Shiba Inu is no longer an unknown cryptocurrency in the crypto space. It has grown to be one of the top and most popular coins in the market despite having no utility to speak of. This has however not deterred the community support for the meme coin. Sitting at 11th place on the list of top coins by market cap, it can no longer be said that SHIB is a ‘worthless’ coin.
Shiba Inu also has arguably the largest supply of any of the top cryptocurrencies, with a total supply of over 589 trillion and a circulating supply of more than 549 trillion. However, the majority of the supply is held in only a handful of wallets. As this information makes the rounds on social media, it is important to know who these wallets are and why they hold so much.
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10 Wallets Hold Most Of Total Supply
The top ten wallets hold the majority of the Shiba Inu coins in circulation. This information, while correct, is often misconstrued as only a handful of people holding the majority supply of the meme coin. This is fundamentally wrong. One thing to take into account is while there are certainly SHIB whales who hold large volumes of the asset, these top wallets do not simply belong to single individual holders.
To start out, the top wallet with the highest volume of coins belongs to no one. This wallet holds 41% of the total supply of SHIB but the coins in the wallet can never be accessed. This is because it is a dead wallet where Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin had sent the majority of the Shiba Inu tokens that were gifted to him by the SHIB team in what was a marketing stunt.
SHIB trading below $0.00006 | Source: SHIBUSD on TradingView.com
After donating about $1 billion worth of tokens to the Indian Covid Relief fund, Buterin had promptly sent the rest of the tokens to the dead wallet, taking almost half of the total supply of SHIB out of circulation. Over time, more SHIB has been sent to the wallets as a way to reduce the circulating supply and the amount held in this wallet has grown.
Most of the other wallets holding large volumes of SHIB are exchange wallets. This means that the balances held in these wallets belong to thousands of users who are holding their tokens on exchanges.
Shiba Inu Holders Surpass 925,000
A recent milestone by the meme coin has been the addition of new holders to its ranks. The number of investors holding on to Shiba Inu touched over 925,000, setting a new record on Monday.
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The downtrend in the digital asset has been described by some as the inevitable end to the meme coin. However, others have taken this to be a buying opportunity. Buying ramped up in Shiba Inu with investors hoping to fill their bags in time for the next rally.
The asset has since dropped over 40% of its all-time high in October. SHIB has been consolidating below $0.00006 for most of the weekend, not recording any significant upwards or downwards movement within the time period. But as trading opens up for the week on Monday, the asset has shown some favorable trends with the start of a recovery pattern.
Featured image from U.Today, chart from TradingView.com
