It turns out that the crypto market hasn’t turned away from dog-inspired meme coins just yet.

The SHIB price, which claims to be the “DOGE destroyer”, has risen more than 220% in the past week, pushing the token to 20th place in the ranking of the most valuable cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.

SHIB 4-hour chart | Source: Tradingview

Such a rare upward movement in one random coin among thousands of others has led some traders to wonder: why SHIB and why now?

Ashwath Balakrishnan, associate at analytics firm Delphi Digital, said:

“I would say that crypto is just cryptocurrency. When the market is at risk, meme coins tend to benefit. “

While many claim that electric car maker Tesla CEO Elon Musk accidentally pumped prices, blockchain data suggests that the seemingly irrational rally was likely fueled by the movements of the “whales.”

SHIB. Whales

According to data from blockchain company Santiment, the number of SHIB transactions valued at more than $ 1 million soared along with the bull run.

A wallet monitoring Twitter account also spotted whales making over 6 trillion SHIB on Sept. 30, just days before the price spike, Bitcoin Magazine reported.

SHIB price (green) and number of whale transactions (red) | Source: Santiment

In particular, the number of whales buying SHIB increased, according to India’s Crypto Covid Relief notification 23 on the conversion of 50 trillion SHIB – donated by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin – into stablecoin USDC has been completed. The London-based crypto market maker Wintermute is responsible for the changeover.

While the moving SHIB whale can give us an idea of ​​how the pump is triggered, a high number of whale trades is probably not the best news for SHIBArmy as it often coincides with price spikes mood.

Retail fever

In terms of retail trade, data from blockchain analytics firm Kaiko shows that trading volumes in the eight most liquid SHIB / USDT markets on October 4th at 8:00 p.m., October 5 at 3:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. October 5th (Synthetic Team time).

According to Clara Medalie, Head of Research at Kaiko, it is common for trading volumes to be the same across multiple exchanges because the markets are integrated and overlap. Hence, the SHIB / USDT pair’s trading data on 8 centralized exchanges cannot answer the question of where and when the upward momentum began.

SHIB price and volume | Source: Kaiko

According to Kaiko’s research analyst Dessislava Aubert, data on two trading pairs related to SHIB on the Coinbase exchange supports this conclusion.

At Coinbase, the average transaction size increased for both the SHIB / USD (crypto-to-fiat) and SHIB / USDT (crypto-to-crypto) pairs, demonstrating the popularity of the token, which is on a “large customer base” of both longtime based players and newbies.

Bullish timeline

While the data doesn’t tell where the upward momentum is coming from, a timeline of price action suggests the rally may have little to do with Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s tweet about his dog Floki, which appeared at 8:41 am on October 4th Clock was published (Synthetic Team time).

Floki Frunkwelpe pic.twitter.com/xAr8T0Jfdf

– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 4, 2021

Ever since the SHIB began to rise, the market has emerged with the popular story that Musk’s tweets were extremely profitable for SHIB.

Lucas Outumuro, Head of Research at IntoTheBlock, said:

“I’m not 100 percent sure what caused the pump, maybe investors will be more comfortable when the entire market begins to rebound.”

Telegram chats and SHIB’s Reddit community are littered with buy and HODL SHIB advice, with speculative online brokerage app Robinhood soon to endorse the meme coin.

A Robinhood representative said the company had no comment on the rumors.

Burn them all

Although it is rising, the price is currently still nearly 43% below the record high seen in May after SHIB was listed on several major exchanges. With market capitalization skyrocketing, SHIB rose at the same time that overall supply began to shrink.

In addition to tokens that were donated to charity, Buterin also sent over 410 trillion SHIBs to a “dead” blockchain address and withdrew them from circulation.

According to a post on middle from one of the team members, the SHIB project will introduce more NFT collections in the coming days, including a new token burning mechanism.

Whenever an NFT owner changes the name of one of the 10,000 NFTs to “Shiboshi”, $ 100 SHIB is burned.

“If people named all of these Shiboshis, SHIB would burn $ 1 million,” the post said.

According to Etherscan, the largest SHIB holder is an address known as the “Black Hole” that only accepts SHIB tokens. This is also the address Buterin uses to burn his SHIB tokens.

At the time of writing, there are only about 394.7 trillion SHIBs in circulation, with a total supply of 1 trillion, according to CoinGecko.

Join Bitcoin Magazine Telegram to keep track of news and comment on this article: https://t.me/coincunews

At home at home

According to Coindesk

Follow the Youtube Channel | Subscribe to telegram channel | Follow the Facebook page