A massive whale emerged on Sunday as wallet tracker bot Whale Alert spotted the purchase of 4 trillion SHIB tokens — around $40 million at press time.
This is by far the largest acquisition for SHIB in December, considering whales remained somewhat inactive through Q4 2023. Moreover, it seems the whale has chosen to hold its SHIB bags instead of transferring them to another wallet, sparking rumors of a possible long-term hodling strategy.
The whale’s identity and actions remain unclear but could indicate over-the-counter (OTC) trades or simply wallet reshuffling. Interestingly, a month ago, CryptoPotato reported a similar transaction of 4.4 trillion SHIB by an anonymous whale whose address was created 12 hours before the transfer occurred.
The latest whale activity aligns with the renewed interest in the Shiba Inu ecosystem, which is experiencing a surge in network activity not seen since August —a 40% uptick in active addresses engaging in their initial SHIB purchases.
However, SHIB had a bittersweet start to the week as its price is down 8% — a drop aligned with the significant market correction reported this Monday. Most of the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market cap are sitting in the red.
Despite the decline, SHIB has been recording notable double-digit gains two weeks in a row. Shibarium, SHIB’s scaling solution, is touted as the main factor behind SHIB’s price rally, as the network recently surpassed 80 million processed transactions.
There are 90,000 addresses that collectively hold over 422 trillion SHIB at $0.000016, while the number of wallet addresses has also risen to 1.3 million. While SHIB and Shibarium have reached notable milestones in terms of price and network activity, only 23% of SHIB holders are currently in profit, and 62% are facing losses.