Some in the SHIB army have decided to add more SHIB to their crypto stash as they are looking forward to the launch of the beta version of the Layer 2 protocol for Shiba Inu.

Whale grabs close to billion Shiba Inu

Twitter user Ali Needazar has shared a screenshot of a recently made Shiba Inu purchase. According to the tweet, an anonymous user bought 848,776,937 SHIB meme coins.

#Shibarium around the corner pic.twitter.com/Z0BUbkka3M

— Ali Needazar (@needazar) January 22, 2023

In the comment thread, he admitted that it was not he who made the purchase. Still, it seems it was made recently after the news of the imminent Shibarium beta release was spread around Twitter about a week ago. Shibarium is expected to face a significant price surge when Shibarium is launched. So is ShibaSwap Bone (BONE) token, as the latter will be used to pay transaction fees on the network.

On Jan. 18, U.Today reported that an anonymous whale transferred 443 billion meme coins to major exchange OKEx, most likely to sell them.

Overall, the largest whales on the Ethereum chain are now storing over 50.5 trillion Shiba Inu in their wallets. This is the equivalent of $611,251,631, comprising 16.18% of their portfolio.

BitGo adds wallet and custody for SHIB, DOGE

Over the weekend, the news spread that popular crypto exchange BitGo added hot wallets and qualified custody for the two most popular doggy-themed cryptos, Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB).

Now, SHIB and DOGE can be sent, received and stored in both hot and cold wallets of the platform.

Now Available: Hot wallets and Qualified Custody for $DOGE and $SHIB.@dogecoin @Shibtoken

Learn more: https://t.co/kqPeTifZ5H pic.twitter.com/ar3W6jjXK7

— BitGo (@BitGo) January 20, 2023

BitGo is a major U.S.-based (California) crypto exchange and crypto custodian, which mostly works with institutional customers and companies that build the crypto space. Ripple Labs giant is one of their regular customers, storing XRP tokens in its custodial wallets.

In 2021, Galaxy Digital led by Mike Novogratz announced a deal to purchase the aforementioned platform. However, by the end of the year, Novo backed out from the deal.

Data provided by the WhaleStats wallet tracker shows that over the past 24 hours, the top whales on the Ethereum chain have greatly increased their Shiba Inu stash, adding trillions of meme tokens to it.

$31 million worth of SHIB added to wallets

According to WhaleStats, over the past 24 hours, the USD worth of Shiba Inu, the second most popular meme coin in terms of market capitalization, spiked from $578,489,756 to $624,917,962.

This means their collective SHIB stash has increased by 2,534,750,613,246 Shiba Inu. Thus, the meme coin continues to hold the third place of top holdings, going after Ethereum and the USDT stablecoin.

Shibarium launch expected on Valentine’s Day

As reported by U.Today earlier, lead developer of Shiba Inu Shytoshi Kusama added a text to his bio on Twitter that suggested that the final steps toward launching the beta version of Shibarium are being taken right now.

In that text, he mentioned a “heart-shaped box,” in which Shibarium will be presented to the community. Many prominent SHIB accounts took this vague hint as the exact day of release — February 14, Valentine’s.

#Shibarium Beta will be launched on VALENTINES 14th February! @ShytoshiKusama Bio pic.twitter.com/GBI43Qe5T3

— Shibarium (@ShibariumGems) January 20, 2023

On this news, both SHIB and BONE tokens surged in price. SHIB added nearly 6% in the past 24 hours, now trading at $0.00001211.

BONE is the token that will power transactions on Shibarium, it surged to a local high of $1.5, also adding new users to a total count of more than 28,000.

WhaleStats crypto tracking platform has posted a tweet, showing a large transaction made on the BNB chain by a whale who bought 68 million Dogecoins.

In the meantime, DOGE now is back on the list of most actively bought tokens on the BNB Chain (formerly known as BSC chain).

Whale grabs 68 million Dogecoin

Twelve hours ago, a whale whose wallet carries an exotic name, “Martian Manhunter,” purchased 68,000,000, paying $5,684,188 for this amount of meme coins. The whale himself is number 71 on the WhaleStats scale, according to the tweet.

BNB whale “Martian Manhunter” just bought 68,000,000 $doge ($5,684,188 USD).

Ranked #71 on WhaleStats: https://t.co/rIB9PMrMsq

Transaction: https://t.co/IaOo0O81Lq#DOGE #BEP20 #BNB #whalestats #babywhale #BBW

— WhaleStats – the top 1000 BSC richlist (@WhaleStatsBSC) May 26, 2022

Among other large single positions in this whale’s portfolio is TUSD stablecoin, AVAX, DAI, TRX, MATIC and Cardano’s native token, ADA.

Overall, the largest 100 wallets on the BNB chain are holding $15,833,990 worth of Dogecoin—that is 1.17% of their comprised portfolio.

They own slightly more of BNB Chain-based ADA worth $16,483,029, which is 1.22% of their comprised crypto riches.

At the time of writing, however, the aforementioned whales hold zero DOGE as they have moved it out either to sell or simply moved the coins to another address.

DOGE leads the top 10 purchased coins list

As per the data shared by the aforementioned crypto tracker, Dogecoin is now on the top 10 list of the most used smart contracts, which means it is among the coins that are bought most actively now.

The largest meme token now holds first place on the top 10 list of purchased coins on BNB Chain. The average amount of DOGE that has been bought in the past 24 hours is nearly 690,000 coins worth $57,646.

