And in doing so, he brought together the disparate worlds of emergency medical relief and meme coins.
If you are unfamiliar with internet culture, the millennial propensity for irony and the topsy turvy world of cryptocurrency, the idea of a currency based on a joke or meme might seem bizarre.
Shiba Inu, named after the Japanese breed of hunter dogs, is a meme coin, like its more famous rival Dogecoin, which was originally created as a satire or joke on the crypto-mania.
Incidentally, shortly after the donation was announced, Shiba Inu’s price crashed by almost 30%.
Russian-Canadian programmer Buterin, best known for founding the Ethereum blockchain project in 2015, also co-founded the Bitcoin Magazine, one of the first publications in the world dedicated to covering cryptocurrencies.
According to a white paper, 50% of the Shiba Inu supply was transferred to Buterin’s public wallet when the coin was created in order to create an “element of scarcity”.
Nailwal took to Twitter to thank Buterin and assure SHIB holders that the relief fund would act responsibly with the donation.
The total value of donations in the fund will depend on the price of cryptocurrencies at a given time.