The meme-inspired cryptocurrency Shiba Inu ($SHIB) has seemingly lost over 30,000 holders overnight amid an ongoing whale accumulation that has seen the 50 richest SHIB addresses command 788.59% of the cryptocurrency’s supply.
According to data from the Ethereum blockchain, provided by Etherscan and CoinMarketCap, the number of SHIB holders was set to hit 1.2 million earlier this month and seemingly plunged by over 30,000 overnight, before continuing a decline that’s seeing it approach 1.15 million holders.
It’s worth noting this is not the first time the number of SHI holders on the Ethereum network dropped, as the same occurred in late January. After a short drop, it continued to rise as more users added the meme-inspired cryptocurrency to their portfolios. The number of SHIB holders surpassed one million in November last year.
The number of SHIB holders is going down at about the same time Shiba’s burn rate is surging. As CryptoGlobe reported, last week it jumped 6,700% in a 24-hour period after 745 million tokens were burned.
The cryptocurrency’s use cases are at the same time growing, as recently the first real estate investment trust (REIT) to accept cryptocurrencies for shares, NOYACK Logistics Income (NLI), embraced both SHIB and rival meme-inspired cryptocurrency Dogecoin ($DOGE).
Earlier this month Australian energy firm 1st Energy started accepting cryptocurrency payments through BitPay as well. The firm also accepts payments in the meme-inspired tokens DOGE and SHIB.
Leading U.S. movie theater chain AMC has also recently added payment options for these two cryptocurrencies thanks to BitPay, as in an announcement from its CEO Adam Aron the crypto payments provider was mentioned for helping “make this happen.”
The declining number of SHIB holders is also coming at a time in which Ethereum whales are accumulating. Earlier this week a whale scooped up over 271 billion tokens for little over $6 million, shortly after, another whale invested $1 million to buy 49.6 billion SHIB.
Data from IntoTheBlock now shows large SHIB holders – addresses that own 1% or more of its circulating supply – control over 80% of all the SHIB in circulation.
The SHIBArmy has notably also been anticipating the launch of Shibarium, a layer-two network built on top of the Ethereum blockchain meant to support the Shiba Inu ecosystem. It’s set to enable “rapid low cost transactions optimized for gaming.”
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