Vitalik Buterin earned more than $4 million from Dogecoin investments

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin earned more than $4 million from investments in Dogecoin (DOGE). In a podcast with MIT researcher Lex Fridman, he said that in 2016 he invested $25,000 in the cryptocurrency.

According to Buterin, he was impressed by the Dogecoin community, but had no objective reasons to invest in the asset.

“I remember thinking: ‘How do I explain to my mom that I invested $25,000 in DOGE?’ The only interesting thing about this coin is the dog logo. But, of course, it was one of the best investments I have ever made,” he said.

The Ethereum co-founder noted that he was caught off guard by the speculative frenzy sparked by Elon Musk’s tweets about the meme cryptocurrency. He said that he was in isolation in Singapore when the price of DOGE rose by 775% in a single day.

He sold half the coins and donated $4.3 million of the profit to the nonprofit GiveDirectly. 

Buterin does not think there is “calculated malice” in Musk’s actions. In his words, the businessman is “just a man who likes dogs”.

He stressed that Tesla and SpaceX will have to embrace Ethereum at some point if they want to stay in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. 

“Bitcoin is a blockchain for money, and Ethereum was designed from the outset as a general-purpose blockchain,” he said.

Musk commented that he is “pretty much” in agreement with Buterin. He did not specify what exactly he means.

I pretty much agree with Vitalik

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2021

Back in May Ethereum co-founder criticized Musk for remarks about increasing Dogecoin’s scalability and lowering the network fees of the cryptocurrency.