SHIB Whales Accumulate Tokens

Some of the biggest whales in the Ethereum (ETH) ecosystem have amassed over 1.2 trillion tokens of the dog-themed cryptocurrency Shiba Inu (SHIB) just days after releasing 10 trillion SHIB to the market following the launch of the Shibarium testnet.

Blockchain data, first flagged by whale watching service WhaleStats, revealed that the purchase came from two large whales in the ecosystem. A whale whose wallet is labeled “Kvothe” has purchased approximately 900 billion SHIB for $9.61 million. A few hours later, a famous SHIB whale with the tag ‘BlueWhale0073’ took a new entry position in the token. ‘BlueWhale0073’ completed a transaction by purchasing 122.04 billion SHIB worth $1.28 million.

While the purchases made by these whales were substantial, they did little to increase the price of SHIB. The Shiba Inu (SHIB) has been moving along with the overall cryptocurrency markets, which have recently been on the rise amid the banking crisis in the US. Rising interest rates and inflation have led to the collapse of banks like the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank, joined by Credit Suisse, a 167-year-old bank recently acquired by UBS in a deal backed by the Swiss National Bank.

The whales’ movements followed the testnet launch of the highly anticipated layer-2 network Shibarium for the project. The network’s mainnet could launch as early as May 2023, CryptoGlobe reported. Shibarium is designed to provide fast and inexpensive transactions for SHIB and other tokens in its ecosystem. It also burns SHIB in every transaction. Shibarium’s native token is the Bone ShibaSwap (BONE), which is used to pay gas fees and reward validators and delegates on the network. On March 11, 2023, Shiba Inu announced the launch of PUPPYNET, an early beta test of Shibarium. Anyone can access PUPPYNET and try Shibarium’s features and functions through a new website.

Most Shiba Inu investors showed they were not planning to sell in bulk, as the average time that users on Coinbase held the meme-inspired coin before selling or moving it to an external address exceeded 230 days.