Ethereum whales are buying up large amounts of Shiba Inu (SHIB), driving up the price. The community anticipates a dramatic increase in SHIB burn and utility on the chain in 2023, as both the core devs and the Shiba Inu Ecosystem hint at the imminent debut of the Shibarium Layer-2 blockchain.

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Shibarium is an upcoming layer-2 solution that seeks to improve the Shiba Inu ecosystem by, among other things, enabling speedier transactions at a reduced cost. As the upcoming upgrade edges closer to launch, Shiba Inu has become popular among Ethereum whales.

On December 29th, SHIB entered the top 10 most purchased tokens of the 2000 largest Ether (ETH) whales, as reported by WhaleStats, a platform that counts the top 5,000 largest Ether (ETH) wallets. Together, 100 entities control 20% of all SHIB in circulation. Their average SHIB holdings are valued at about $16.3 million, or 1.9 billion SHIB tokens.

One of the biggest Shiba Inu whales had transferred about 2 billion SHIB to its balance, which amounted to $22 million at the time of acquisition. This took place in a single day, and according to the available data, the wallet in question is the sixth largest Shiba Inu wallet, with around $319 million worth of SHIB tokens on its balance.

In addition, the Shiba Inu token burn rate has increased dramatically, as indicated by the Shibburn tracker. Over the past 24 hours, 182,339,090 SHIB tokens have been destroyed. Over the past several days, the burn rate and the number of transactions have skyrocketed, as reported on the Shibburn website.

On Jan. 1, 159,411,895 SHIB tokens were burned in 13 different transactions. Meanwhile, the burn rate increased by 13,198% after an address delivered 297,290,339 SHIB tokens to the burn address on January 1.

As of press time, market watchers believe that recent whale activity has slowed the negative trend. SHIB’s price also rose by at least 2%. But they do not anticipate much of a rebound, especially if there is insufficient liquidity and engagement from whales to fuel a significant price increase.