Vitalik Buterin has recounted how he dropped $25,000 into $4.3 million in three years by investing in DOGE.
In his latest appearance on the Lex Fridman Podcast, ETH co-founder Vitalik Buterin revealed he gained over $4 million from a $25,000 investment he made into Dogecoin (DOGE) throughout 2016.But true to form, he gave it all away to charity.Dogecoin was made in December 2013 and sought to capitalize on the popularity of the then-popular Shiba Inu-inspired dog meme, together with Buterin describing DOGE as among the first ”fun coins” launched into the burgeoning crypto advantage ecosystem.Although he was impressed by the community which had formed around DOGE, Buterin joked about the lack of investment thesis telling his conclusion, stating:
“In the beginning, people didn’t take it quite seriously […] I just remembered thinking to myself,’how am I going to explain to my mum I just invested $25,000 into Dogecoin?’ […] enjoy, the only interesting thing about this coin is a logo of a dog someplace. But of course, that has been among the best investments I’ve ever made.”
Although Buterin stated that DOGE ”did really well” over the following years, he recalled being caught off-guard from the speculative frenzy which resulted from Elon Musk’s fascination with the meme-coin.Musk’s curiosity about DOGE seemed to stem after a 2019 community vote which shown that the SpaceX founder to be the job’s most-desired hypothetical CEO in 2019 — four years after Dogecoin’s founder had abandoned the undertaking.”In the end of 2020, Elon Musk began talking about Dogecoin, and the market cap only taken up to $50 billion […] It shot up several occasions,” said Buterin.He recounted being in lockdown in Singapore as soon as the price of DOGE taken up 775% from $0.008 to $0.07 over the course of a single afternoon, thinking:”Oh my god, my DOGE is worth, for example, much!”
“I instantly called up some of my friends and told them to drop everything and moan, and I sold half the DOGE, and I got $4.3 million, donated the profits to GiveDirectly, and a few hours later I did so, the price dropped back from around $0.07 to $0.04.”
After selling half his DOGE at the local top, Buterin says he felt as ”an remarkable dealer,” before,”of course, the price went back up from $0.04, then to $0.07, then to $0.50.”
Assuming that Buterin held on to the remaining 50% of the DOGE stash, ETH’s co-creator would currently be hodling nearly $20 million value of the dog token.Despite backing the project relatively early into its development, Buterin highlighted he didn’t expect that Dogecoin would catch the mainstream imagination and reemerge as a Major crypto advantage by capitalization:
“DOGE getting this large phenomenon, where there’s even a lot of people who have heard of DOGE who haven’t heard of ETH, is something which I was not calling”
