- Vitalik Buterin said he can't write-off the tax of his Shiba Inu donation to India's crypto-based COVID-19 relief fund.
- The ethereum creator said he is taxed as a Singaporean citizen and is not eligible.
- Shiba Inu, a meme token founded in March 2021, took inspiration from dogecoin.
- Sign up here for our daily newsletter, 10 Things Before the Opening Bell.
Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin said he won't get a tax write-off after donating 50 trillion Shiba Inu coins to a crypto-based COVID-19 relief fund in India, Bloomberg first reported.
Buterin said he is taxed as a Singaporean citizen and is not eligible, Bloomberg first reported. The rules in his country, he said, are "significantly cleaner than in the US or Canada."
The 27-year-old on May 13 donated what was, on that day, equivalent to $1 billion. Buterin intended for it to provide India with healthcare and basic-needs items.
India, currently a global hotspot for the virus, is seeing global record numbers of cases and deaths with an overwhelmed healthcare system unable to cope with shortages in medication, food, and oxygen tanks.
When news broke of Buterin's donation, Shiba Inu dropped by around 34% as investors panicked. The meme token the week prior was skyrocketing to almost 1,000%.
Shiba Inu, founded less than a year ago, took inspiration from dogecoin, a more established meme currency. It even branded itself as a "dogecoin killer." Because it's new, it's still also very volatile. At one point, the donation of Buterin fell to around $800 million and rose to about $2 billion.
Shiba Inu was last at $0.000009253 as of 9 a.m. ET Wednesday, according to CoinMarketCap. It is the 33th largest cryptocurrency with a market valuation of over $3.2 billion. At this point. Buterin's donation is equivalent to $414 million.
Then, on May 17, Buterin announced that he burned 90% of his Shiba Inu holdings - almost half the coin's circulation. It was his only choice, he said, given that the creators of the meme token sent him trillions of coins without his consent.
"I don't *want* to be a locus of power of that kind. Better to just print the coins into the hands of a worthy charity directly (though do talk to them first)," he wrote in his note.
To burn a coin means to send it to an unusable account thereby permanently removing it from circulation.
The largest cryptocurrency exchange in India, Binance-owned WazirX exchange, listed Shiba Inu a day after Buterin's donation. The listing of meme tokens is often seen as a sign of legitimacy in the cryptocurrency community.