Shiba inu, the self-proclaimed dogecoin killer, briefly surpassed DOGE in market value on Wednesday, according to data from CoinGecko.
Both coins now have a market cap of over $31 billion and are toggling between 10th and 11th on CoinGecko’s rankings page, as of press time.
Blockchain data shows that while SHIB continues to attract retail investors around the globe, more-sophisticated crypto traders are fueling the latest rally.
Since the beginning of this week, addresses labeled as “smart money” by blockchain data firm Nansen started buying up SHIB, according to Daniel Khoo, a research analyst at Nansen. The buying was mostly concentrated in the past seven days, worth about $160 million.
Addresses labeled as “smart money” include traders who made more than $100,000 in profit by providing liquidity and mining liquidity in decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols and public entities that invest in crypto.
“It was shocking to me,” Khoo said, adding that he didn’t expect SHIB to become accumulated by “smart money.”
Read more: Shiba Inu Coin (SHIB): A Beginner’s Guide 2021
Data from another blockchain data firm, Santiment, also supports the perspective.
SHIB transactions worth at least $1 million started increasing since the beginning of October, Santiment data shows. The whale activities spiked on multiple days in the past weeks, as SHIB’s price rallied.
Notably, while there have been a lot of SHIB spot activities on centralized exchanges, at press time roughly 66% of SHIB are on decentralized exchanges versus 13% on centralized exchanges, according to Nansen.
Over on centralized exchanges, SHIB’s trading volumes mostly come from Binance, Coinbase and BKEX, according to CoinGecko. Compared with Binance and Coinbase, BKEX is a little-known exchange started in China.
SHIB hits China
Google trends also revealed another interesting fact about shiba inu: Despite China doubling down on its crypto trading ban, traders in the East Asian country have shown an unquenchable appetite for SHIB that’s nearly as high as their counterparts in the United States.
At press time, Google Trends, a widely used tool to gauge retail interest in trending topics, shows a value of 98 for the search query “SHIB” in China versus 100 in the U.S. over the past week.
A score of 100 represents peak popularity – the maximum number of searches observed for a term during a given time frame. It means more and more people are scanning the web for information on SHIB.
The finding is extraordinary considering the fact that the market has been talking down China’s influence on crypto for weeks. Chinese crypto traders may be lying low, but they have not quit crypto, as suggested by SHIB’s latest rally.
Read more: Why Shiba Inu Has Been More Resilient Than Some SHIB Haters Would Like to Admit
