This early whale still holds Shiba Inu (SHIB) worth $2.5B

Shiba Inu (SHIB) has produced one of the biggest crypto whales. An early investor controls 10% of the SHIB supply, not selling since the token’s early history. 

Bubblemaps discovered that Shiba Inu (SHIB) has 10% of its supply concentrated in wallets controlled by a single entity. SHIB is one of the oldest meme tokens with added utility. The asset relied on early adoption, while easily rising by thousands of percent. 

On-chain analysis shows SHIB may still be held in the wallets of an early whale. The holdings make up 10% of the SHIB total supply. Despite the high value, the SHIB whale has not liquidated any of the tokens and is sitting on unrealized gains of $2.5B. 

The whale holds more SHIB than even the public wallets of Binance and Robinhood, adding to the stability of SHIB by refusing to sell during pumps.

Whale has been holding SHIB since 2020

The large-scale holder bought SHIB between August and October 2020, acquiring the holdings for only 38 ETH. At that time, ETH was near its lows under $300, making the investment worth around $10,000. The buying started immediately after SHIB was created in July 2020. The token launched with a fair distribution, open to anyone to build initial positions. 

At one point, the whale’s holdings held an unrealized gain of up to $5B. To anonymize the main wallet, the whale first split the holdings into 14 addresses. Later in 2023, the same holdings were split into 150 addresses. 

Bubblemaps discovered the whale’s long-term position after applying its new Magic Nodes tool, displaying hidden wallets connected by transfers. Without the connection tracking, the token would look fully decentralized, or held by small wallets. 

The Bubblemaps V2 tool will be able to expose more tokens with sniped supply and seemingly unrelated wallets. On the usual snapshot page, SHIB looks as if it’s owned by multiple small wallets, where even the top 150 holders own just 0.04% of the supply. 

Whale holdings linked to legendary crypto founder

The best news about the whale is that he may turn out to be a holder under any market conditions. Comments point to the identity of pseudonymous buyer Shibtoshi_SG, founder of the SqudGrow project.

The pseudonymous masked crypto investor has supported meme token communities for years. The large-scale holdings are thus not an insider wallet prepared for selling, but a potential endorsement for the Shiba Inu project. Shibtoshi’s approach and ethos match the general goal of Shiba Inu to offer an accessible entry point to crypto. 

SHIB remains ahead of the dog pack

The meme token market retained its total valuation above $115B. SHIB is the second-largest asset, with a $14B market capitalization. Even after its recent rally, Pepe (PEPE) only climbed to $8.1B in market capitalization. 

SHIB trades at $0.000025, within the upper bound of its range for 2024. The token is widely represented, with pairs on Binance, Coinbase, and Upbit, as well as mainstream adoption on Robinhood. 

The token reached a yearly peak at $0.00003 and has been waiting for another vertical pump for a while. The rumors of a top crypto personality holding SHIB long-term may boost those chances. SHIB is also expected to rise on a general meme super cycle, expecting another parabolic phase and a reevaluation of the price range.

The SHIB token is consolidated in the hands of the top 100 holders. Those wallets control over 75% of the supply of SHIB. However, the token has not shown a pattern of protracted stagnation, as the asset is held for staking. SHIB is also key to the Shibarium ecosystem, an L2 chain with 1.8M addresses. 

Additionally, SHIB supply is diminishing due to token burns, which have helped the asset emerge from its initial extremely low price. However, the strongest suit of SHIB remains its meme potential and mainstream appeal.

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