- A crypto whale scooped up 50 billion shiba inu coins worth $1.8 million on Thursday as its continued to tumble.
- Shiba inu has fallen 17% in the past seven days alongside a wider sell-off in cryptocurrencies.
- On Tuesday, another big holder purchased nearly 100 billion shiba inu coins.
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An ethereum whale purchased close to $1.8 million worth of shiba inu as the dogecoin-inspired coin slid this week during a wider sell-off in digital currencies.
The whale — a popular term for a big holder — bought 50 billion of the meme coins on Thursday, according to data from Whalestats, which tracks activity for the 1,000 largest ethereum wallets.
That brought the Jiraiya wallet's total holdings to 1.67 trillion shiba inu, worth $59.6 million.
It follows another big shiba inu bet on Tuesday, when another whale scooped up close to 100 billion worth $3.5 million, this time on the Binance Smart Chain.
Shiba inu has fallen about 17% over the past seven days, and is down 2.9% in the past 24 hours at $0.00003524, according to CoinMarketCap data.
Digital currencies have tumbled as fears about the Omicron coronavirus variant detected last week roiled asset markets. Over the past seven days, leading cryptocurrency bitcoin has lost 12.9% and second-place ether, the native token of the ethereum network, has dropped 9.1%.
Crypto investors have been bracing for a stronger dollar if US inflation continues to soar. On Friday, official data showed the Consumer Price Index rose 6.8% year-on-year, its highest level since 1982.
Shiba inu is in the hands of a few big investors. Its biggest whale holds over 410 trillion of the coin, which is 41% of its total supply, according to CoinMarketCap data.
Recent moves by shiba inu whales have driven the cryptocurrency to soar and tumble because of their dominance in the market.
In November, the meme coin tumbled by as much as 21% after a big holder moved $2.3 billion worth out of wallets, which spread fears the coins would be sold and pull the price down hugely.
A month earlier, shiba inu climbed 22% to hit a new record high, after another whale purchased 276.6 billion coins, worth about $11.5 million.