cryptoglobe.com
In the world of cryptocurrency, it seems that one altcoin is making waves and grabbing the attention of the biggest Ethereum whales. That altcoin is none other than Shiba Inu (SHIB).
According to data from WhaleStats, a platform that provides analysis of the top whale wallets on multiple chains, the 5,000 largest Ethereum whales now hold a massive number of SHIB tokens, valued at $708,456,318. This impressive figure places SHIB as the largest non-ETH holding among Ethereum whales.
As of 9:10 a.m. UTC on 7 February 2023, the next three largest holdings are USDT, USDC, and BEST.
As interest in SHIB continues to grow, so too does the number of large whale transactions involving the digital asset. For example, last weekend, a whale anonymously transferred 3,216,307,240,798 SHIB tokens, worth $47.6 million, to an unknown wallet.
What’s driving the surge in popularity for SHIB? In part, it’s due to the project’s plans to launch its layer-2 protocol, Shibarium, a layer 2 blockchain designed to address the shortcomings of the SHIB token’s host chain Ethereum, namely low speed and high transaction cost.
Shibarium will require using BONE to pay for transaction/gas fees and will burn SHIB with every transaction (thereby making SHIB more scarce and potentially increasing its value. Although the exact launch date is yet to be determined, developers are optimistic that a beta version will be available soon.
In the past 30-day period, SHIB has outperformed its main rival, Dogecoin (DOGE), with a 61% increase compared to DOGE’s 23% rise.
At the time of writing, SHIB is trading around $0.0000140, down 2.88% in the past 24-hour period.