- Shiba inu coin's price jumped 13% after a crypto whale bought 4 trillion tokens.
- The whale's wallet is worth half a billion dollars and is also made up of metaverse tokens.
- Other crypto whales have been buying up shiba inu as it's slumped from October highs.
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Shiba inu's price jumped 13% after a big crypto investor bought trillions of the meme token.
The big buyer, better known as a crypto whale, bought 4 trillion tokens for about $136 million, according to whalestats, which tracks ethereum wallets but excludes those for exchanges and projects. Coindesk first reported the purchase.
About a quarter of the whale wallet — which is worth half a billion dollars in total — is now made up of shiba inu coin. Metaverse tokens from Decentraland, Gala, and Sandbox also make up a big chunk of the wallet, along with stablecoin tether.
Shiba inu reached all-time highs in October and has largely been falling since, giving whales the chance to buy the dip. Earlier this month, one whale scooped up 50 billion tokens to bring the wallet's total holdings to about 1.67 trillion shiba inu, Insider reported previously. Another whale bought about 100 billion of the tokens.
An individual shiba inu token is still worth less than a penny. But even so, it's the 13th biggest cryptocurrency by market value, just below its meme predecessor dogecoin, according to Coinmarketcap's rankings.
Shiba inu coin, named after the Japanese pup, is an ethereum-based alternative to dogecoin. It was founded in August 2020 by a person called Ryoshi, who wanted to move away from "rigid social structures and traditional mindsets," and make the coin "an experiment in decentralized spontaneous community building," Insider reported previously.
In a year, the token has surged an eye-watering 53 million percent, according to crypto.com.