Vitalik: I didn’t expect the SHIB donation to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars—otherwise, I would’ve made a different decision.

On October 29, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin reflected on his investments in DOGE and donation of SHIB during an interview on the Silicon Valley 101 podcast: He initially invested $25,000 in DOGE, which later surged in value to over $10 million. The SHIB team transferred 50% of the token’s total supply to his public wallet; he sold a portion of those tokens for approximately $70 million worth of ETH—but due to insufficient market liquidity, he retained a large amount of unsold SHIB, which he ultimately donated to India’s COVID-19 relief efforts and the Future of Life Institute (FLI). Buterin had originally expected the recipients to liquidate roughly $20+ million worth of tokens; instead, they managed to sell several hundred million dollars’ worth—far exceeding expectations. Regarding this outcome, Buterin admitted that, had he foreseen it, his decision would have been entirely different.