Shiba Inu is one of the worst performing cryptocurrencies in the top-20 by market cap in the past week. SHIB has lost 3.7% of its value in the last 24 hours, while it is down 12% for the week.
One of the reasons for this, in addition to the recent negative market sentiment, seems to be the disappointment that Shibarium’s 2-layer technology will not be launched this Valentine’s Day, February 14, as was long suspected.
Pope Shiba Inu Tuku Dip
However, one of the biggest Ethereum investors has taken advantage of the price drop to buy the dip. As reported by WhaleStats, an anonymous Ethereum whale has bought 223.07 billion Shiba Inu, equivalent to about $2.75 million.
Indeed, the whale is the 329th largest holder of ETH, and the purchase of Shiba Inu is the eighth most purchased token among the top 1,000 ETH whales in the last 24 hours. The data provider tagged the lead investor as “BlueWhale0073.”
🐋 Whale ETH “BlueWhale0073” just bought 223,077,962,531 $sib ($2,755,012 USD).
Ranked #329 on WhaleStats: https://t.co/RBupemZyZX
Transaction: https://t.co/ciUrRtoE5K#SHIB #ShibArmy
— WhaleStats (tracks crypto whales) (@WhaleStats) February 13, 2023
As of early February, the whale had more than $45 million in cryptocurrencies, although he began distributing tokens to other addresses, as he did with SHIB shortly after the purchase.
Anyway, the Shiba Inu whale may have used the dip to buy relatively cheap SHIB, considering the still-hyped upcoming launch of Shibarium.
Shibarium launched before May?
As reported by Bitcoinist, Shytoshi Kusama, the main developer of Shiba Inu, has sparked rumors that Shibarium could be launched on Valentine’s Day. However, recently, they have dismissed these rumors and stated that they cannot give a firm launch date at this time.
However, in a message on Telegram, Kusama revealed that the launch could happen before May this year. The statement came after some community members continued to speculate about Valentine’s Day as the launch date.
Kusama responded to the speculation with a wink, stated“MAYBE…. just kidding, it will be out before May, lol.”
Maybe We’ll see when the Devs align
It’s not one – It’s three + unity #Shibarium when you are ready pic.twitter.com/m8CxTuPRzH— 𝐋𝐮𝐜𝐢𝐞 🃏 (@LucieSHIB) February 13, 2023
With this, Shibarium still doesn’t have a firm release date, which raises the expectations of the SHIB community due to the new buzz, which is also reflected in the price of SHIB.
At the moment, the hype is still so big that it could be a big driver for SHIB’s price. But the longer the hype drags on, the more likely the launch will become a “buy the rumor, sell the news” event.
This could mean that the price of SHIB falls sharply on launch day as speculators want to realize SHIB’s profits at local highs.
At press time, the SHIB price stood at $0.00001229, finding support at the 200 EMA on the 4-hour chart (at $0.00001201). On the upside, the resistance at $0.00001297 is very important.
Options images from Bloomberg, Charts from TradingView.com