Around 41% of shiba inu's total supply is burned

• About 41% of shiba inu's total supply is burned - meaning those coins are no longer in circulation.
• Shiba inu is an ethereum-based alternative to dogecoin founded in August 2020.
• It has a total market valuation of nearly $37 billion and has become the 10th-largest cryptoasset.

Shiba inu investors have been riding high on the meme token's eye-popping rally in recent days.

But what many may not realize is about 41% of the token's total supply is burned - meaning those coins are not in circulation anymore, data by Etherscan showed. Though the address can look like a single person or entity owns that amount, it is in fact a "black hole," where shiba inu coins are burned out of circulation.

According to a list of the cryptocurrency's top 10 holders, about 10% of the tokens were purchased by cryptocurrency platforms such as Crypto.com and Binance. In total, there are 836,588 holders of the token.

The team behind shiba inu has locked 50% of the total token supply on Uniswap, according to its website.

The remaining 50% was gifted to ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin, who donated the majority of it - about $1 billion at that time - to a crypto-based COVID-19 relief fund for India. He then "burned" the rest, permanently taking the supply out of circulation.

Shiba inu is an ethereum-based alternative to dogecoin. It was founded in August 2020 by someone going by the name Ryoshi, whose goal was to move away from "rigid social structures and traditional mindsets," according to the coin's 28-page white paper, dubbed a "woof paper."

Its unlikely rise has catapulted the meme-inspired cryptocurrency to a total market valuation of nearly $37 billion. It was the 10th most valuable cryptocurrency as of Thursday.

Editor's note: We have corrected a previous version of this story, which used data from CoinMarketCap in referring to the top 10 shiba inu holders. We have now used Etherscan, a different tool, which shows blockchain transactions in more detail. We have clarified that a large percentage - 41%- is burned by the address that is shown as the top holder. We have also changed the headline to reflect that.