Whales accumulate 1 trillion SHIB ahead of Shibarium launch

• Shiba Inu wallet addresses with 10 million to 100 billion added 1.11 trillion SHIB since June 4.
• The increased whale activity comes amid bullish sentiment for Shiba Inu ahead of its Shibarium launch.
• SHIB price was slightly higher on Saturday, trading around $0.00000830.

Shiba Inu is among altcoins to see a significant surge in their prices over the past week, with the meme coin largely benefitting from whale activity.

According to on-chain data from market intelligence platform Santiment, large holders have accumulated staggering amounts of SHIB since early June.  This spike in whale activity comes ahead of a highly anticipated Shiba Inu ecosystem event – the launch of the layer-2 solution Shibarium.

While only testnet access is available for now, the huge anticipation surrounding Shibarium is one of the factors driving interest in the meme coin.

Shiba Inu whales gorge on SHIB

As Santiment shared on Friday, large Shina Inu wallets in the category of “sharks” and “dolphins” have added more than $9 million worth of SHIB over the past two or so months.

Indeed, on-chain data indicates addresses with 10 million to 100 billion SHIB have accumulated 1.11 trillion of the meme token since June 4. The total SHIB holdings in the hands of these large investors stood at $32.49 trillion on Friday, July 28. In total, this group holds roughly $266 million worth of SHIB.

Here’s Santiment’s chart showing the increased SHIB accumulation by 10 million to 100 billion address cohort.

😺 #ShibaInu has been a surprise winner during the final hours of a particularly dull trading week. Shark & dolphin wallets holding 10M-100B $SHIB tokens have accumulated ~$9M in just under 8 weeks, a significant amount for the 14th ranked #crypto asset. https://t.co/WwZrvcUN0D pic.twitter.com/98A1darF5A

— Santiment (@santimentfeed) July 28, 2023

SHIB price outlook

SHIB traded at $0.00000830 on Saturday afternoon, about 2% up in the past 24 hours after paring gains seen when it reached intraday highs of $0.00000840 across major exchanges.

CoinGecko ranks Shiba Inu the 15th largest cryptocurrency by market cap, with this at over $4.9 billion at the time of writing.