An $8,000 purchase of Shiba Inu which appreciated to $5.7 billion in around 400 days has been hailed as “the greatest individual trade of all time.“
An analysis of on-chain data suggests an alternative view, backed by an anonymous source that has revealed the identity of the mysterious trader.
Etherscan shows that the person of interest first acquired Shiba Inu (SHIB) on Aug 1. This places diamond hands at the genesis of the memecoin, one day before the token lists on CoinMarketCap. Significant SHIB purchases which follow suggest an investor of great faith or potentially one involved with Ryoshi – the adopted pseudonym of the co-founding team.
Purchasing activity on the future billion-dollar address stopped in October as the user seemingly hibernated over the winter months, but in February 2021, the investor started to move tokens again. This time the whale transferred significant lump sums of SHIB to another address.
The token exodus also coincides with a flurry of activity at Shiba Inu as the project created a brand-new Twitter account and webpage, indicating that it was busy on a number of fronts.
Who is the mystery person?
The birth of Shiba Inu holds a great many parallels to the emergence of bitcoin. Both are the stories of founders operating under a pseudonym, acquiring vast sums of their own cryptocurrency before seemingly disappearing – or at least trying to.
In the case of Shiba Inu’s Ryoshi, that circle of trust appears to have been too wide to keep the secret hidden forever, and the disappearing act not entirely effective. Our source states that the mystery person who controls the $5.7 billion was a founding member of the group.
Our source also provided evidence that there are multiple other third parties who also believe that Ryoshi is the mystery person behind the billion-dollar wallet.
Ryoshi’s members include experienced founders who have participated in the creation of numerous meme coins, shitcoins, and other startups which could uncharitably be classed as pump and dump coins. During their time working in various meme projects, core members of Ryoshi have developed a reputation among fellow whales as particularly shrewd and financially aggressive operators.
[UPDATE Nov 3, 2021] A previous version of this article went on to name an individual believed to be a founding member of Ryoshi. Following publication, this person reached out to us and requested we remove this detail.
A Shiba Inu timeline
April 7, 2018. The first activity on the ‘$5.7 billion’ wallet takes place. The address is used multiple times for a series of small Ethereum transfers until activity ceases a few months later on June 12th, 2018.
August 1, 2020. The wallet becomes active once more when a number of trades are made to swap Ethereum for wrapped Ethereum (WETH).
The wallet holder swaps their newly acquired WETH for Shiba Inu. For $56.63 of WETH the wallet holder acquires 70,144,278,680.072 SHIB which is worth around $5 million today. Over the next couple of months, the wallet holder makes multiple repeated purchases of SHIB, adding to their bags.
August 2, 2020. CoinMarketCap data for Shiba Inu begins the day after the wallet holder’s first purchase of Shiba Inu. The CoinMarketCap listing is announced on Twitter at the same time – corroborating the timeline.
Sept 6, 202 The single biggest purchase of Shiba Inu is made by the wallet holder when $3,219 of WETH purchases 24,256,546,086,219.27 SHIB, today worth $1.7 billion.
October 7, 2020. The wallet holder makes their last purchase of Shiba Inu. This time they purchase 20,790,192,060,353.28 SHIB at around $2,000. That SHIB is now valued at $1.5 billion.
February 1, 2021. The official Shiba Inu Twitter account becomes active.
February 7, 2021. Shiba Inu launches a new website.
February 17, 2021. The wallet owner begins the first of their final transfers over the course of the next three months. This time the transfers are outgoing to address 0x0b925b1dc9b9b9709092bbccbfb32f14db81981d. Today, this second wallet holds $86 million Shiba Inu (SHIB).
April 18, 2021. The final outgoing transfer on the ‘$5.7 billion wallet’ occurs, and it then goes dark.
April 20, 2021. The price of Shiba Inu hits a new all-time high of $0.000003768 in the first significant price move since its creation.
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