SHIB pumps hard as whales take center stage
- SHIB holders had unrealized profits of over 31% on average.
- The rally caused a sharp spike in the movement of coins lying idle for over a year.
The meme coin landscape turned hot last week, with nearly all high-cap and mid-cap assets posting significant gains.
Shiba Inu holders’ profits soar
Amidst the broader market rally, the second-largest meme coin Shiba Inu [SHIB] spiked 118% over the week, visiting levels not seen since May 2022, per CoinMarketCap.
The price hike resulted in a sharp jump in the network’s overall profitability. At press time, SHIB holders had unrealized profits of over 31% on average, AMBCrypto’s analysis of Santiment’s data revealed.
Whales get to work
Naturally, the lure of high profits garnered the attention of wealthy investors, also referred to as whales in the crypto parlance.
As per a recent post by on-chain analytics firm Scopescan, a whale deposited 365.36 billion SHIB tokens, worth nearly $7.4 million at the press time market price, to cryptocurrency exchange Binance [BNB].
Typically, such large inflows to exchanges imply an intent to sell.
The concerned whale had accumulated SHIB tokens three months ago at a much lower price. With the latest sale, it was expected to make profits of about $4.5 million.
However, this was not a one-off occurrence. Whale transactions across the board spiked dramatically on the 2nd of March, as evident from Santiment’s graph below.
In fact, the transaction count of 1791 was the highest since the peak bull market phase of November 2021.
Following the transaction spike, addresses belonging to large whales dropped significantly, suggesting that many of these players took profits.
Dormant supply becomes active
Another interesting aspect of the rally was how it activated dormant coins. A whopping 22 trillion SHIB tokens that didn’t move for more than a year were transacted on the 2nd of March.
This movement of previously idle coins reflected a state of bullishness towards SHIB.
Read Shiba Inu’s [SHIB] Price Prediction 2024-25
Meanwhile, the SHIB market entered the “Extreme Greed” phase, AMBCrypto noted using Hyblock Capital’s data.
This could potentially pave the way for stronger accumulation in the days to come, thereby pumping SHIB’s price further.