Shiba Inu: What do SHIB whales know that we don’t

• Supply held by top non-exchange addresses has been on a steady uptrend of late.
• The dog-themed token lost more than 10% of its market value over the past week.

Popular memecoin Shiba Inu [SHIB] continued to struggle even as the rest of the crypto market looked forward to a historic day.

The dog-themed token lost more than 10% of its market value over the past week, AMBCrypto found using CoinMarketCap data. As of this writing, it was exchanging hands at $0.000009532. 

To be fair, most altcoins and memecoins witnessed capital outflows over the past week. With the impending spot Bitcoin [BTC] ETF approval looming large, investors started to shift their money into the king coin.

However, whale investors have clearly sensed something that we don’t know as yet.

Whales continue to accumulate SHIB

According to an X post by Scopescan dated 9th January, a whale pulled out more than a trillion SHIB tokens from different exchanges in the preceding 24 hours.

As per the current market value. the withdrawn quantity amounted to $10.2 million.

A whale withdrew 1.08T $SHIB ($10.27M) from CEX for the past 24 hours.https://t.co/itytSdAKRJ https://t.co/KBuM5dD0Iu

— 0xScope (@ScopeProtocol) January 9, 2024

This whale may have sensed an opportunity in SHIB’s slump, encouraging them to buy the dip.

As they own a large portion of a crypto’s circulating supply, whale investors contribute significantly to price changes through their transaction activity. An increase in whale ownership typically indicates a long-term bullish trend.

Therefore, the recent grab fueled speculations of improved prospects for the memecoin in the short to medium term.

AMBCrypto took a closer look at SHIB’s accumulation trends using data from Santiment.

SHIB continues to move away from exchanges

The combined SHIB balance of top non-exchange addresses has been on a steady uptrend over the past month. This was despite the prices falling by more than 8% in the same period.

Moreover, the supply outside of exchanges increased in this time. This reinforced the HODLing and accumulation narrative of SHIB.

Source: Santiment

Perhaps whales pinned their hopes of a wider market boom owing to spot ETF approval.

Read SHIB’s Price Prediction 2024-25

However, it remained to be seen whether the interest in Bitcoin spreads to memecoins, often and rightly perceived as risky assets.

Interestingly, SHIB’s market sentiment entered the positive territory over the last two days. The spot ETF excitement seemed to be the only plausible reason driving this.

Source: Santiment