A newly revealed action by Ryoshi, Shiba Inu's anonymous founder and former lead developer, has sent shockwaves through the crypto community. In a move that drastically reduces circulating supply and fundamentally shifts governance, Ryoshi locked and transferred a massive portion of SHIB tokens shortly after launch, a revelation that could trigger significant market repositioning and redefine the meme coin's long-term value proposition.

The Move Made By Shiba Inu’s Founder Ryoshi

In an X post on April 10, @Shibizens, followers, and supporters of the Shibarium ecosystem revealed a fun fact about Shiba Inu that continues to guide its direction and operations to this day. They revealed that following Shiba Inu’s mid-2020 debut, Ryoshi had sent approximately 50% of its massive supply of 1 quadrillion tokens, about 505 trillion SHIB tokens, to Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum (ETH). 

The transfer was initially described as a gesture of respect and acknowledgment. However, Buterin later revealed that the real motive was a marketing strategy aimed at generating attention, similar to how SpaceX CEO Elon Musk helped drive interest in Dogecoin. 

As a result, in May 2022, Buterin burnt over 410 trillion SHIB, permanently removing them from circulation. This was valued at over $6 billion in a single transaction at the time. The Ethereum founder stated that his reasons for burning the meme coin were that he didn’t want to be a “locus of power” in the project. 

Shibizens note that Ryoshi’s decision to transfer over 500 trillion SHIB to Buterin effectively removed access to the meme coin’s remaining supply, eliminating any possibility of centralized control, with no keys and no way to manage those funds. This move further reinforced Shiba Inu’s decentralization, as the ecosystem reportedly has no tokens reserved for developers and no hidden supply, leaving it fully community-governed.

Excluding Buterin’s half, Ryoshi had locked the remaining 50% of SHIB’s supply in Uniswap liquidity pools and threw away the keys. The tokens were locked in as foundational trading liquidity for the market, ensuring that anyone could swap ETH for SHIB and vice versa automatically and at any time, without a centralized exchange. 

While highlighting these events, Shibizens also explained how token burns work. According to them, users must buy SHIB tokens before they can send them to dead wallets, permanently removing them from circulation. They noted that without owning or buying coins, burns cannot be executed to increase SHIB’s scarcity over time.

SHIB Whales Continue Buying As Price Drops

New updates from Shiba Inu analysts have shown that whales are currently accumulating SHIB, viewing low prices as a buy-the-dip opportunity. Notably, the Shiba Inu price is down more than 4% over the past seven days, closely tracking the broader market’s dip, largely driven by geopolitical risk aversion, according to CoinMarketCap data.

Following the recent decline, Shiba Inu is now trading around $0.0000057, with no clear signs of a recovery in sight. The meme coin also appears to be tracing the downward trajectory of Bitcoin, which recently fell due to a shift in investor sentiment after failed US-Iran peace talks and a looming Strait of Hormuz naval blockade.