A huge Shiba Inu (SHIB) whale has been activating ‘whale alerts’ in the crypto community with a total of 13 transactions that follow the same pattern, which could indicate that they were done by the same entity. Finbold looked at the ‘4 trillion token shuffle’ tracks, and this is what was found.
Following the tracks of this huge SHIB whale
The first ‘4 trillion’ transaction was firstly made on July 14, between two unknown entities: from “0xd75…aE4e0” to “0xf3b…0EE67”, moving 4.11 trillion SHIB. The sender had previously received 3.81 trillion SHIB on June 16 from another unknown address, as its first ‘in’ transaction, but got more Shiba Inu tokens from multiple other sources, which indicates a trading address.
After that, the 4.11 trillion SHIB started moving from one address to another, following a similar pattern of sends and receives, which resulted in a sending of 4.71 trillion Shiba Inu tokens from “0x1Bc…B8B05” to “0x764…fBBCB” on August 17. One day after the failed Shibarium launch.
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Interestingly, most news regarding the failure — which made SHIB lose over 21% of its value in the last seven days at the time of publication — was covered on the day of this 4.71 trillion transaction. That was followed, on the same day, by the first transaction to a known address: Bitvavo, a centralized exchange (CEX), receiving 4.65 trillion tokens.
From Bitvavo to the most recent address holding the 4 trillion SHIB
On August 20, the Bitvavo account that received the 4.65 trillion SHIB, sent 4.66 trillion SHIB to another Bitvavo account. These internal transactions are usually ‘wallet management’ transactions, to/from cold wallets, in order to keep the digital assets safe.
And it was on August 21 that the ‘4 trillion token shuffle’ left Bitvavo’s wallet, which is usually recognized as a withdrawal transaction after a purchase. For this specific case, the whale could have used the CEX to trade the tokens from August 17 to August 21 — which corresponds to the period of constant updates by the Shibarium team, first assuring that “funds were SAFU [safe]”, and then, on August 22, publicly announcing that the Shibarium Network would be safely restarted soon.
The final transaction — by press time — was made from “0x344…5d3f6” to “0xA9d…76715”, following two other transactions after leaving the centralized exchange. This Shiba Inu whale now has 4.62 trillion SHIB sitting in this final address, but the ‘4 trillion tokens’ can be moved again soon.
Moving tokens from one address to another, sometimes using CEX’s addresses, are often used as part of a ‘mixing strategy’, where the cryptocurrency owner tries to make it harder for their balances to be tracked — but a mixing strategy can only be effective if the holder uses different patterns of transactions.
By using the same pattern, and very similar amounts, trackers can make educated guesses, like supposing that all the registered transactions from July 14 to August 22 were made by the same entity (person or institution).
