Vitalik Buterin says the Shiba Inu donations that made headlines turned out much larger than he expected. The Ethereum co-founder said that if he had known how the situation would develop, he would have made different choices about how to handle the token gifts. The comments came in a recent interview, where he looked back at one of the stranger episodes in his public giving.
Donation Size Surprised Buterin
Buterin recalled that the SHIB team sent half of the token supply to a public wallet tied to him. At first, the move may have looked like a symbolic gesture. Then the price of SHIB rose fast, and the wallet held assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He said he did not expect that result. After the value climbed, a portion was sold and converted into about $70 million worth of ETH. He donated a large share to the Against Malaria Foundation, which works on malaria prevention and treatment.
The sale was not simple. Market liquidity could not absorb all the tokens at once. Buterin sent a large part of the remaining SHIB to CryptoRelief, an Indian pandemic relief effort, and to the Future of Life Institute, or FLI.
Funds Beat Early Estimates
He thought the groups might raise a little over $20 million by selling the tokens. That estimate was far off. CryptoRelief raised around $470 million, according to his account. He said he did not know the exact amount FLI raised, but it may have been between $400 million and $600 million. The gap between his guess and the actual totals helps explain why he now says he would have handled the donations differently.
Buterin also said he did not fully agree with how FLI used some of the funds. The group began with a broad focus on risks such as biological threats, nuclear war, and artificial intelligence, he said. It later centered more on AI policy. He said he did not support some of its activities, and his proposal to direct resources to other areas was not accepted.
Dogecoin Gains Also Came Up
In the same interview, Buterin shared an early Dogecoin investment. He put in about $25,000, and the position later grew to more than $10 million, he said. The detail fits a wider point about how quickly crypto holdings can change value. For Buterin, the SHIB episode is less a story about a single token and more a lesson in what happens when unexpected sums land in public view. Maybe the main takeaway is simple: large donations can create large responsibilities, and timing matters.
