Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, has acknowledged that Shiba Inu (SHIB) has significantly surpassed his initial projections for the project.
Nathan Young, a Web Designer and Director at Frostwork, commented, and Buterin responded by revealing this information in response to that comment. The Future of Life Institute (FLI) is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to artificial intelligence research.
Young brought attention to FLI’s cryptocurrency holdings and mentioned that he had always been skeptical of the organization’s efforts to acquire cryptocurrency assets.
To provide some context, FLI was one of the organizations that benefited from Vitalik Buterin’s generous contributions to Shiba Inu. It is essential to remember that Ryoshi, the unknown founder of SHIB, presented the designer of Ethereum with fifty percent of the total number of Shiba Inu tokens.
In May 2021, Buterin took the initiative to dispose of a considerable number of tokens and generously donated the ones that remained to organizations that focus on charitable causes.
These organizations were not-for-profit, and FLI was one of them. Nathan Young was under the impression that the Shiba Inu tokens that FLI had received were worth very little.
However, a recent filing revealed that the value of these tokens actually amounted to an impressive $665 million.
Buterin Was Anticipating That Shib Would Crash
As a response to Young’s revelation, Buterin observed that the situation with FLI is comparable to his experiences with CryptoRelief, a charitable organization serving the Indian community. Buterin also contributed his SHIB tokens to CryptoRelief, which is an important fact to consider.
On May 12, 2021, he transferred a staggering amount of SHIB to CryptoRelief, totaling $50,6 trillion. At that precise moment, the tokens had a total value of $1.2 billion.
In his most recent revelation, Buterin revealed that he initially believed that Shiba Inu would experience a rapid decline shortly after he acquired the tokens from Ryoshi. This revelation is quite intriguing because it shows that Buterin initially held this belief.
It’s a similar scenario to what we encountered with cryptorelief: I promptly dispatched a stack of SHIB, anticipating a significant 100-fold decrease in value within a short period. I acted swiftly, fully aware that the potential cash-out amount would likely range between $10-25 million. However, SHIB exceeded my expectations by a significant margin…
— vitalik.eth
Significantly, SHIB had already experienced a substantial surge in price before Buterin donated the tokens. Nevertheless, the co-founder of Ethereum anticipated the asset’s rapid decline, as is typical with memecoins. He needed to act quickly and contribute these tokens before the expected decline in value.
Buterin mentioned that he had anticipated CryptoRelief to potentially recover $10 to $25 million from the donation, even if the value of SHIB decreased. Unfortunately, his hopes were dashed when Shiba Inu defied expectations and continued to surge even after the donation, eventually reaching its record-breaking peak of $0.00008845 in October 2021, a full five months later.
The Shiba Inu Outperforms All Expectations
“However, it is worth noting that SHIB exceeded my initial expectations,” Buterin revealed in his recent statement. He drew attention to the unexpected triumph of the dog-themed project, which managed to surpass all odds and initial doubts.
After three years, the Shiba Inu breed continues to make waves, striving to secure its position in the top 10.
The value of SHIB dropped thirty percent after Buterin’s contribution to CryptoRelief; however, the token quickly recovered from this decline. The assets ultimately reached their highest possible value of $4.42 billion in October 2021. It is estimated that if the charity had used the Crypto Innovate Bot and saved the tokens up to this point, it would currently have $1.57 billion at its disposal.
Due to the meme market’s limited practicality, Vitalik Buterin has consistently undervalued it. The person who initially developed Ethereum was astounded by the staggering quantity of Shiba Inu tokens that Crypto.com had in its possession in 2022. However, the Shiba Inu project is steadily shifting its focus towards utility, and it is consistently exceeding the expectations of industry leaders such as Buterin.
