The Shiba Inu price crashed to as low as $0.000007683 yesterday, sparking bearish sentiment towards the meme coin. This crash came on the back of a transfer of billions of SHIB tokens, which raised concerns of a potential sell-off by the whale in question. 

Why The Shiba Inu Price Crashed

The Shiba Inu price crashed amid significant selling pressure, with a SHIB whale sending billions of tokens to Robinhood, likely to offload these tokens. Arkham data shows that the whale (0x2d0…9f7bB) first sent 210.365 billion SHIB tokens, worth $1.63 million, to the crypto exchange. These tokens represented about 97% of the whale’s SHIB holdings.

Further data from Arkham shows that the SHIB whale sent an additional 1.52 billion tokens to Robinhood and 7 billion tokens to liquidity provider B2C2 Group, which could be an OTC sale. The Shiba Inu price has notably crashed by over 7% in the last week, and it suffered its worst drop during this period yesterday amid the whale’s transfers. The whale now holds only 5.86 billion SHIB, worth $46,790.

The Shiba Inu price also crashed due to the sell-off in the broader crypto market, led by Bitcoin. BC dropped to as low as $87,000 yesterday amid concerns over trade tensions between the U.S. and Europe stemming from the Greenland-linked Trump tariffs. However, the market recovered towards the end of the day as Trump announced that he had canceled the proposed tariffs, having reached a Greenland deal with NATO.  

Despite the recent Shiba Inu price crash, the meme coin is still up over 15% year-to-date (YTD) and ranks among the best-performing crypto assets this year. However, SHIb is still far off from its current all-time high (ATH) of $0.00008845. 

Exchange Netflows For SHIB Remains Mixed

SHIB’s exchange netflows have remained mixed, indicating there is no clear accumulation pattern for the meme coin at the moment. CryptoQuant data shows that today’s net flows are negative, totaling just over 7 billion Shiba Inu tokens, suggesting that more coins are flowing into exchanges than out. 

However, the total exchanges’ netflows yesterday were positive, at 1.6 billion tokens, indicating more tokens leaving exchanges, which is bullish for the Shiba Inu price as it hints at accumulation from whales. On January 16, SHIB’s netflows were also positive, totaling around 115 billion tokens. However, the positive netflows on that day were overshadowed by the negative flows of 214 billion SHIB recorded on January 20.   

Related Reading: Here’s Why The Shiba Inu Price Jumped Over 13%

Crypto traders still remain bullish on the Shiba Inu price as CoinGlass data shows the long/short ratio is currently above 1. Derivatives trading volume has also jumped by over 20% while the open interest is up almost 3%. 

At the time of writing, the Shiba Inu price is trading at around $0.000007978, up in the last 24 hours, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Shiba Inu’s on-chain data shows an interesting dynamic among SHIB holders and their relationship with crypto exchanges. Recent metrics from CryptoQuant show sustained withdrawals from exchanges alongside a noticeable increase in burn activity in the past few days, all of which are signs of tighter supply conditions. 

This dwindling exchange supply reflects hundreds of billions of SHIB tokens removed from exchanges in recent days in a trend that dates back up to a year.

Massive Decline In SHIB Held On Exchanges

According to data from on-chain analytics platform CryptoQuant, SHIB exchange reserves have declined noticeably as whale wallets withdraw large amounts of tokens from trading platforms. On January 16, the total Shiba Inu exchange reserves stood at approximately 82.6 trillion SHIB. As of January 20, that figure has fallen to about 82.23 trillion SHIB.

This change means that roughly 370 billion SHIB has been removed from exchanges in just a few days. Such movements are typically attributed to whale activity, as transfers of this size are rarely caused by retail traders. When whales move SHIB off exchanges, the tokens are often sent to cold storage or long-term holding wallets, reducing the amount of supply immediately available for selling.

SHIB Exchange Reserve. Source: CryptoQuant

This short-term outflow also fits into a much larger trend of outflows from crypto exchanges since January 2025. CryptoQuant data shows that SHIB exchange reserves were close to 140 trillion tokens in early January 2025. Since then, however, SHIB whales have steadily reduced exchange balances, and this has pushed the reserves down to current levels around 82.2 trillion SHIB. The consistency of this decline suggests deliberate accumulation or long-term positioning by large holders.

SHIB Exchange Reserve. Source: CryptoQuant

Whale Activity Correlates With Increased SHIB Burn Rates

Burn activity across the Shiba Inu network has intensified alongside whales withdrawing SHIB from exchanges. According to recent on-chain data, the SHIB burn rate has witnessed a jump of more than 1,200% in the past 24-hour period, with almost 29 million SHIB permanently removed from circulation. 

Although burns are not exclusively initiated by whales, large holders often play a role by sending large tokens to burn addresses or interacting with ecosystem mechanisms like Shibarium that lead to burns. Data from the burn tracker website Shibburn shows that the bulk of these burns were made with one single transfer of 28 million SHIB tokens sent to burn address CA.

SHIB Burn Rate. Source: Shibburn.com

According to CryptoQuant data, over 51.2 billion SHIB tokens have been withdrawn from crypto exchanges in the past 24 hours alone. So far, Shiba Inu’s price action has not made a decisive move in response to these changes. At the time of writing, Shiba Inu is trading at $0.00000794, up by 1% in the past 24 hours but down by 7.6% in a seven-day timeframe.

SHIB Exchange Netflow. Source: CryptoQuant