Vitalik Buterin Sparked MOODENG Memecoin Rally After Adopting Famous Hippo

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin's adoption of Moo Deng, an internet-famous pygmy hippopotamus, fueled the creation of the MOODENG memecoin and its subsequent rally.

The Khao Kheow Open Zoo revealed that Buterin joined their Wildlife Sponsorship Program, pledging 10 million baht, or around $293,000 USD, to support Moo Deng and her family, in a Dec. 26 announcement. Buterin expressed in a post on X his commitment to supporting Moo Deng over the next two years “with my 10M THB donation, maybe more as I set aside 88 ETH for [pygmy hippopotamuses] + frens.”

The move by Buterin spiked the memecoin’s price by as high as 70% to $0.0002446 before retracing to $0.0001924, which is a 55% increase in the past 24 hours. The coin’s trading volume also increased by 1,037% to $59,964,342, according to CoinGecko data.

The MOODENG memecoin, issued on Ethereum in Sept. 2024, was inspired by a baby hippo from Thailand that went viral on social media due to her tiny size and playful videos.

“Thank you Vitalik Buterin for joining the Wildlife Sponsorship Program and adopting Moo Deng with a generous gift of 10,000,000 THB for her family!” the Thai zoo’s post reads. “We look forward to working with you over the next 2 years for the benefit of the Khao Kheow Open Zoo community & all our visitors!”

Buterin’s adoption of Moo Deng highlights the growing trend of cryptocurrency philanthropy being used to support different causes, including wildlife conservation efforts. MOODENG's success also exemplifies how cryptocurrency can intersect with charity, demonstrating the real-world impact of crypto, such as its potential to support wildlife conservation.

The Crypto Donation King

Buterin is well known in the crypto community for his philanthropic efforts, including donating to causes such as COVID-19 and Ukraine Humanitarian funds.

In April 2021, Buterin donated $1 billion SHIB coins to a COVID-19 relief fund in India. In 2023, he once again made waves after donating $9.4 million in USDC to fund medical research, according to The Living Block.

The Ethereum co-founder has long been vocal about donating, tweeting in 2017: “All crypto communities, ethereum included, should heed these words of warning. Need to differentiate between getting hundreds of billions of dollars of digital paper wealth sloshing around and actually achieving something meaningful for society.”

In a 2024 blog post, Buterin further observed that memecoins had become a significant topic in the crypto space, though many raised concerns due to the emergence of racist and sexist examples.

Despite this, he suggested that memecoins could serve a meaningful purpose if leveraged for charitable initiatives.

“Among the more interesting of the coins that I've seen are coins where a large portion of the token supply (or some ongoing fee mechanism) is dedicated to some kind of charity,” he wrote.

Buterin’s Moo Deng donation is phased over a year, with the first installment funding a 1,600 square meter enclosure for Moo Deng and her family.

In a post on X, Buterin said that he’s happy to be the adoptive father to Moo Deng as she grows up concluding, “may [pygmy hippopotamuses] live long and prosper.”