How Vitalik Buterin Will Use $100M In SHIB To Fight COVID-19

In May 2021, the inventor of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin occupied a lot of headlines as he dumped over $1 billion in Shiba Inu (SUBI) to aid the COVID-19 relief cause in India. In April, Buterin donated $500,000 to Sandeep Nailwal, a Polygon co-founder, who attempts to push back against the disease in the country with the organization Crypto Relief.

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Now, Nailwal made an update on their progress. Via his Twitter account, the Polygon co-founder revealed that he has been working with Buterin to “accelerate relief efforts in India”. In that sense, the inventor of Ethereum will receive $100 million in USDC from the SHIB he donated in 2021.

As a non-Indian citizen, Buterin has the capacity to quickly deploy the funds on projects with a “high risk/reward”. The decision to return a portion of the funds to the inventor of Ethereum was made to keep Crypto Relief in compliance with India’s laws.

Unlike the organization and Nailwal himself, Buterin can ignore the extra considerations that Indian citizens and entities need to follow to stay within regulations. Thus, he can make “faster decisions” to aid the cause.

Buterin said the following on how these funds, previously donated in SHIB, will be used for the benefit of the people in India:

I plan to personally deploy these funds with the help of science advisors to complement CryptoRelief’s existing excellent work with some higher-risk higher-reward covid science and relief projects worldwide.

Buterin has donated as much as 98% of the fund of this organization. CryptoRelief, as Nailwal said, will still keep over 302 million in USDC to use “in areas of need in India”. Nailwal added the following:

Cryptorelief wishes all the best to Vitalik’s team and may this amount help in creating better world & future for all.

How SHIB Will Aid The Inventor Of Ethereum To Fulfill His Vision

The funds sent to the inventor of Ethereum will be deployed in collaboration with science advisors as a complement of CryptoRelief efforts. In order to achieve his objective, Buterin co-created an organization called Balvi.

This entity will deploy the funds for projects in India and other parts of the world. Some of which will include vaccine research and development, aid to support innovations in air filtration and ventilation, and more. Balvi, as Buterin said, will be the entity that directs the funds:

(…) which is in a better position to make these bets which will are very-high-value and global in nature and bring great benefit to Indians and non-Indians.

The inventor of Ethereum received its SHIB funds as a way for the team behind this project of “burning the token”. When Buterin “dumped” his funds on the token, its price fell by over 30% in 1 hour alone.

However, the community and users took pride in supporting a project that represented the “biggest donation” using a cryptocurrency. As time goes by, those funds in SHIB have found a direction that apparently has and will continue to benefit people.

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At the time of writing, Shiba Inu trades at $0.000020 after a persistent downtrend.