Everybody loves a good supply-sapping token. Shiba Inu fans will be pleased to know that about 2 billion SHIB tokens were burned last month — meaning those coins are no longer in circulation. After having a fairly rough start in December, SHIB investors are hoping for a full-fledged trend reversal and new all-time highs.

Time To Expect A SHIB Rally?

Coin burning is a process by which crypto assets keep their market value high and try to offset inflation. In theory, when a huge chunk of a coin’s supply is eliminated, that coin sees increased demand, and as a result, the price skyrockets.

Shiba Inu started with an initial supply of 1 quadrillion (yes, 1 quadrillion!). The Ethereum-based alternative to Dogecoin then locked 50% of the token supply on Uniswap and gifted the remaining half to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin in hopes that his star power would give legitimacy to the coin or act as a token burn.

The Shiba Inu community burns SHIB tokens on a frequent basis. At the start of November, the Shiba Inu token burn tracker observed that 410,296,586,422,853 SHIB coins —  or 41.02966% — were burned. This number surged to 410,298,449,011,405 — 41.02984% — as of December 1, marking an almost 1.9 billion growth in tokens burned within the period. The total amount of SHIB coins burned to date has now topped 597 billion.

Gaming also boosts the SHIB token burning process because purchases made within the Shiba Inu game burn a big portion of the coin. The SHIBArmy also has an array of community-driven token burning initiatives, including the SHIB Burner playlist and the Shiba Coffee Company.

Besides the token burn, whales have also been accumulating more SHIB coins. One Ethereum whale going by the name Gimli, for instance, scooped up over 28 billion SHIB coins valued at an eye-popping $1.2 million yesterday. Prior to the purchase, the whale purchased 24.8 billion tokens worth $1 million on November 3. 

Shiba Inu stole the spotlight recently after its 25% upsurge following a listing by major US cryptocurrency exchange Kraken. Given these bullish fundamentals and tokenomics, it wouldn’t be a cardinal sin for the cryptocurrency’s holders to expect another mammoth rally in the near future.