Vitalik Buterin-Linked NFTs Soar In Value: What You Should Know

Non-fungible tokens linked to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin quickly soared in value on Wednesday after NFT traders and collectors found more details about the collection.

What Happened: Over the past two years, NFT collections have been launched by Web3 startups, existing brands, celebrities and athletes. A new NFT was launched this week that is connected to Ethereum ETH/USD co-founder Buterin.

Quadratic Funding Open Edition is the first from Metalabel’s Quality Drop series and celebrates onchain records of The Quadratic Funding Collection.

The NFTs celebrate the work of Buterin, Zoe Hitzig and E. Glen Weyl with contributions from Scott Moore and Kevin Owocki.

The NFTs were released as an open edition on March 1 but went relatively quiet until early Wednesday. The open edition allowed users to mint as many NFTs as they wanted before a 12 p.m. ET cutoff on March 8.

The cost of the NFTs was 0.05 ETH, or around $77.53 on Wednesday. A limited edition of signature NFTs was also available via dutch auction with a starting price of 12 ETH. The limited-edition NFTs look different and also come with a physical signed copy of the whitepaper.

The NFTs look similar to album covers and include a digital version of “Liberal Radicalism: A Flexible Design for Philanthropic Matching Funds,” a whitepaper from 2018 signed by Buterin, Weyl and Hitzig.

A total of 9,209 NFTs were minted, a relatively low supply given the strong name recognition of Buterin.

Over $780,000 was raised from the NFT mint. The proceeds will be split 70% to Gitcoin, 20% to Plurality Institute and 10% to Metalabel. Along with initial mint proceeds, the organizations will get royalties from secondary sales.

Buterin “agreed to reissue the whitepaper he co-authored” for the NFT mint and sign the 12 physical copies for the NFT drop, a Metalabel representative told Decrypt.

Related Link: How To Buy Ethereum 

Why It’s Important: Since the whitepaper was released in 2018, over $70 million has been used for open-source projects using quadratic funding by Gitcoin and other organizations, according to the website.

Buterin has 4.7 million followers on Twitter but has not posted about the NFT collection. Many were unaware of the collection until the mint had closed. Some NFT alpha groups, including MetaverseHQ were able to alert their Discord members of the open edition and 0.05 ETH mint price.

In a TIME interview, Buterin highlighted the positives and negatives of cryptocurrency and took a potential shot at one of the most popular NFT collections of all time.

“The peril is you have these $3 million monkeys, and it becomes a different kind of gambling,” Buterin said, potentially taking on Bored Ape Yacht Club. 

Buterin argued profits from crypto shouldn’t be used to buy yachts and cars, but rather for public good. The Ethereum co-founder highlighted the amount of crypto donations that had been made to support Ukraine in the war efforts as a positive at the time.

“The goal of crypto is not to play games with million-dollar pictures of monkeys, it’s to do things that accomplish meaningful effects in the world,” Buterin added.

Price Action: The Quadratic Funding Collection NFTs soared in value Wednesday hitting highs of more than 0.60 ETH.

At the time of writing, the floor price is 0.463 ETH, or $717.90.

The signature limited editions have a floor of 62.9 ETH, with one selling for 22.22 ETH on the secondary market.

Image: Gonzalo Lanzilotta for Benzinga