Wallets attributed to Vitalik Buterin by crypto data platform Arkham Intelligence sold off $1 million worth of memecoins Monday morning, the latest instance of the Ethereum co-founder doing so.

Buterin disposed of 28 separate memecoins sent to his wallets in recent months, raking in around $1 million from the sales. Memecoins often have low liquidity, meaning that traders often receive less than market value when selling large amounts.

Traders often keep a close eye on such moves as they can cause wild price fluctuations among the tokens Buterin sells.

This time was no exception.

Estee, a Shiba Inu-themed memecoin which sent 12% of its 420 billion supply to Buterin in September, rallied some 112% after the Ethereum co-founder sold the tokens for $116,000.

Another dog-themed token called Marvin Inu, as well as other coins called Ethereum is Good and Terminus, whipsawed after the sales, ultimately trading higher.

What’s going on?

Memecoin projects often choose to send large amounts of their tokens to Buterin in an attempt to harness his star power.

The trend started with Shiba Inu, a memecoin launched in 2021. It was the first to send tokens to Buterin on claims that doing so would be the equivalent to taking tokens out of circulation, or “burning” them

But Buterin later disposed of the SHIB tokens through a mix of donations and a different kind of burning — sending the tokens to an inaccessible Ethereum address, permanently removing them from circulation.

Initially, Buterin interacting with gifted memecoins drove their prices down. The price of Shiba Inu temporarily crashed 50% after Buterin’s $1 billion SHIB donation to the Indian Crypto Relief Fund, for example.

But in recent months the opposite has often happened, with Buterin’s memecoin sales sparking violent price rallies.

In October, an Ethereum memecoin named after popular pigmy hippo Moo Deng jumped 480% after Buterin sold.

While Estee and several others rallied today, many memecoins Buterin sold didn’t perform as well.

One token called Ledog is down a whopping 65% after Buterin sold his share.

Other sold memecoins, including Dogey-Inu, AstroElon, and Amaterasu omikami, are also trading lower.

Charitable donations

The Ethereum co-founder routinely uses the money raised by selling gifted memecoins to make charitable donations.

Following his October selloff, Buterin thanked those who sent him memecoins and announced that he was going to donate the proceeds to an anti-airborne-disease tech charity.

Buterin donated the proceeds from an earlier selloff in August to an effective altruism charity.

The Ethereum co-founder has deposited the proceeds to a wallet earmarked for charitable donations, but is yet to reveal which charity the latest round of selling will fund.

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.