Vitalik Buterin donates $182K to help fight airborne diseases after receiving billions of Moo Deng memecoin tokens

Quick Take

  • Buterin donated $182,000 worth of ETH converted from the Moo Deng memecoin to the biotech charity Kanro.
  • He added that users should opt to send tokens directly to charity or create a DAO to allow community involvement in the funds.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin donated $182,000 worth of ETH, converted from billions in the Moo Deng memecoin that people sent him, to the biotech charity Kanro.

Buterin noted that any memecoins sent to him would go to charity. He added that users should either send the tokens to charity directly or create a DAO so that people can have a better say in where their money goes.

"I've said before that I think the best thing for memecoins is if they can be maximally positive-sum for the world, so it's great to see moments when that actually happens!" Buterin wrote on the social media platform X.

The Moo Deng memecoin MOODENG derives from the female pygmy hippo of the same name. She lives in Thailand's Khao Kheow Open Zoo and gained viral popularity for her cute appearance and seemingly aggressive personality.

MOODENG traded at around $0.105 as of 9:53 a.m. ET (13:53 UTC) as of Oct. 7, according to the cryptocurrency price tracker CoinGecko. The token has a market capitalization exceeding $105 million.

The Block Prices shows that 1 ether is valued at nearly $2,508 after experiencing a 2.72% increase in the past day.


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About Author

MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020 — joining just before bitcoin surpassed $20,000 for the first time. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for the publication, covering any and all crypto news but with a penchant toward NFT, metaverse, web3 gaming, funding, crime, hack and crypto ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. You can follow MK on X @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.

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