A large Shiba Inu ($SHIB) whale that had been dormant for over seven months has relocated an eye-popping sum of nearly 500 billion $SHIB tokens to the declining cryptocurrency exchange HotBit, presumably to sell the tokens after making a significant profit with them.

HotBit has notably announced it’s halting operations earlier this month and asked its users to withdraw their tokens before June 21, at 4:00 am UTC. The firm said its operating conditions deteriorated following an investigation into a former member of its team that forced it to stop business for weeks.

The collapse of FTX and the USDC depeg were also cited as reasons that deteriorated its cash flow and let to the halt. According to popular cryptocurrency analyst Spot On Chain, the SHIB whale moved 499.6 billion tokens to HotBit after being dormant for over seven months, with the transaction valued at a rate of $0.0000085 per SHIB token, or $4.24 million.

The service indicated that the whale appears to be offloading these SHIB tokens, which were originally accumulated at higher prices back in 2022. Even though the investor could suffer a minor loss if the tokens are sold at their current market rate, the whale has an impressive track record of over 200% return on investment (ROI) from previous SHIB transactions.

Per the service, the whale managed to earn an estimated profit north of $70 million predominantly from strategic SHIB trades throughout 2021, when the whale moved into the cryptocurrency ahead of its current recognition.

Through periods of decline, the investor would seize the opportunity to amass SHIB tokens at bargain prices, later making significant sales when the price skyrocketed. In one transaction, the investor transferred a massive 900 billion SHIB tokens to the HotBit exchange when the token was at its zenith, at $0.000065, thus raking in a significant $58.27 million – nearly eight times the original investment.

Having profited from these tactical divestments, the investor shifted gears towards re-accumulation of SHIB tokens. However, the persistent downward trend of SHIB since late 2021 may have spurred the decision to exit the position at this time.

Earlier, the SHIB burn rate has recently surged by more than 8,000% as millions of tokens are moved to inaccessible wallets and effectively removed from circulation.

Recently, the Shiba Inu team has unveiled the intricacies of the SHIB burn mechanism on the Shibarium Layer 2 network, which currently operates in beta test mode.

For every transaction that occurs on Shibarium, a fee in $BONE is levied. This fee is locked in a contract, with the team receiving 30% of it for network maintenance, and 70% being burned.

Recently shared screenshots indicate that the fee can be burned only when the contract contains more than 10 BONE. Then, the tokens can be converted into SHIB and burned,

As CryptoGlobe reported, a newly formed mysterious SHIB wallet has recently accumulated a whopping 20 trillion tokens for around $176.8 million, making it the fifth-largest holder of the meme-inspired cryptocurrency. The investor now holds around 2% of the cryptocurrency’s supply.

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Featured Image via Pixabay