- Shiba Inu showed unusual support for competing memecoins.
- All the memecoins had ties with the same powerful financial force.
- SHIB has grown too large to compete with 10x gain makers.
A few months ago, one of the world’s most significant memecoins, Shiba Inu, generously promoted its dog-themed competitors.
However, on-chain data suggests that the same heavyweight force may stand behind both SHIB and its rivals. What if this force has already squeezed all it can from the high-cap Shiba Inu and is now clearing the path for its successors?
Shiba Inu Supports Kendu Inu
SHIB’s unusual behavior was first noticed this summer. Traditionally unreserved in its criticism of competitors – most notably its primary rival, Dogecoin – Shiba Inu unexpectedly pivoted to endorse two new Shib-inspired memecoins in quick succession: Neiro on Ethereum (NEIRO) and Kendu Inu (KENDU).
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At first, it introduced Kendu Inu to its loyal army of followers. Founded by the pseudonymous Kendu Miazaki in February, KENDU has swiftly risen to rank among the top 60 memecoins, with its $88M market cap months later.
Kendu Inu emphasizes community engagement and sustainable growth, aiming to connect memecoins with traditional businesses, as per Shiba Inu.
“Built on honesty, transparency, and a rebellious spirit, Kendu contrasts sharply with the profit-driven norm of the crypto world,” asserts KENDU’s pseudonymous founder.
He expresses his ambition to make Kendu Inu the world’s first $100 billion memecoin. Achieving this goal would elevate KENDU’s market cap alongside Tether (USDT), the largest stablecoin.
While this may seem overly ambitious for brand new memecoin, what if underlying factors are at play? Could a powerful force be driving this memecoin, poised to elevate KENDU to crypto elites?
KENDU: All Roads Lead to B2C2
Nothing reveals connections, hidden relationships, and potential interests better than the flow of money. Therefore, I tracked asset movement to uncover what lies behind the KENDU smart contract deployer and its largest holders.
The KENDU deployer appears to be a brand new wallet, created for this only purpose and used for nothing else. Luckily, it made a small single outgoing ETH transfer, which led me to a highly active wallet (0x0166…).
The latter makes thousands of transfers, operates numerous cryptos, and resembles market maker activity. It also uses a network of intermediaries to transfer millions of dollars worth of assets to a single destination: “B2C2 Group” (0x66E0…), a prominent crypto liquidity provider and market maker, offering institutional clients deep liquidity across a range of cryptocurrencies.
As of this writing, the top five accounts control over 11% of KENDU’s total supply. They are all unidentified wallets, each funded from different sources. But they pass their assets to the same destination and then to the market maker’s proxy account.
The largest KENDU holder, 0x9c1B… is an automated liquidity miner, continuously minting memecoins since early August. Accidentally or not, it is funded by the accounts that receive inflows from other TOP5 Kendu Inu holders.
Funds from the largest holder’s account pass through numerous intermediaries but eventually land at the “B2C2 Group” account (0x66E0…), also connected to the token deployer.
B2C2 is a prominent cryptocurrency market maker. It is a very important name in this story and appears in the money flow chains of another Shib-backed memecoin: Neiro Ethereum (NEIRO).
Shiba Inu Endorses NEIRO Ethereum
NEIRO caught Shiba’s attention just a few weeks after spotlighting Kendu Inu. The official SHIB magazine did not hold back on compliments for another memecoin:
“The unification of Doge and Shiba’s formidable power. A light for those yearning for something more than fleeting pumps and meme-driven speculation. A testament to the enduring power of community” praised Shiba Inu.
Founded by the anonymous Neiroshi, NEIRO showed remarkable growth this summer. The project donated 4% of its supply to Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, mirroring the epic move of SHIB in 2021 when Buterin was granted half of Shiba Inu’s supply.
Ethereum’s founder burned a major part of his holding, sparking a massive frenzy that catapulted SHIB to the top of the crypto world, where it stays to this day.
However, the copycat’s marketing move wasn’t the only thing that propelled the weeks-old NEIRO closer to the crypto elite. According to Shiba Inu, the heavyweight whales and SHIB and DOGE veterans have also embraced it.
And here’s where things started getting interesting.
