Whale Buys 28 Billion SHIB for $1.2 Million as Price Stalls

Yesterday, pseudonymous ETH whale “Gimli” bought 28 billion SHIB for $1.2 million. Gimli has a months-long history of stacking the infamous memecoin, which is now the 13th largest crypto by market cap.

Stacking SHIB

WhaleStats – a Twitter account analyzing the movements of the richest 1000 ETH wallets – called attention to the transaction yesterday. Apparently, Binance sent exactly 28,236,296,316 SHIB to Gimli for $1,204,823.

With the latest purchase, Gimli now holds a whopping 1,281,667,671,716.74 SHIB for $53,977,897. That’s more than Binance holds on its exchange: 531,107,299,855.73 SHIB valued at $22,367,776.

Buyers should be wary on that front. Though SHIB is a crypto token, it is far from decentralized. According to data from Coincarp, the top 20 SHIB addresses alone control 70% of token supply. 

WhaleStats ranks Gimli as the 246th largest ETH address. His address is 25% composed of SHIB, which is even greater than his ETH balance. The whale has been making large and regular purchases of the token since June, and has gained some notoriety for it. 

Shiba Inu’s Rise

SHIB is a spinoff memecoin known as the “Dogecoin killer.” Though Dogecoin was originally created as a joke, it has cemented itself as a top 20 cryptocurrency. Shiba Inu is now amongst its ranks, with a near $23 billion market cap. It even briefly surpassed its parent dog-coin after surging back in October. 

As one might expect, both DOGE and SHIB are highly speculative, even amongst other cryptocurrencies. They are heavily impacted by short-term market sentiment – especially when influenced by Dogecoin enthusiast Elon Musk. 

For example, Dogecoin copycats soared when the Tesla CEO revealed his new pet dog – a Shiba Inu. On the other hand, SHIB tanked after Musk announced that he didn’t personally own the meme coin. 

This week, SHIB has seen relatively mild price action. However, it did manage to get listed on Kraken late last month.