The top 1,000 whales by assets held on the Ethereum ($ETH) netowrk have been increasing their exposure to the meme-inspired cryptocurrency Shiba Inu ($SHIB), to the point they now hold over $2 billion worth of the cryptocurrency.
The accumulation was first spotted by on-chain monitoring resource WhaleStats, which pointed out on social media Ethereum whales’ holdings surpassed the $2 billion mark as SHIB led in the list of altcoins by total holdings.
Shared data shows that right after Shiba Inu came the native token of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, with whales holding over $1.7 billion worth of it. Next came the USDC stablecoin at $1 billion, and it was followed by other popular tokens including the Bitpanda ecosystem Token (BEST), OKEx’s OKB, and more.
The price of Shiba Inu has been growing over the last few weeks amid a wider cryptocurrency market recovery and as the project keeps on developing. Earlier this month Shytoshi Kusama, the cryptocurrency’s community leader, announced that Shiba Inu was partnering with a burger restaurant with one physical outlet in Italy, Welly’s, to launch what was described as the “first and only SHIB themed restaurant powered by the community.”
As part of the deal, Welly’s will integrate NFTs and Shiba Inu’s blockchain into its business, while SHIB will handle payments for Welly’s. The community supported the project to such an extent it’s now welcoming new franchisers.
The meme-inspired cryptocurrency has also seen Singapore-based blockchain solutions provider Unification, a company that has worked with firms like Google and Amazon, announced it has been working with the Shiba Inu community to develop Shibarium.
Shibarium, it’s worth noting, is 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.” Unification is planning on launching a public testnet for the network “very soon” according to its announcement.
Finally, the cryptocurrency’s liquidity was recently boosted by a listing on one of Brazil’s oldest and most popular cryptocurrency trading platforms, Foxbit.
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