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

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

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

NEIRO 24-hour rice chart | Source: CoinGecko

The daily trading volume of the crypto asset is $56.7 million, while its market value is $13.29 million.

The drop in Neiro comes after Lookonchain announced that Buterin had sold all 17.15 billion Neiro tokens he received from the Neiro team, representing 4.08% of the total supply — making him the largest holder of the meme coin. The sale earned Buterin 44.53 Ether (ETH), equivalent to $112,500.

Journalist and blockchain blogger Colin Wu explained to investors that the Neiro token on Ethereum was the token sold by Buterin, drawing attention to the existence of other tokens with the same name in the cryptocurrency market.

Launched at the end of July, the memecoin initially saw a 200% increase in value as Buterin attempted to capitalize on his fame by airdropping 4% of its supply to it on August 4 and claiming to be the largest holder. Buterin’s decision to rapidly sell off the tokens, however, caused widespread concern among investors, leading to a steep 60% price drop.

Following the sale, the Neiro team posted on X asking Buterin to donate a portion of the proceeds to a stray dog ​​shelter: “Hey Vitalik Buterin, we see you’re selling your Neiro bag. Our humble request is that you donate a portion of the proceeds to a stray dog ​​shelter. And thank you for building our playground.”

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

The project announced on August 4 that it would be donating around $1,600 to a stray dog ​​shelter in Japan, where the dog that inspired the Neiro memecoin lives.

Inspired by Kabosu, the sister of the famous Shiba Inu featured in the Doge meme, the Neiro memecoin has grown exponentially since its launch, reaching a record high of $0.19 on August 1 and reaching a market cap of close to $200 million.

The latest incident comes amid a broader downturn in the meme coin market, with total meme market cap down nearly 16% in the past 24 hours to $35.8 billion. Major memecoins like Pepe (PEPE), dogwifhat (WIF), Floki (FLOKI), and Book of Meme (BOME) have all seen significant declines of between 18% and 20%.

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

Other altcoins that experienced the biggest losses of over 20 percent included Lido DAO (LDO), Chainlink (LINK), Bittensor (TAO), and KuCoin (KCS).