Shiba Inu is nearing a local technical bear market after falling by over 17% from its highest point this month.
Shiba Inu (SHIB) was trading at $0.000014 on Sunday, with its 24-hour volume dwindling to $158 million. This volume is much lower than that of other popular meme coins like Dogecoin (DOGE), Pepe (PEPE), Official Trump (TRUMP), and Bonk (BONK).
The underperformance is happening because of the ongoing whale and mart money selling and falling burn rate.
ShibBurn data shows that the daily burn rate crashed by 85% to 2.14 million. Its weekly burn rate also dropped, with the biggest burn transaction being 23.5 million on Thursday.
Shiba Inu price often does well when more tokens are being burned, as this reduces the number in circulation and boosts confidence among holders. Over 410 trillion tokens have been burned from the initial supply.
Santiment data shows that whales have been on a selling spree since January. Their total supply stood at over 743 trillion on January 19 and has dropped to 725 trillion today. This means that these investors have sold over 18 trillion tokens, a sign that they expect it to keep falling.
Shiba Inu whale transactions | Source: Santiment
Worse, the selling behavior did not improve as Bitcoin (BTC) surged to a record high of nearly $112,000 last week. In the past, a strong Bitcoin surge would have pushed Shiba Inu higher.
Another data by Nansen shows that smart money investors have also sold their SHIB tokens. They now hold 14.13 billion tokens, down from 14.53 billion on April 8.
SHIB smart money transactions | Source: Nansen
In addition to the falling burn rate, investors have likely rotated to the faster-growing meme coins like Fartcoin and Dogwifhat.
Shiba Inu price technical analysis
SHIB price chart | Source: crypto.news
On the positive side, there are signs that the SHIB price has bottomed. The daily chart shows that it is stuck at the 100-day Exponential Moving Average.
It has also formed a cup and handle pattern, with the upper side at $0.00001733. The recent decline is part of the formation of the handle section.
This cup has a depth of about 40%. Therefore, measuring the same distance from its upper side brings the target at $0.00002443. This is a notable target since it coincides with the highest point in January.