Neiro meme coin plummets 60% following Vitalik Buterin’s token sell-off

Neiro, a newly launched Ethereum-based meme coin, dropped by 60% early Monday morning following a massive sell-off by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.

According to price data from CoinGecko, Neiro’s price fell from $0.022 to $0.013 before experiencing a minor recovery to $0.015. The meme token plummeted further and is now trading back at $0.013 at press time. 

The crypto asset has a daily trading volume of $56.7 million, with its market cap standing at $13.29 million.

The fall in Neiro came after Lookonchain revealed that Buterin sold all 17.15 billion Neiro tokens he received from the Neiro team, which represented 4.08% of the total supply — making him the largest holder of the meme coin. The sale netted Buterin 44.53 Ether (ETH), equivalent to $112,500.

Journalist and blockchain blogger Colin Wu clarified to investors that the Neiro token on Ethereum is the one sold by Buterin, noting the existence of other tokens with the same name in the cryptocurrency market.

Launched at the end of July, the memecoin initially saw a value increase of 200% as it attempted to leverage Buterin’s fame by airdropping 4% of its supply to him on Aug. 4, claiming he was the largest holder. However, Buterin’s swift decision to dump the tokens led to a drastic price drop of 60%, causing widespread concern among investors.

Following the sell-off, the Neiro team posted on X, asking Buterin to donate part of the proceeds to a stray dog shelter, “Hey Vitalik Buterin, we see that you sold your Neiro bag. Our humble ask is that you donate part of the proceeds to a stray dog shelter. And thank you for building our playground.”

The Neiro project had created a strategic reserve to hold tokens for potential central exchange (CEX) listings and to make charitable donations to stray dog shelters and other animal abuse prevention foundations.

On Aug. 4, the project announced a donation of almost $1600 to a stray dog shelter in Japan, which houses the dog that inspired the Neiro memecoin.

Neiro memecoin, inspired by Kabosu, the sister of the famous Shiba Inu featured in the Doge meme, saw exponential growth after its launch, reaching an all-time high of $0.19 on Aug. 1 and achieving a market cap close to $200 million.

The latest incident occurred amid a broader downturn in the meme coin market, with the total meme market cap falling around 16% over the past 24 hours to $35.8 billion. Major memecoins such as Pepe (PEPE), dogwifhat (WIF), Floki (FLOKI), and Book of Meme (BOME) have all experienced significant drops between 18% and 20%.

Meanwhile, the global crypto market is also experiencing a drop of 13.8% in the last 24 hours. Bitcoin (BTC), the pioneering crypto asset, was down 12.7%, trading at $52,706, while Ethereum (ETH), the largest altcoin, was also down 18.5%, exchanging hands at $2,355.

Other altcoins that suffered the steepest losses of over 20% include Lido DAO (LDO), Chainlink (LINK), Bittensor (TAO) and KuCoin (KCS).