- Sophisticated investors with "smart money" addresses are buying up shiba inu coin.
- The purchases have corresponded with the cryptocurrency's rallies this week, CoinDesk reported.
- One crypto whale bought 276.6 billion shiba inu coins for about $11.5 million on Monday.
More sophisticated crypto traders are likely responsible for shiba inu coin's massive recent rally, CoinDesk reported Wednesday.
Traders with so-called "smart money" addresses bought up about $160 million worth of shiba inu coin since the beginning of the week, according to CoinDesk, which cited blockchain data firm Nansen. During that time, the coin has surged more than 160% and fought with its predecessor dogecoin for a spot in the list of top 10 cryptocurrencies.
Those "smart money" addresses refer to crypto traders who earned more than $100,000 by providing and mining liquidity in DeFi protocols, CoinDesk said.
Another crypto data firm, Santiment, found that since the beginning of October the number of shiba inu coin transactions worth at least $1 million have been increasing. Surges in those crypto whale transactions then corresponded with the coin's price increases, according to the data, reported on by CoinDesk. Santiment did not immediately respond to Insider's request for its research.
On Monday evening alone, an anonymous crypto whale purchased 276.6 billion shiba inu coins for about $11.5 million, Insider reported previously, citing data from WhaleStats. The transaction put the investor's total holdings in shiba inu coin at 316.5 billion, worth about $15 million.
Shiba inu coin, the ethereum-based alternative to dogecoin, now has a market capitalization close to $30 billion, thanks to its recent rally, according to CoinMarketCap data. Despite its epic run, the coin is still worth less than a penny at $0.0000772 as of 3:13 p.m. in New York.
Retail investors have also been pushing into the coin, as several shiba inu hashtags, like #SHIBarmy, trended on Twitter Wednesday.