Blockchain analytics platform Bubblemaps said a mysterious whale cluster in the Shiba Inu (SHIB) ecosystem has continued to hold about 103 trillion SHIB since 2020. The position was initially built with 38 ETH, worth about $10,000 at the time.
Initial purchase accounted for about 10% of circulating supply
According to Bubblemaps, the whale first bought the 103 trillion SHIB through wallet address 0x1406, equal to roughly 10% of SHIB’s circulating supply at the time. As SHIB climbed, the position’s value at one point reached about $5 billion. The wallet cluster still holds assets worth more than $2.5 billion, with cumulative returns above 21,000x.
Bubblemaps described the case as one of the most striking investment stories in crypto market history.
Holdings were later split and moved across more addresses
To reduce exposure, the whale split the assets into 14 addresses in November 2021. In January 2023, Bubblemaps first disclosed the SHIB whale cluster, saying it controlled about 10% of SHIB supply and was worth more than $1 billion at the time. That disclosure sparked discussion in the community over the concentration of holdings under a single entity.
The cluster then kept moving and splitting addresses. In September 2023, Bubblemaps found that the holdings had spread from a small number of obvious wallets to more new addresses, which it viewed as a typical attempt to reduce on-chain visibility. Using its Magic Nodes tool, the firm said it could still identify links between those wallets.
Value moved back above $2 billion in early 2024
During SHIB’s rise in early 2024, the value of the whale cluster’s holdings climbed back above $2 billion, while the number of wallets expanded to more than 170 addresses.
As of now, the cluster still controls about 8.51% of SHIB’s circulating supply. That is down from the original 10%, but Bubblemaps said the change mainly reflects normal on-chain transfers and that it has not detected large-scale selling.
Case highlights the role of on-chain transparency tools
Bubblemaps said the case shows why on-chain transparency tools matter. A single entity may split wallets to obscure a large position, but every transfer still leaves a public record on-chain. The SHIB whale case has become a useful example for tracking whale behavior, concentration of holdings and on-chain tracing in the crypto market.