About a billion Shiba Inu SHIB/USD tokens were removed from circulation on Thursday, applying further deflationary pressure on the popular dog-themed cryptocurrency.

What Happened: Kaal Dhairya, a key figure in the ecosystem, took to X to announce the massive burning event to celebrate upgrades made to ShibTorch, Shiba Inu’s community-driven burn portal.

“To celebrate the progress team is making the deployer has burnt pending 1B SHIB, enjoy,” Dhairya said.

Coin burning involves purposely sending a cryptocurrency to an unusable wallet address to remove it from circulation. This is done to generate scarcity and gradually boost the market value of the token in the long term.

Due to the massive incineration, the burn rate shot up to 43325.59% in the past 24 hours, according to Shiba Inu’s official burn tracker. As of this writing, nearly 410.744 trillion SHIB tokens have gone up in smoke.

ShibTorch was launched in August last year on Shibarium, Shiba Inu’s Layer-2 blockchain, allowing users to actively participate in burning tokens. Note that a portion of transaction fees paid on Shibarium are set aside and burned.

See Also: Elon Musk’s Tesla Records $600 Million In Paper Gains On Bitcoin In Q4 Thanks To New Accounting Rule

Why It Matters: The mega-burning event comes on the heels of a big tease by Shytoshi Kusama, Shiba Inu’s lead ambassador. Earlier this week, they hinted at the “biggest announcement” ever related to the blockchain ecosystem.

Kusama continued to pique the interest of the community, announcing that an “extremely powerful partnership” was the works.

Meanwhile, SHIB’s daily active addresses rose by 1.15% in the last 24 hours, although large transactions involving whales dipped significantly, according to data from IntoTheBlock.

Price Action: At the time of writing, SHIB was exchanging hands at $0.00001859, up 0.41% in the last 24 hours, according to data from Benzinga Pro.

Image via Shutterstock

Read Next: 

• Former Senator Bob Menendez Who Said ‘Bitcoin Will Open Doors Of Corruption In El Salvador’ Gets 11-Year Jail Term For Accepting Bribes