Big whales stock up on Ethereum (and are fond of SHIB). Should the small fish follow?

It feels like all whalesa term used in the cryptocurrency community to describe individuals or entities who own large amounts of crypto have herd behavior. Or maybe the mere plankton cannot reach their level of insight.

The largest Ethereum holders are sure to stock up on ETH in the run-up to the long-awaited merge network upgrade (September 19), which promises to make the system more efficient in terms of energy saving. According to Coinbase, the worth of ETH skyrocketed during the week by +55.29%, and as of July 20, it stands at $1,601.

According to Santiment, the number of big investors (those holding 1K to 100K ETH) has increased over the past few weeks. There were 131 new such wallets until July 17, and the total briefly exceeded 6,666.

“On-chain data points to large investors looking to increase their crypto exposure, particularly ETH. The total ETH balance held by addresses labeled as whales reached an all-time high this week. Addresses holding over 1% of the ETH in circulation have increased their positions,” reported Lucas Outumuro, head of research at blockchain analytics firm IntoTheBlock, last week.

At the same time, though, Itachi, the third prominent investor, withdrew 17% of his ETH reserves in the last 24 hours.

Not only ETH

By the way, as the crypto market as a whole comes back to life a bit, most Bitcoin giants also have already started to stockpile tokens little by little. There are some exceptions, though: one whale withdrew enormous 61K BTC from its cryptocurrency wallet (in 2021, it owned 117K).

Whales chasing dogs

The Shiba Inu’s token SHIB has once again become the most used smart contractSmart contracts are programs stored in a blockchain and triggered when predefined conditions are met. They are usually used to automate the execution of an agreement without intermediaries. among the 5K most giant Etherium whales, according to WhaleStats. During last week SHIB managed to add +28.49% in value, and now the token’s price has reached $0.000013 (as of July 20).

Why are whales buying up SHIB?

Well, guys, we don’t know for sure (no one does). Large holders of the main altcoin of the crypto market may hoard SHIB because of their desire to cash in on the rising value of the token or use SHIB as a means of payment. It is accepted by various payment systems, which allow purchasing, among other things, luxury goods and services.

The rise in SHIB’s price is also related to the long-awaited arrival of Shibarium, a second-tier blockchain solution that will expand the use of not only SHIB but also other tokens from the ecosystem, such as BONE and TREAT.

Also, the team behind Shiba Inu works on its own SHIB: The Metaverse.