Shortly after Vitalik Buterin sold off his portion of Shikoku (SHIK) tokens, a token inspired by the Shiba Inu, it was listed on the US-based exchange Poloniex.
Today, Poloniex declared that they added SHIK to their list of currencies, enabling deposits starting at 11:00 (UTC). Trading in the SHIK/USDT pair opened up at 11:40 (UTC).
A few hours after NOW Wallet, a non-custodial wallet, announced it would include Shikoku in its offerings, the news spread.
The addition of Poloniex to the list of exchanges coincided with a sharp rise in the project’s popularity after Vitalik Buterin chose to divest himself of all his complimentary tokens. The Shikoku team had gifted him 500 trillion SHIK tokens. This amount is equivalent to half of the total issuance of 1 quadrillion tokens released by Shikoku.
The team suggested that in order to show their appreciation for Buterin’s involvement in creating the Ethereum blockchain, they had sent tokens. They requested that Buterin should incinerate 47% of the tokens if he accepted the offer, give 2% to a charity and keep 1% for himself.
Lookonchain noted that Buterin unloaded all 500 trillion SHIK tokens yesterday, exchanging them for 380 ETH which amounted to $600K. Additionally, he sold 50 billion MOPS tokens for 1.25 ETH and 10 billion CULT DAO (CULT) tokens for 58 ETH; these were gifts given to him beforehand. Consequently, the Ethereum co-founder made nearly $700K from this large-scale sale of his assets.
After the dump, the value of SHIK plummeted nearly 96%. This sudden drop in price enabled traders to make money, especially a Smart Money address and an arbitrageur pointed out by Lookonchain.
The Smart Money address acquired 34.2 trillion SHIK when the price dropped drastically, exchanging it for 14 ETH ($21.7K). It then sold 12.2 trillion tokens for 64.6 ETH ($100K) and moved out another 10 trillion SHIK worth 26 ETH ($40K), leaving 2 trillion SHIK valued at 6 ETH ($9.3K) in the wallet.
The arbitrageur was able to purchase 38 trillion SHIK with 6 ETH ($9.3K) on Uniswap V2, and then quickly sold them all again at a higher rate of 89.6 ETH ($139K) on both Uniswap V3 and Uniswap V2.
The Shikoku team showed their displeasure with the situation after Buterin’s selloff, but made it clear that they don’t bear him any ill will and hope he gives the money to a good cause.