NEIRO: To Wintermute, Then to B2C2
At the time of writing, the top five biggest NEIRO holders manage nearly one-third (32.1%) of the token’s 1 billion total supply.
The biggest was the Bybit crypto exchange, followed by two wallets attributed to Wintermute market maker: Wintermute (0xDBF…) and Wintermute: Gate.io Deposit (0x645…).
However, blockchain records revealed that the fourth largest holder, an anonymous wallet (0x9642…), is also tied with the prominent cryptocurrency market maker.
The fourth largest holder uses various proxies to send liquidity to the lending protocol Aave, which transfers funds further to Wintermute OTC (Over-The-Counter) account. The latter facilitates large-scale crypto trades directly between counterparties outside of exchanges.
And this is not all. Funds from NEIRO’s largest holder, Bybit, changed hands multiple times but eventually ended up in Wintermute’s account.
From there, funds went further to the already familiar B2C2 Group (0x66E0…).
Market Makers Have SBI in Common
B2C2 is a global trading firm and cryptocurrency market maker that provides liquidity primarily for institutional clients worldwide.
Incorporated in London in 2012, B2C2 operates one of the largest over-the-counter (OTC) trading desks and is an influential player in the cryptocurrency industry. However, it’s still just another middleman in this story.
Since December 2020, B2C2 has been part of Japan’s SBI Holdings, one of the country’s largest financial groups. SBI’s subsidiary, SBI Digital Assets Holding, owns over 75% of B2C2’s shares.
Since 2020, SBI and its partner SIX have built a joint venture crypto exchange for the Asian market. Their plan fully materialized in 2023 when the institution-only crypto exchange AsiaNext went live.
By early 2024, Wintermute joined AsiaNext as its partner and liquidity provider. Thus, both market makers, linked through KENDU and NEIRO memecoin holders, were more or less connected to SBI Holdings.
Crypto inflows, particularly those from memecoins, play a key role in this conglomerate’s profits.
Public Secret: SBI Is Behind SHIB?
It’s widely speculated online that SBI Holdings may be behind the launch of the Shiba Inu memecoin and its anonymous founder, Ryoshi.
On-chain detective TruthLabs uncovered that Ryoshi is most likely a blend of two B2C2 LTD employees, Ryo Suzuki and Tsuyoshi Maruyama, who worked there when SHIB was created in 2020.
Several key developments align closely here: SBI Holdings made its initial investment in B2C2 in July 2020, followed by the launch of the Shiba Inu smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain a month later. By December, SBI had acquired over 75% of B2C2 shares, significantly boosting SHIB’s liquidity shortly thereafter.
Then, the famous marketing move with Vitalik Buterin and his SHIB holdings propelled SHIB’s price by nearly 990% in just three days to its first all-time high in May 2021.
Since then, SBI Holdings’ crypto subsidiaries have held SHIB as part of their crypto portfolio. By the end of 2021, these holdings constituted ¥64.3 billion (over $569 million) worth of digital assets and were the fourth-largest asset category under SBI Holdings.
From there, the SBI group’s yearly earnings grew exponentially.
Meanwhile, the corporation’s financial reports reveal that the digital asset sector outperforms the group’s other business areas in revenue. In 2024, SBI’s digital asset businesses experienced an impressive 172.2% growth.
SHIB Became too Big to Generate Massive Gains
Although it’s unclear how much SHIB, in particular, contributed to SBI Holdings’ success, one fact is undeniable: Shiba Inu is the world’s second-largest memecoin, with a market cap of over $10 billion and close to 100 trillion total supply.
This means that SHIB needs at least a $110 billion market cap to generate another 10x returns, as during its iconic 2021 rally. That massive amount of new capital is extremely scattered in today’s oversaturated cryptocurrency market.
Achieving 10x, 20x, or even 50x returns with small-cap memecoins is significantly much easier. For instance, a coin with a market cap of $10 million must reach just $100 million to deliver a 10x return, a considerably easier feat.
This may explain why the rational forces behind Shiba Inu have opted to endorse two low-cap memecoins amid a fiercely competitive landscape.
Even if the worst-case scenario materializes and SHIB’s profitability wanes compared to its newer counterparts, profits could continue flowing into familiar hands.
Find out about how oversaturation shapes the altcoin market:
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Check out the risks that lie behind Telegram Wallet:
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