“Proof of Assets” for DOGE on Binance

As reported by U.Today earlier this month, Binance chief Changpeng Zhao promised to add “Proof of Assets” for BSC-DOGE. This means the data in a wallet that shows the amount of actual Dogecoins that back the BSC-DOGE tokens.

The head of the largest crypto exchange has tweeted that after the Dogecoin army had been pushing for Binance to do that for a long while.

As reported by WhaleStats, ETH whale “BlueWhale0073” ranking fifth largest has bought 223,761,580,609 SHIB, or $5,781,999 worth. Shiba Inu received a ton of attention after the long-awaited listing on the Robinhood trading platform.

ETH whale “BlueWhale0073” just bought 223,761,580,609 $shib ($5,781,999 USD).

Ranked #5 on WhaleStats: https://t.co/RBupemZyZX

Transaction: https://t.co/v2U1IdkLjN#SHIB #ShibArmy

— WhaleStats – BabyWhale ($BBW) (@WhaleStats) April 15, 2022

In addition to the rise in social volume, large traders have purchased a significant amount of tokens, which made SHIB one of the most purchased assets among Ethereum whales in the last 24 hours, per WhaleStats. SHIB trades at $0.000257 at the time of publication.

The top 1000 #ETH whales are hodling

$1,602,881,412 $SHIB
$1,197,799,124 $FTX Token
$358,731,104 $BEST
$329,907,445 $MATIC
$284,615,375 $MANA
$283,290,040 $OKB
$276,094,944 $CHSB
$265,754,098 $LINK

Whale leaderboard https://t.co/jFn1zIOXPB pic.twitter.com/HVKS5U3ECY

— WhaleStats – BabyWhale ($BBW) (@WhaleStats) April 15, 2022

Moreover, Shiba Inu (SHIB) remains the top holding among the top 1,000 ETH whales. These top wallets currently hold $1,602,881,412 worth of the meme coin.

JUST IN: $SHIB @Shibtoken now on top 10 purchased tokens among 2000 biggest #ETH whales in the last 24hrs

We’ve also got $APE, $MANA & $MATIC on the list

Whale leaderboard: https://t.co/R19lKnPlsK#SHIB #whalestats #babywhale #BBW

— WhaleStats – BabyWhale ($BBW) (@WhaleStats) April 16, 2022

SHIB also ranks among the top 10 purchased tokens for the 2,000 biggest ETH whales in the last 24 hours.

SHIB: The Metaverse bid event ends

As seen on the official SHIB: The Metaverse Twitter handle, the early access bid event, which marks the introductory phase of SHIB: The Metaverse land sale has reached its end.

#ShibArmy ,

Wow that was exciting!!!

Thank you for participating on the BID EVENT!

We are 10+ minutes out from the next stage starting, the HOLDER EVENT!

As a reminder, please acknowledge that you will need to have $LEASH or a #SHIBOSHI locked for this early access event.

— SHIB: The Metaverse (@ShibTheMV) April 16, 2022

Following the completion of the introductory phase of the early access land bid event, SHIB developers have announced that it has launched the second stage, which is the holder event.

The second and third stages, which are the holder event and public sale, are for those who could not get early access. The holder event is expected to last for seven days and begin immediately after the bid event ends.

The last stage of the public sale is slated to happen after the first two stages, and participants will be able to purchase the remaining available lands on the map, at a fixed price and without needing to lock any SHIB ecosystem assets.

As reported by U.Today, the official mobile app of AMC Theatres, the world’s largest movie theater chain, now allows users to purchase tickets with the help of Shiba Inu, according to an announcement made by CEO Adam Aron. Users have to update their app to its latest version to pay with SHIB.

Anonymous whales purchased billions of Shiba Inu tokens amid its 30% run in March following a massive increase in the number of large transactions and positive price action, WhaleStats reports.

Billions of SHIB being shoveled

To execute such a large order, largest wallets on Ethereum blockchain had to separate their purchases into several transactions. The first whale who purchased 420 billion SHIB made two large transactions. The first transaction was worth $4 million three hours before the second one of $7.3 million.

The second whale, who purchased a smaller amount of Shiba Inu tokens, made one transaction worth approximately $1.3 million. The whale could make a transaction without splitting his orders, showing there was enough liquidity on the market.

Last 24hrs, a whale names “Gimli” just bought 421,370,420,624 $SHIB worths $11,313,795 in two transactions:

https://t.co/xBg4n1sRRC
https://t.co/sH4HtZ49tA#ShibArmy, let’s make some noise! Woof! Woof! pic.twitter.com/GA3YgL9NbY

— WhaleStats – BabyWhale ($BBW) (@WhaleStats) March 30, 2022

It is not clear which exchange they used for the transaction, nor is it clear if whales used OTC trading platforms.

The total value of funds held by both Shiba Inu wallets stays at almost $40 million, or 1.3 trillion SHIB tokens.

SHIB market performance

The last days of March were considerably positive for all Shiba Inu holders as the token started rapidly gaining value and social attention. Since bottoming out in March, Shiba Inu has gained over 25% to its value at press time and 38% at the local peak.

We could explain the strong performance of Shiba Inu on the market by both sentiment change and demand increase for alternative cryptocurrency exposure solutions. Historically, once coins like Cardano, Solana or Ethereum grow, memecoins and tokens like Shiba Inu or Dogecoin also receive some of their retail interest and gain value.

In March, Dogecoin gained almost 30% to its value, while Shiba Inu currently trades at $0.000027.