Shiba Inu Whale Accumulates $10M From Coinbase, Binance Amid SEC's Legal Battle Against Crypto Exchanges

A mysterious whale has been accumulating massive amounts of a particular meme token Shiba Inu SHIB/USD, over the past few hours.

What Happened: The whale in question accumulated 1.5 trillion SHIB worth $10 million from Binance and Coinbase, according to data from block explorer and analytics platform data Etherscan, first noted on Lookonchain.

Lookonchain tweeted that this whale is already the largest holder of SHIB, excluding exchanges. This mysterious individual, known only by their wallet address “0x40B3,” currently holds a whopping 5.3 trillion SHIB, which is currently valued at around $35.5 million.

Interestingly, on May 16, this same whale transferred a staggering 20 trillion SHIB, valued at $134.4 million, to another wallet address known as “0x73AF.”

SHIB has seen a 3% increase in value since this news broke.

See More: A Stay At The Floating Palace From James Bond's ‘Octopussy’

Why It Matters: The news of the mysterious whale accumulating SHIB comes at a time when the meme-inspired token has experienced one of its worst weeks, with a 21.4% decline.

The SEC has accused both Binance and Coinbase of offering unregistered securities to the general public, among other allegations. These suits have reignited ongoing questions about whether cryptocurrencies should be classified as securities, commodities, or something else entirely.

Securities are defined as investments that can be exchanged and used to raise capital.

However, the fact that cryptocurrencies are decentralized and do not have a central authority or entity controlling their issuance and trading has made it difficult for regulators to determine how they should be classified.

Price Action: At the time of writing, SHIB was trading at $0.000006736, up 3.14% in the last 24 hours, according to Benzinga Pro.

Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs