Large Shiba Meme Wallets Dump On Retail Investors, Take Profits. Credit: salarko / iStock https://www.istockphoto.com/portfolio/salarko?mediatype=photography
Shiba Inu, the popular meme coin named after a dog that was launched slightly more than a year ago, dropped more than half of its value on Nov. 24 after hitting an all-time-high on Oct. 27, then surged higher today, Nov. 29, on speculation that it may be playing a role in the metaverse.
Analysts have attributed the route to large token holders taking profit from its price jump this year, while others dumped the coin after its officials flagged various scams using the cryptocurrency.
The coin, which trades as SHIB and champions itself as the “Dogecoin killer”, has been on a tear since it was created by an anonymous person or people named ‘Ryoshi” in August 2020. It skyrocketed 17,300,000 percent since its introduction to a record high of $0.00008841 before cutting back to $0.000039. SHIB was trading at $0.0000413 as of this writing.
It has also made some instant paper billionaires.
SHIBA’s decline was in line with a “risk-off mode” that the market had adapted after Bitcoin and Ether reached new highs about two weeks ago, Blockchain analytics firm Nansen told CoinDesk.
The world largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin reached a new record high of $69,000 on Nov. 10 as U.S. inflation hit its highest rate in three decades. Ether, the coin linked to the Ethereum blockchain and the No. 2 cryptocurrency, has also been trading around its all-time high, catching up with bitcoin’s rally and riding on news of wider blockchain adoption.
It is “natural to see higher beta assets like SHIB to dip in price as investors de-risk,” Nansen wrote to CoinDesk.
Large token holders made huge dumps of SHIB and other cryptocurrencies. Blockchain firm Santiment told CoinDesk it had noticed that transactions valued over $100,000 on SHIB have been on the rise since the beginning of November.
SHIB’s trading volume -it was once the most traded token on centralized exchanges — has dropped significantly, according to CoinGecko’s data.
“It appears investors in higher-risk, higher-reward assets have been looking for a reason to take profits for some time. Whether or not this new covid-19 variant proves to be a significant macroeconomic risk, there’s certainly an appetite to take a little risk off the table today,” crypto analyst Chris MacDonald wrote on Nov. 26 on The Motley Fool.
“For those holding Shiba Inu, that’s not good for the immediate outlook.”
Shiba Inu ambassador Shytoshi Kusama posted on Medium over the weekend about a potential Shiba Inu metaverse game. Video game designer William David Volk has been tapped as a partner on the project, The Motley Fool reported on Nov. 29.
Over the last month, Shiba Inu was down approximately 45 percent. Today’s rise of 3.4 percent at 9 a.m. ET “is a meaningful improvement,” MacDonald wrote.
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