Shibarium Triples in Size in Just 24 Hours, Thousands of BTC Acquired by Insiders Before Grayscale v. SEC Ruling, SHIB Perpetuals Go Live in BitMEX: Crypto News Digest by U.Today

Here are the top three news stories by U.Today from the past day.

Shiba Inu's Shibarium triples in size in just 24 hours

It has been three days since SHIB lead Shytoshi Kusama officially announced that Shibarium Layer 2 protocol has been relaunched, but his brainchild is already making significant progress, growing by leaps and bounds. According to data by Shibariumscan.io, Shibarium has demonstrated a threefold increase in terms of wallet addresses; only the day before yesterday, this metric accounted for 100,000, whereas by yesterday, the Layer 2 solution had managed to amass more than 300,000 addresses. The rise was also spotted in the network's transaction activity, with the number of transactions reaching 520,000. As of today, the aforementioned metrics of Shibarium rose as well, hitting highs of 447,138 addresses and 620,743 transactions at the moment of writing.

Thousands of Bitcoin (BTC) acquired by insiders just before epic Grayscale v. SEC ruling

According to data provided by Santiment, BTC sharks and whales seemed to be informed of the outcome of the Grayscale v. SEC lawsuit, as the market intelligence platform spotted a surge in accumulation of the flagship cryptocurrency by these large wallets. In a surprising coincidence, the uptick in accumulation occurred just before the Grayscale v. SEC verdict made the news. Wallets holding between 10 and 10,000 BTC amassed $388.3 million, or 14,596 BTC, on the day prior to announcement. The accumulating initiative was decently rewarded, as Bitcoin's price surged 6% on the news, reaching a two-week pinnacle of $28,142 per BTC. As a reminder, Grayscale scored a victory in the legal battle against the SEC regarding the listing of Bitcoin futures products.

Shiba Inu (SHIB) perpetuals go live on BitMEX

Yesterday, BitMEX cryptocurrency trading platform announced that it is adding new perpetual contract listings for the Shiba Inu meme token. From now on, BitMEX's users will be able to take long or short positions on the meme coin sensation with up to 33x leverage. The platform's inclusion of SHIB perpetual contracts follows an initial announcement made the day before yesterday, indicating BitMEX's increasing attention to diversifying its offerings. In particular, the SHIB/USD contract will operate as a quanto contract with a fixed Bitcoin multiplier. This allows traders to speculate on exchange rate changes without needing to own the underlying assets, using Bitcoin as the margin for potential gains or losses.