• Ethereum co-founder joked about having THE Protocol (THE) crypto and it came to life a few days later.
  • Buterin becomes the largest holder with 100 million THE coins grabbing a 10 percent stake in the protocol.

 

In an interesting turn of developments, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin’s jibe at some crypto projects ended up giving birth to a new meme coin rivaling Shiba Inu. Last Friday, Vitalik Buterin shared a random thought on his Twitter handle while joking saying that someone must create a project dubbed ‘THE Protocol’.

Commenting on it, Buterin said that it would be easy to shill a project by referencing it ‘THE” by the influential crypto community members. “Someone should make a project called “THE Protocol” so that their shills can say “Look, so-and-so mentioned THE!” pretty much any time anyone says anything,” added Buterin.

Just a few days later, an ERC20 protocol, THE Protocol (THE), has come to life. Interestingly the Twitter admins of the new memecoin have also taken a cue from Vitalik Buterin’s suggestion. Crypto analytics firm Nansen has shared some interesting insights about THE Protocol.

Drawing a leaf from Shiba Inu playbook

As per crypto analytics firm Nansen, THE Protocol has drawn a leaf from the Shiba Inu playbook. They have also decided to give Vitalik Buterin a 10 percent stake making him the largest holder with 100 million THE tokens. Interestingly, the cryptocurrency managed to grab the attention of some of the Ethereum investors. The data from Nansen shows:

The largest token holder is @VitalikButerin who received 100M $THE, 10% of its total supply. Top 50 non-entity addresses hold 50.6% of $THE, and most of them got their $THE shortly after its release. The decentralizedvision.eth swapped 3 ETH for 13,614,311 THE at just $0.00028/THE. We see quite a bit of  Smart Money activity on $THE. Just 2hrs ago, “sisterofvitalik” and hxr.eth both sold their $THE, but hxr.eth still holds 2M tokens. 

During the launch on Tuesday, October 18, the price of THE Protocol (THE) surged a staggering 1000 percent. As of press time, it has gained another 100 percent and is currently trading at $0.03352.

Furthermore, THE cryptocurrency has made its way to popular crypto exchanges such as Hotbit and MEXC Global in less than six days. In a very short span, its market cap has also shot to $33 million.

The launch of THE Protocol is a testament that the crypto community can stretch to new areas for excitement despite the crypto winter this year.

Will SHIB Price Rise

After a strong bull run last year, Shiba Inu (SHIB) price dropped significantly during this year’s crypto winter. However, the Shiba Inu ecosystem has been undergoing interesting developments. The recent one was the launch of the Shiba Eternity game on mobile platforms that saw more than 100,000 downloads.

Furthermore, the Shiba Inu blockchain secured the second rank in the Web3 security leaderboard and a trust score of 93. The recent launch of Shiba Inu’s competitor could help in boosting the trading activity for the memecoin.