Ethereum’s Buterin receives $100 million in crypto back from India Crypto Relief Fund

For the uninitiated, Buterin in May donated over $1 billion worth of meme coins to India’s Covid-19 relief fund as well as a number of nonprofit organisations battling the country’s aggressive second wave. A large portion of Buterin’s donation was made using massive amounts of dog-themed ‘meme coins’, which had been gifted to him for free by the creators of the Shiba Inu coin (SHIB), Dogelon (ELON) and Akita Inu (AKITA), Forbes reported. He donated 50 trillion SHIB tokens, worth around $1.2 billion to the India Covid Relief Fund, founded by entrepreneur Sandeep Naliwal.

Nailwal confirmed Vitalik’s statement in a tweet, saying that they would be releasing the funds in cryptocurrency USDC. “Considering fund’s foreign origin and laws of India, CryptoRelief followed a systematic, controlled, and robust approach in disbursing funds mandated to be utilised for India. But being an Indian citizen (NRI), I have to be extra cautious in any of the projects being donated to,” he added.

Apart from this, Buterin also donated about $1.5 billion worth of coins to Indian charities, some of which came in his own cryptocurrency, Ether. According to Forbes, he donated millions of dollars to tech-focussed charities like GiveWell, Methuselah Foundation, as well as Machine Intelligence Research Institute.