The meme-inspired cryptocurrency Shiba Inu (SHIB) saw an acceleration in its token burn rate in September, with over 2.3 billion SHIB tokens permanently removed from circulation last month. This amounts to around $17,173 worth of SHIB destroyed based on the token’s price at the time of writing.
According to data from Shibburn, a website that tracks the number of SHIB tokens burned, September saw 2,323,834,085 SHIB tokens burned across 426 separate transactions. This is a significant decrease from the previous month of August, when a much higher 5.7 billion SHIB tokens worth $45,899 were burned.
The renewed acceleration in burning activity has sparked optimism amongst the SHIB investor community. In the last 24 hours alone, the price of SHIB has seen a 3% bump, coinciding with a 50% surge in trading volumes to around $99 million.
Overall, September was a relatively sideways month for SHIB trading, with the token price concluding the month at $0.0000075, marginally up from the $0.000007 range it started September trading in.
Last week, the SHIB burn rate witnessed a brief 1000%+ spike in a single day, following the removal of 164 million tokens from circulation. Analysts pointed to two previously dormant cryptocurrency wallets suddenly receiving large withdrawals of SHIB tokens from exchanges Binance and MEXC as a catalyst for this burn rate jump. These new major holders of SHIB, referred to as “Shiba Inu whales”, hold a combined SHIB value of over $500,000.
In other positive ecosystem development, Shiba Inu’s core development team took a major step closer to completing the complicated renouncement process for the native token of its upcoming Layer 2 blockchain project Shibarium, BONE.
This involved introducing a temporary token called Calcium purely to renounce the BONE contract, which should not be used for trading due to lack of liquidity.
Once renounced, it will be impossible for the developers to alter the total supply of BONE, instilling greater trust and autonomy in the Shibarium platform. Shibarium is slated to significantly reduce transaction fees on the Shiba Inu network compared to the congested and expensive Ethereum blockchain SHIB currently relies on.
The recent token burn comes against the backdrop of an eventful couple of months for the SHIB community following a massive price surge in mid-August. At one point, the token price nearly doubled within the span of a week, although it gave back most of those gains in the following weeks.
Nevertheless, renewed investor interest in SHIB sparked fresh debate around the prospects of the token being listed on popular trading platforms like Robinhood. While Robinhood confirmed they were not adding SHIB yet, the token did get listed on the Wealthsimple crypto trading app in Canada in late August.
More importantly, SHIB also saw growing utility and adoption from businesses and platforms like movie theater chain AMC, luxury resort The New Yorker Hotel, and most recently fast food chain Welly’s in Portugal. The cinema chain AMC set the internet abuzz when it announced the option to pay for online tickets and concessions using SHIB through its website and mobile app.
The series of positive developments led to some analysts predicting SHIB could eventually eliminate another zero and surge 10x from current levels. However, other skeptics have warned about getting carried away, pointing to the massive circulating supply of over 549 trillion tokens and the historical volatility of meme-based cryptocurrencies like SHIB.
Though the recent burn rate has accelerated, at the current pace it would still take many years to put a dent in reducing the circulating supply substantially. Proponents maintain that expanding utility and new burning mechanisms proposed by the developers could significantly speed up the burn rate. But whether this actually transpires remains to be seen.
For now, the SHIB army remains passionately bullish on the future of the ‘Dogecoin killer’, buoyed by the accelerating burn and adoption news. Many investors are closely watching if Robinhood finally relents and lists SHIB, which would likely spark the next major price rally. The coming few months seem poised to determine whether Shiba Inu can sustain traction and evolve beyond just being a hype-driven meme token.