Key Highlights
- SHIB’s 37% rally faded as whales likely took profits while retail traders joined the rally late.
- SHIB futures open interest dropped 13.79% to $55.53 million, showing traders reduced their positions after the rally.
- SHIB remains above key support near $0.00000500, but losing $0.00000445 could weaken the recent breakout.
Shiba Inu (SHIB) saw a major rally over the past two days, marking one of its biggest rallies in months, but already lost some of it as investors start taking out their profits.
According to data from blockchain analytics platform Santiment, the meme coin gained about 37% in just two days before quickly pulling back, with on-chain data pointing to a slowdown after all the excitement.
The rally caught the attention of the wider market as SHIB climbed to its highest level in about two months. However, Santiment suggests that the excitement around the token may have arrived at the same time the rally was beginning to lose strength.
According to Santiment, SHIB’s social dominance climbed to 0.084%, its highest level since April 2. Social dominance measures how much people are talking about a cryptocurrency compared to other digital assets across social media.
In many cases, an increase means more traders are paying attention to a token after it has already made a strong move. At the same time, whale activity reached its highest level in months, with 52 transactions recorded in a single day, the most since March 31.
Whales appear to take profits
Santiment said the timing of those large transactions stood out because heavy whale activity happened while SHIB was still rallying, suggesting that larger investors may have been selling into the strength instead of continuing to buy.
As prices climbed, retail traders appeared to join the rally much later, creating enough buying demand for whales to reduce their holdings.
“The social spike after the vertical pump suggests smaller traders chased the excitement near the top, giving whales the liquidity needed to reduce their exposure,” Santiment said.
Futures traders begin reducing positions
The same trend could also be seen in the derivatives market. According to data from Coinglass, SHIB’s futures open interest dropped by 13.79% over the past 24 hours to $55.53 million.
This metric tracks the total number of active futures contracts. So when it falls after a rally, it often shows that traders are closing positions, either because they are locking in profits or because the market has started moving against them.
Price pulls back after strong trading activity
At the time of reporting, SHIB is trading for $0.000004976, down 3.43% over the last 24 hours but still up about 17% in a week after briefly reaching levels not seen in about two months.
The rally had also pushed SHIB back into the top 25 cryptocurrencies by market value. Trading activity also surged during the breakout, with SHIB’s trading volume increasing by nearly 12 times compared with previous sessions, making it one of the meme coin’s strongest trading days in recent months.
However, trading activity has of today is now 60.77% over the last 24 hours, to around $271 million in volume.
Key price levels to watch next
The price action also shows that buyers are beginning to lose momentum after the initial breakout.
On the daily chart, the price reached a high of $$0.00000580 before rejecting. The 100-day exponential moving average, around $0.00000500, is now acting as the first support level.
If SHIB stays above it, the recent breakout could remain intact. The next major level is the 200-day exponential moving average near $0.00000600, which has acted as a strong barrier during previous recovery attempts.
If SHIB falls below $0.00000445, however, much of the recent recovery could disappear, raising the chances that the rally was driven more by short-term trading than lasting buying demand. Moreover, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) is at $65.81, which suggests that the price is approaching an overbought level but still has room for more rally.
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