The price of Shiba Inu has recently declined despite the recovery of the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency market. This decline is linked to a number of developments that shook the price of the meme coin, and as a result, caused its price to drop by about 10% to test a new support level.
WazirX Hack Causes Shiba Inu to Decline
Earlier this week, Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX was hacked and around $235 million was stolen. A number of prominent cryptocurrencies were stolen in the hack, ranging from market leaders like Polygon to Ethereum. However, the highest amount stolen was Shiba Inu.
While the stolen Ethereum coins were worth $52.6 million and Polygon coins were worth $11 million, the Shiba Inu coins stolen by criminals were worth $96.7 million. This comes as no surprise, given that Shiba Inu has consistently been the most traded cryptocurrency on the exchange.
The same popularity that SHIB has gained on the WazirX exchange is also the reason why the Shiba Inu price has been affected so significantly. Since WazirX has become one of the most popular exchanges for trading SHIB, the hack has struck fear into the hearts of investors, who are afraid of what the bad guys might do in the aftermath of the attack.
In response to the hack, the cryptocurrency market saw some pullback but quickly recovered. However, Shiba Inu had already succumbed to the downward pressure and lost around 10% of its value by the time the cryptocurrency market started to recover again.
Hacker Starts Selling SHIB Tokens
Although the cryptocurrency market seems to be on its way to recovering from the WazirX hack, the Shiba Inu price is still under tremendous pressure. This is because the WazirX hackers have started transferring their exploits to Ethereum.
So far, most of the Shiba Inu tokens stolen in the hack have been sold and converted into Ethereum. According to on-chain data tracking platform Spot On Chain, the hackers have It has been converted. $90.2 million from SHIB to ETH, along with $10.2 million in MATIC and $7.5 million in PEPE.
So far, around $150 million has been converted into ETH, putting massive pressure on the Shiba Inu price. The exploiter’s account now holds 59,087 ETH worth $201 million, with smaller balances across altcoins like CHR, CELR, and OOKI.
As for the Shiba Inu price, it is currently looking to retest the $0.000017 support level. However, this level has remained stable so far, despite the 1.03% decline recorded in the past 24 hours.
Featured image created using Dall.E, chart from Tradingview.com