Back in 2021, amid the best of the bull run and the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic, Vitalik Buterin made a now famous donation of $1bn to SHIB to support Covid-19 efforts in India.
Now almost two years later, a Investigation by top crypto journalist Isabel Hunter (DL News) has revealed that only less than 5% original donation Made it for Covid relief efforts in India.
Ethereum-founder donates $1 billion in SHIB tokens to an Indian Covid relief fund (called Crypto Relief) set up by Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal,
Nelwal set up the fund when Covid-19 saw a major breakthrough in the world’s largest democracy, with new daily cases rising to 3 million.
Buterin donation breaks SHIB liquidity
Of the original $1bn donated – Vitalik sent 500 ETH and 1 trillion Shiba Inu (SHIB) tokens.
However, while Crypto Relief moved quickly to capitalize on the jaw-dropping donation – the sheer size of the stack pushed SHIB to the limits of its liquidity.
In an OTC deal with Wishfulsync and Wintermute, CryptoRelief was able to trade SHIB’s close to billion dollar stack of stablecoins (mainly USDC) for $500m.
This raises big questions about the practical liquidity behind this insane multi-billion market cap – such low liquidity levels are a worrying sign for the industry.
How was the $500m USDC spent?
Of the $500m received in stable coins, $274m remains in the Crypto Relief wallet.
crypto relief The fund returned $100 million to Vitalik’s Balvi Fund – which was soon established to finance bold projects that would provide an innovative response to the pandemic.
$100 million was earmarked between April 2021 and April 2022 – and surprisingly the discredited Alameda Research managed up to $1.5 million of these funds.
Of this cash-out, only $58m reached non-profits and NGOs registered in India – 57 of the 60 projects announced by the Crypto Relief Fund confirmed receipt of the donation share.
Nevertheless, a bank statement recently shared by Nelwal revealed that $40 million of this funding is lying in a bank account in Puerto Rico (with US licensed FV Bank).
Overall, this means that only 5.8% of Vitalik’s original $1 billion SHIB donation was ever received in India.
And two years later, donations above $314m (31%) remain in crypto wallets and bank accounts controlled by Nailwall.
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