The meme-inspired cryptocurrency Shiba Inu ($SHIB) could be facing significant selling pressure as massive whales have recently deposited over 4 trillion tokens onto Nasdaq-listed cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase in a potential sell-off sign.
The price of SHIB is down by more than 16% over the past week after a sell-off saw it drop from around $0.000025 to 0.000021 at the time of writing. The cryptocurrency’s price dropped even amid a wider crypto market rise fueled by better-than-expected inflation data in the US.
Notably, data shared by on-chain cryptocurrency analyst OnchainDataNerd on the microblogging platform X (formerly Twitter) shows that 10 different wallets deposited 4.29 trillion SHIB tokens worth nearly $100 million on Coinbase, after accumulating in two separate periods, September 2021 and March 2024, with an average purchase price of $0.000013.
With Shiba Inu currently trading well above $0.000021, a complete sell-off could generate a substantial profit of over $41 million for the whales.
These potential whale sell-offs come shortly after a massive cryptocurrency investor started accumulating SHIB, pouring millions onto the meme-inspired cryptocurrency to accumulate billions of tokens.
That’s according to on-chain analysis service Lookonchain, which noted that a successful SHIB investor who has in the past made more than $120 million worth the meme-inspired cryptocurrency has now spent 4,849 ETH worth $18.44 million to buy 715.9 billion SHIB.
The trader, according to the service, has in the past spent $400,000 to buy 5.5 trillion SHIB, which were then subsequently sold for around $121 million over two peaks.
Beyond the whale’s actions, the Shiba Inu ecosystem itself has witnessed significant developments that likely fueled the token’s recent price rise. Shibarium, the Layer-2 scaling solution, has seen notable progress this year, enhancing the network’s capacity to handle a higher volume of transactions efficiently.
Furthermore, the Shibdentity initiative promises a new era of digital identity, while the recently launched Sheboshis NFT collection boasting 20,000 digital avatars on the Ethereum blockchain adds another layer to the Shiba Inu universe.
Further bolstering the ecosystem’s prospects, Shiba Inu secured a $12 million funding round from heavyweights like Polygon Ventures, Mechanism Capital, and Animoca Brands, earmarked for the development of a privacy-focused Layer-3 blockchain. The integration of the Shibaswap decentralized exchange with Shibarium signifies another step towards a more robust and comprehensive ecosystem.
As reported, these developments help SHIB briefly overtake Cardano to become a top 10 cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
Featured image via Unsplash
