Vitalik Buterin Cashes Out $29,400 in Latest Unsolicited Memecoin Batch

Ethereum's co-founder just turned another wave of random crypto tokens into real money—proving that even in decentralized finance, some addresses are more equal than others.

The Unwanted Windfall

It happens with surprising regularity: airdropped tokens, often memecoins of dubious origin and zero utility, land in high-profile wallets. For most, it's digital clutter. For Vitalik Buterin, it's become a modest revenue stream. The latest conversion netted a cool $29,400, a sum that likely didn't cause a ripple in his personal treasury but speaks volumes about the state of token distribution.

The Mechanics of a Casual Cash-Out

The process is straightforward. Tokens appear, get swapped for ETH via a decentralized exchange, and the ETH moves on. No fanfare, no market-moving announcements—just efficient asset liquidation. It's a masterclass in dispassionate portfolio management, treating speculative gifts as the financial noise they are. The action underscores a core truth: liquidity is the only feature that matters for a token with no other purpose.

A Cynical Footnote for Finance

Let's be real—this is the crypto equivalent of a celebrity cashing a sponsorship check for a product they never endorsed. The entire ecosystem watches, some tokens pump on pure proximity, and the originator walks away with actual value extracted from the speculative fervor they inspired. It's a neat trick if you can get it, turning community hype into a personal slush fund without lifting a finger. The real innovation here isn't technical; it's finding new ways to monetize attention in a market that still confuses popularity with intrinsic worth.

Buterin's repeated, low-key disposals serve as a periodic reality check. They highlight the absurd liquidity sloshing around the memecoin fringe while demonstrating a pragmatic approach to an ecosystem he helped create—one that now spends considerable energy generating assets worthy of little more than an immediate sale.

Buterin sells WOOLLY, IZZY and OP in the  latest airdrop token dump

Looking at the tokens involved in the conversions, Buterin swapped 7.528 OP tokens into Ether through Bungee Exchange. He also exchanged 4.508 million DEGEN tokens for ETH, and a separate swap of 23.988 million CHIB tokens through Socket Gateway and PullSplit.

The Arkham data also shows several other Ether-denominated swaps in aggregator routes, including 0.668, 0.762, 0.837, 1.927, and 0.739 ETH received from LiFi and Bungee Exchange conversions.

One of the most sizable single conversions came via Across Protocol, where Buterin received 4.496 ETH from the sale of a bundled token position. Smaller token exchanges for ETH included WOOLLY and IZZY trades, with the latter seeing 13.628 million units converted through LiFi.

At the time of the swaps, ethereum was trading slightly above $3,136, according to Coingecko’s pricing data. The ETH received was sent back to addresses that purportedly belong to Buterin, adding to his already substantial Ether holdings.

The Ethereum Foundation co-founder has a recorded history of selling tokens that are airdropped to his address, having publicly said he “sees no moral value” in them. As Cryptopolitan reported last October, Buterin sold 275 trillion CatCoin tokens for 14,216 USDC, equivalent to about $14,200. 

As with the latest activity, he did not publicly comment on the reasons behind the disposal, and the assumption is that the proceeds will go to a charitable cause. He rarely announces a sale ahead and refrains from explaining them entirely. However, he has openly blasted projects for using his wallet for “promotions.”

“Many projects have opted to send a substantial chunk of their supply to me,” Buterin told his followers on X last year. “Anything that gets sent to me gets donated to charity too, though I truly prefer if you guys send to charity directly.”

In January, Cryptopolitan, citing Lookonchain, reported that Buterin sold several other memecoins he had received for free, including 340 billion DOG tokens for 5.2 ETH. The combined proceeds from that round totaled $139,000 at the time.

Around October 10, the programmer sold tokens valued at 1,101 ETH, or about $2.78 million at then-current prices. Among the tokens sold in that round were 10 billion MOODENG, 200,000 MSTR, and 500 million EBULL. 

Those disposals generated 395.95 ETH, 93.23 ETH, and 73.79 ETH, respectively, based on contemporaneous pricing. From those sales, he donated 360.16 ETH, roughly $884,000, to an unmentioned charity.

“I appreciate all the memecoins that donate portions of their supply directly to charity. Anything that gets sent to me gets donated to charity too (thanks, moodeng!). The 10B from today is going to anti-airborne-disease tech,” the Ethereum founder remarked at the time.

Buterin’s portfolio, beyond the memecoins he sold and as seen on Arkham’s dashboard, places his total on-chain assets at more than $763 million. The wallet holds about 240,000 ETH, valued at $752 million at current prices. 

Smaller positions include wrapped ether variants and a range of minor tokens accumulated over time, like WHITE, MOODENG, KNC, TRUE, REPv2, and THE. Some of these assets have seen recent price declines, which have slumped the portfolio’s holdings by just over $7 million in the past seven days and over $30 million in the last month. 

Meanwhile, Ethereum is flashing signs of bullish momentum, although it recorded a meager 0.8% price uptick to hold above the $3,090 level. h.

Meanwhile, Ethereum is flashing signs of bullish momentum, although it recorded a meager 0.8% price uptick to hold above the $3,090 level. e the $3,090 level.

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