India’s second Covid-19 wave earlier this year proved especially harrowing for the country, leading to many international personalities donating huge relief funds. Among them was Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin who, at the time, donated trillions of Shiba Inu coins in a bid to support India.
Earlier today, the ‘India’s Crypto-Covid Relief’ account announced that it had officially converted the last remaining tokens from the donation to $76.2 million in stablecoins.
The total proceeds for converting 10,139,544,347,612 SHIB amounted to 76,215,526.65 USD Coin (USDC). Global market maker Wintermute is expected to transfer the amount to the Covid relief fund wallets over the next few hours.
The total proceeds for converting 10,139,544,347,612 SHIB are 76,215,526.65 USDC.@wintermute_t would be transferring the said amount to our ETH wallet in the next few hours.
With this, we have now converted all the $SHIB donations from @VitalikButerin into stable coins.
(3/x)
— India's Crypto Covid Relief ?? (@CryptoRelief_) September 24, 2021
Once the news broke, Shiba Inu’s Twitter account swiftly expressed its support for the cause, tweeting,
Milestone for India, and @CryptoRelief_.
Stay strong India! The #ShibArmy is, and will always be with you.
A special thank you to @VitalikButerin for making the biggest crypto donation in history, utilizing $SHIB, and to promote efforts in the battle against COVID-19. https://t.co/VGBimCjcec
— Shib (@Shibtoken) September 24, 2021
Sandeep Nailwal, Founder of India Covid Crypto Relief Fund, had previously claimed that cashing out an asset lacking liquidity, along with regulatory compliance and remitting funds to the appropriate recipients, was a herculean task.
It wasn’t an easy feat for the SHIB network either as the token’s price had dropped by 50% when Buterin made the donation. Upon the creation of the coin, 50% of the total coins in circulation had been donated to Buterin. While donating 10% of the gift to India, the Co-founder burned the remaining 90% tokens, taking almost half its supply off the market.
At the time, he had also requested coin creators to not send large amounts of tokens to individuals or charities without their consent.
In any case, the Dogecoin copycat has been rising in popularity over the past few months. In the last three months alone, SHIB has increased its holders by 100,000. Moreover, the network recently revealed that its Twitter followers had reached a massive sum of 900,000 – A sign of its growing community.
Earlier this month, SHIB was listed on top exchanges such as Binance.US and Coinbase, pushing its valuation north even further. $870 million were invested in the meme coin within just 24 hours of its being listed on Coinbase.
The spike in valuation was short-lived, however, as SHIB has dropped by over 20% over the past week.
