- Vitalik Buterin received 50 percent of the total Shiba Inu supply upon its launch, making him the largest whale.
- The DOGE copy has in the last week rallied by over 1,500 percent taking the Ethereum founder’s holding to a $15B value.
Over the past year, the anonymous developers of Shiba Inu (SHIB) have sent 50 percent of the token supply to Vitalik Buterin’s wallet. This was in their view, another way to burn it. Assuming that the founder of Ethereum would not spend the tokens, by sending these tokens to him, they effectively removed them from circulation. With supply low and capped, demand increases with time. Now, Vitalik holds 50 percent of the circulating supply making him the single largest whale of the digital asset.
Since DOGE began rallying primarily driven by retail investors FOMOing, Dogecoin clones have become more popular. During the weekend when DOGE flopped following Elon Musk’s SNL appearance, SHIB broke out. The asset took up part of DOGE’s exiting money.
Furthermore, at the start of the week, crypto exchanges KuCoin and Binance added support for the coin, supporting its positive momentum. A look at the last 7 days shows the token has earned over 1,500 percent. This remarkable jump has seen the altcoin climb to the top 20 largest coins in the market. This is a remarkable achievement by a coin that was launched only a year ago.
The meme coin has a total circulating supply of 394,796,000,000,000 SHIB. With each SHIB going for roughly $0.000032, this brings the total market cap to just under $12 billion. Vitalik holds around 505 billion SHIB which at the aforementioned price, is worth just over $16 billion at the time of press.
Vitalik’s SHIB: A cloud hanging on investors head
While the developer’s intention was to bring more value to the coin, by giving Vitalik such a huge amount, the token is at risk of a huge dump that could sink it. Unless Vitalik burnt his wallet key, he can always access his account and sell all or a part of his share.
👉 To be perfectly clear, Vitalik can rug you. Will he do it? Certainly not. There’s no incentive for him to tarnish his reputation for 200 ETH.
— #WARONRUGS❌ (@WARONRUGS) January 30, 2021
In the past, this has not been an issue as the price has been low and the community was betting that Vitalik would not compromise his reputation for a small reward. But now, with billions on the line, there is no certainty.
Vitalik recently became a billionaire through his founded coin Ethereum soon after it crossed $3,000. It has since climbed as high as $4,000 without Vitalik selling. Some SHIB investors can take solace from this, noting that the billionaire is not after making a fortune.
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