The meme coin Shiba inu (SHIB) exploded in price in October and has already become one of the top 20 cryptoassets by market capitalization. The increase, which accelerated on October 4 with the help of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, occurred with unusually large trading volumes through Binance, Coinbase and Huobi.
At 9:11 UTC, SHIB was trading at USD 0.00002197, A whopping 68% increase over the past 24 hours. In the last 7 days, the token has increased by 215%, which makes it the best weekly performer among the top 100 cryptoassets by market capitalization.
In addition, the 24-hour trading volume exceeded USD 12bn, compared to Dogecoin (DOGE) USD 5bn or Ethereum (ETH) USD 20bn.
However, SHIB experienced an even stronger rally last May, which ended with a violent crash:
The recent price gains for the token, which is currently number 19 on Coingecko’s list of the most valuable cryptoassets, may have been helped by Tesla CEO and “dog father” Elon Musk, who took US TIME on Twitter late Sunday night to share a picture of a Shiba Inu dog.:
Musk’s tweet followed an earlier tweet in June that said “MY Shiba Inu will be called Floki” as well as one in September that said “Floki has arrived” along with a picture of a Shiba Inu puppy.
In addition, the price increase also follows the announcement by the Shiba Inu community in late September that a new batch of 10,000 randomly generated Shiba Inu-themed non-fungible tokens (NFTs) will be available for trading on the ShibaSwap Decentralized Exchange (DEX).
As so often with meme coins, no other major message drivers have emerged so far that could explain the price pump. However, the community seems more than happy with the current market moves, and members of the SHIBArmy subreddit say things like “Keep going baby. I HAVE TO quit my job!!” And “I want to retire!!!!!”
The SHIB token was developed in August 2020 by the pseudonymous developer ‘Ryoshi’ and originally advertised as a ‘dogecoin killer’ and can be traded both on the project’s own ShibaSwap DEX and on a number of major central exchanges.
Built as an Ethereum-based token, half of the created SHIB was assigned to the wallet of Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin. Vitalik then burned 40% of the total stock, while 10% was donated to a COVID-19 relief effort in India.
With a market capitalization of USD, Shiba inu is currently worth about a third of the original dog meme coin Dogecoin, which stands at USD and is ranked 8th on the list of the most valuable crypto assets.
Before the recent price hike, SHIB also rose by over 40% after Coinbase released the Meme coin on March 17.