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by EAHistorian
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Building effective altruismEffective givingDonation writeupGood things & impact storiesHistory of effective altruismVitalik Buterin
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This may be the first in a sequence of posts sharing little-known interesting stories from the history of Effective Altruism.

In 2021, Effective Altruists played a role in encouraging Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, to liquidate and donate a substantial portion of his meme coin holdings, valued at billions, to high-impact causes such as COVID-19 relief efforts in India. Here's a chronological breakdown of the what worked and the individuals involved. I have no connection to any of the people involved.

🗓️ Late April to Early May 2021

  • Background: Vitalik Buterin had been gifted large quantities of meme tokens like SHIB and AKITA, totaling approximately $13 billion at their peak.
  • These tokens were sent by their creators to Vitalik's public wallet as a publicity stunt, assuming he would never cash them out.

🗓️ May 7-10, 2021

  • In an Effective Altruism (EA) Facebook group, Greg Colbourn noticed this massive holding and highlighted the high expected value (EV) of reaching out to Vitalik to suggest donating a portion.

  • Proposal by Greg Colbourn:

    "Looks pretty high EV to Tweet/otherwise contact him suggesting he cashes out ~ a billion dollars for EA causes."

  • Source Post Discussion Thread: EA Discussion Archive

🗓️ May 10-12, 2021

  • Luke Cockerham suggested avoiding public tweets to prevent market participants from anticipating a sell-off.

    "Tweeting him would be a poor way to get his attention without alerting other market participants that there might become a huge seller in the marketplace."

  • Contact Suggestions:
  • Giego Caleiro attempted to reach Vitalik's father. His interpretation was that the message would reach Vitalik indirectly despite his father’s non-committal response.

🗓️ May 12-13, 2021

  • Vitalik began liquidating significant portions of his meme coin holdings and donating the proceeds.
  • Breakdown of Donations (via Hudson Jameson on Twitter):
    • 13,292 ETH to GiveWell
    • 1,050 ETH to Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI)
    • 500 ETH to Charter Cities Institute
    • $1 Billion in SHIB to CryptoRelief (COVID Relief Fund India)
  • Hudson Jameson's Summary on Twitter: Hudson Jameson Tweet

🗓️ May 13, 2021: Community Reactions and Reflection

  • William Eden: "This was the best possible use of a shitcoin airdrop. Vitalik absolutely rocks."
  • Ezra Malafaia: Praised members of the community for taking bold action.

  • Greg Colbourn:

    "I'm not sure if we can claim credit, but we might well have had some influence."

🗓️ Mid-May 2021

  • Following this success, EA-aligned charities prioritized setting up multi-signature Ethereum wallets to handle future donations more effectively.
  • ALLFED Wallet Example: Gnosis Safe Wallet for ERC-20 Donations

🗓️ May 14-20, 2021: Media Coverage Picks Up

  • Major media outlets began covering the story:
    • Vox Article: The World of Crypto Philanthropy is About to Get Weird
    • Celebrity Net Worth: Vitalik Buterin's $14 Billion Meme Coin Fortune

🗓️ Late May 2021: Reflecting on Success and Future Plans

  • Greg Colbourn: Emphasized the need for EA charities to maintain multisig ETH wallets for efficient handling of large-scale crypto donations.
  • CEEALAR Multisig Wallet Setup: CEEALAR Fundraising Page

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Rasool20
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I agree with Greg that I'm not sure how causal that all was, as Vitalik says on the 80000 hours podcast:

Yeah. And when I got the Shiba tokens in 2021, I fully identified as EA then, and I was fully on board with defending the EAs against all of the various Twitter criticism. But at the same time, if you look at where I gave those donations, it was just a pretty broad spray across a bunch of things — the largest share of which basically had to do with global public health

(emphasis mine)

And as for the timing, in that same podcast episode he says:

What ended up happening was I was anticipating that these coins would just totally crash and burn, and they’d at most be able to cash out maybe $25 million. And I thought that, OK, there’s this very acute emergency situation in India, and they have to go and act quickly. And let’s act quickly, because if you act slowly, then, one, the COVID issue would… like, the opportunity to help would be gone — but also because that was in the middle of a crazy crypto bubble, and those coins could drop by 90% tomorrow. So I was definitely acting very hastily.

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Jamie_Harris2
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I appreciate the original post and also appreciate you highlighting this useful extra info.

Thanks to both!

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Nathan Young2
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I find it very funny that such a huge donation basically happened by accident. Surreal stuff.

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guneyulasturker 🔸2
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Great post. Would love to see more stories like this 

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