VeChain holders are in for a treat.
The nonprofit VeChain Foundation, which looks after development of the blockchain platform VeChain, has announced it will buy back $25 million VeChain (VET). VeChain founder Sunny Lu—who previously worked at Louis Vuitton China—revealed the news during an ask-me-anything video chat on Twitter. The Foundation will buy back the coins over a twelve month period.
The buy back is in celebration of the 12 month anniversary of the VeChain mainnet, when it made the move from being an Ethereum-based token to becoming a cryptocurrency in its own right. This is becoming a bit of a trend recently. Just last week, Tron too celebrated its independence from Ethereum by buying back $20 million of its own currency, TRX.
Binance regularly takes chunks of its profits to buy, and then burn the same amount of Binance Coin—something that has contributed to its positive price performance over the last 12 months. In VeChain’s case, the coins will then be plugged back into the ecosystem in an attempt to drive growth through further development.
The purpose of a buyback is to put upward pressure on the price of a coin. By reducing supply, it increases the value of what’s left. It’s a technique traditionally used for stocks in companies, but blockchain projects have been keen to borrow as a way of helping to stabilize price.
To add to the festivities, the Foundation is running a competition to win a further 163,000 VET ($1,300) and 16,300 OCE ($97)—the OceanEx token which runs on VeChain—but no one seems to know how to play. Several hopefuls were left confused and unable to work out what to do to win. One person who seemingly figured out how to do it, found the wallets empty. At the time of writing, the treasure hunt remains unsolved.
While competitions don’t appear to be the company’s strong suit, VeChain has been on a bit of a charge as of late. Last week, VeChain hit the headlines when it partnered with Walmart China to track multiple products across its supply lines, providing information on food safety to consumers. That was followed by the announcement it is now also possible to buy VeChain on Metal Pay, a U.S.-based app for storing and sending cryptocurrencies.
With all these partnerships, integrations and buybacks, it looks like Christmas has come early for VeChain fans.