How do you feel about vitalik burning 6 billion dollars of tokens?

Chat / Discussion
1

At first when he said he was doing as he did not want the power I was like yeah i get that, butt thinking more about I am absolutely disgusted at his actions. He did a deplorable thing , look its his money he can do what he wants. He is a billionaire but instead of using that money in world were need and poverty is rife he decides to destroy it, what kind of a depraved person does that ?

1 Like
2

Shib was using Vitalik’s cold storage address as a burn address. The tokens that were in Vitalik’s possession were intended to never move. This meant people buying into Shib did so believing those tokens were not in circulation. I’d almost consider taking those tokens and then using them to be akin to theft, but using Vitalik as a burn address was incredibly irresponsible in its self.

Since Vitalik did not want this responsibility, this gave Vitalik a few options.

  1. Do as you say, re-introduce these tokens into circulation and donate them. This massively dilutes the supply of Shib and hurts tens of thousands of investors, both big and small. This also puts the entire Shib project at risk, as this is still early into the project’s lifespan.
  2. Forward the tokens to an actual burn address, fulfilling the goals of the Shib project while taking a large burden off his back, all while not pissing anyone off.

Ultimately he went with a mix of the two, donating about $1b to Covid related charity in India, and if I recall correctly, about $350m to longevity research, before burning the remainder.

I think this is a pretty good outcome. He did help people, $1.35b is not a small number by any means, but he did so in a manner that didn’t put the holders of Shib at any real elevated risk. He did re-introduce some coins into circulation, but an amount that the ecosystem could absorb and still run with, not an amount that tanked them.

He’s just a kid still, I think just 26 or 27 years old at the time, who out of no where had a massive amount of money thrown at him, leaving him with an unimaginable decision to make. I think he did pretty good.

4 Likes