TL;DR

SHIBs burning mechanism skyrocketed in the last 24 hours, with almost 100 million tokens removed from circulation. One large transaction comprised over 99% of the entire burned stash.

The Latest Spike

After several days of recording less activity than usual, Shiba Inus burning program exploded once again. Data shows that the burn rate skyrocketed by almost 140,000% in the past 24 hours, resulting in over 96 million tokens sent to a null address. 

It is worth mentioning that around 99% of the stash was destroyed after a single transaction approximately 10 hours ago. Further investigation reveals that the wallet has received funds from the crypto exchange Coinbase multiple times in the past, suggesting the owner could be user of the platform. 

Meanwhile, the address had been inactive for more than five months before burning the SHIB tokens. Its latest transaction happened 154 days ago and included the swap of 0.2839 ETH ($715) on THORChain. 

While the over 96 million SHIB destroyed in the last 24 hours sound like a substantial amount, their actual USD equivalence is insignificant. However, continuous efforts in that field will make the meme coin scarcer and potentially more valuable in time (assuming demand stays the same or rises).

Shiba Inu currently trades at approximately $0.0000141 (per CoinGeckos data), a 2% decrease on a weekly scale. Its poor performance coincides with an overall decline of the meme coin sector, with Dogecoin (DOGE), dogwifhat (WIF), Pepe (PEPE), Bonk Inu (BONK), Brett (BRETT), and many more being deep in the red for the same period.

SHIB Price, Source: CoinGecko

Shibarium Embraced a Burning Mechanism, too

Earlier this month, Shiba Inus layer-2 scaling solution Shibarium adopted a burning program called Burn Portal. Despite having the same ultimate goal as the original Shiba Inu burn mechanism, there are certain differences.

The burning program integrated into Shibarium is directly tied to its blockchain operations. Each time a transaction occurs on the network, a fraction of the transaction fees paid in Bone ShibaSwap (BONE) is utilized to purchase SHIB tokens from the open market. That stash is then transferred to a null address.

In comparison, the original mechanism mainly relies on community-led efforts and voluntary burns by holders rather than an automatic or protocol-based action.