Vitalik Buterin’s $100 Million SHIB Donation Sent Back By India’s Crypto Relief Fund

The COVID-Crypto Relief Fund (Crypto Relief), a community-run fund aimed at delivering relief during the Covid crisis, was founded in April 2021 and had amassed plenty of donations within merely a month of its inception.

Its cause garnered much love in the crypto community as Vitalik Buterin – founder of the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency Ethererum – transferred 500 ether and 50 trillion Shiba Inu memecoins (totaling about $1 billion) into the fund. Besides Buterin, Australian cricketer Brett Lee had also chipped in via the Bitcoin route last year.

Nonetheless, the co-founder of Polygon (MATIC), Sandeep Nailwal, revealed on Friday that up to 100 million dollars worth of the SHIB donation from Buterin last year will now to sent back to him.

CryptoRelief sending $100m of the $SHIBA funds back to me. I plan to personally deploy these funds with the help of science advisors to complement CryptoRelief’s existing excellent work with some higher-risk higher-reward covid science and relief projects worldwide. https://t.co/xvHxzwwdn8

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 28, 2022

Tweeting through a thread on this move, Sandeep Nailwal explained the reasons as to why this decision was made in more detail.

Nailwal reassured that despite its foreign origins “Crypto Relief follows a systematic, controlled & robust approach in disbursing funds mandated to be utilized for India.” However, he also told that as an Indian citizen, he has to be “extra cautious in any of the projects being donated to.”

“Vitalik being a non-Indian can do it in a more accelerated way by being able to do faster decision making and deploying to projects which have higher risk but high rewards too,” the COO of Polygon illuminates.

• Click here to read Crypto’s Disturbing Parallels With Subprime Lending Crisis: Paul Krugman.

The decision was allegedly settled upon after Nailwal had a conversation about the matter with Buterin (who donated approximately 98% of the fund). The fund has already deployed 70 million USDC and is reserving another 300 million to disburse as it is to places in need within India.

Buterin reverted to the matter with a tweet, disclosing that he has co-founded a new organization (Balvi), to direct these funds. He also provided us with a link on where we can follow these funds.