Shiba Inu’s on-chain data shows an captivating lively among SHIB holders and their connections to cryptocurrency exchanges. CryptoQuant’s latest metrics show continued withdrawals from exchanges with a noticeable boost in firing activity over the past few days, all of which are signs of tightening supply conditions.

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

Huge decline in the value of SHIBs held on exchanges

According to data from analytics platform CryptoQuant, SHIB exchange reserves have dropped noticeably as whale wallets withdraw immense amounts of tokens from trading platforms. On January 16, all Shiba Inu reserves will be replaced amounted to approximately SHIB 82.6 trillion. As of January 20, this number has dropped to approximately SHIB 82.23 trillion.

This change means that approximately 370 billion SHIB was removed from exchanges in just a few days. Such movements are typically attributed to whale activity because retail traders rarely cause transfers of this magnitude. When whales move SHIB from exchanges, tokens are often sent to cool storage or wallets for long-term storage, reducing the amount of supply immediately available for sale.

SHIB Replacement Reserve. Source: CryptoQuant

This short-term outflow is also part of a much larger trend of outflows from cryptocurrency exchanges since January 2025. CryptoQuant data shows that SHIB exchange reserves at the beginning of January 2025 reached nearly 140 trillion tokens. However, since then, SHIB whales have steadily reduced exchange balances, bringing reserves to their current level of approximately SHIB 82.2 trillion. The consequence of this decline suggests deliberate accumulation or long-term positioning by immense holders.

SHIB Replacement Reserve. Source: CryptoQuant

Whale activity correlates with increased SHIB burning rate

Shiba Inu net burning activity has increased as whales withdraw SHIB from stock exchanges. According to the latest on-chain data, the SHIB burn rate has increased by more than 1,200% in the past 24 hours, and almost 29 million SHIB have been permanently withdrawn from circulation.

Although burns are not initiated solely by whales, immense owners they often play a role by sending immense tokens for burning addresses or interacting with the ecosystem mechanisms such as Shibarium which lead to burns. Data from burn tracking website Shibburn shows that most of these burns occurred as a result of a single transfer of 28 million SHIB tokens sent to a CA address.

SHIB burning rate. Source: Shibburn.com

According to CryptoQuant data, over 51.2 billion SHIB tokens were withdrawn from cryptocurrency exchanges in the last 24 hours alone. So far, Shiba Inu price action has not made a decisive move in response to these changes. At the time of writing, the Shiba Inu price is $0.00000794, up 1% over the past 24 hours but down 7.6% over the seven-day period.

SHIB exchange network flow. Source: CryptoQuant

Featured image created with Dall.E, chart from Tradingview.com