Presuming that the Ethereum inventor would not expend the tokens, giving them to him practically took them out of circulation. With production limited and capped, appetite grows over time. Vitalik now controls 50% of the circulated supply, turning him as the crypto’s number one whale. Dogecoin copycats have grown in popularity since DOGE started rallying, largely due to individual traders’ FOMO.
As DOGE tanked after Elon Musk’s performance on Saturday Night Live, SHIB skyrocketed. There was broad based reshuffling of assets from Doge to SHIB. Furthermore, crypto exchanges KuCoin and Binance listed the coin at the start of the week, bolstering its upward trend. In the last seven days, the token has appreciated by more than 1,500%.
This incredible rise has propelled the altcoin into the top 20 most valuable coins based on market capitalization. This is an incredible accomplishment for a coin that has just been around for a year. The estimated token in circulation of the meme coin is 394,796,000,000,000 SHIB.
With every SHIB currently trading for about $0.000032, the aggregate market cap of SHIB is slightly below $12 billion. While writing this article, Vitalik’s wallet contained about 505 billion SHIB, which is valued slightly above $16 billion, based on the aforesaid price level.
Vitalik holds around 505 billion SHIB which at the aforementioned price, is worth just over $16 billion at the time of press.
👉 To be perfectly clear, Vitalik can rug you. Will he do it? Certainly not. There’s no incentive for him to tarnish his reputation for 200 ETH.
— #WARONRUGS❌ (@WARONRUGS) January 30, 2021
Even though the developer’s goal was to increase the coin’s worth, by handing over such a large sum to Vitalik, the token faces the threat of a big dump, which could turn its value to virtually zero. As Vitalik’s wallet key has not been burned, he can still log into his account and sell any quantity of his choice.
In the past, this was not an issue as the altcoin was trading at a very low price and the market believed that Vitalik will not jeopardize his integrity for a miniscule payout. However, currently, with billions at stake, there is no such certainty.
Vitalik became a billionaire after Ethereum, the blockchain co-founded, crossed the $3,000 mark. It has since risen to $4,000, and Vitalik has not made any attempt to sell. A portion of SHIB holders will take comfort in the fact that the billionaire is not looking at short-term gains.