Shiba Inu price on the rise again – is Elon Musk to thank?
As cryptocurrency prices trend upwards, Shiba Inu (SHIB) has recorded gains of over 140% in the past week.
- The cryptocurrency market as a whole has rebounded from a bearish September, with popular cryptocurrencies Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple and Solana all posting 20% gains over the last 7 days.
- Since Dogecoin exploded in early 2021 to be valued at over 75 cents, new "meme" coins focussed on the popular Shiba Inu dog have been regularly minted.
- Speculation surrounds Shiba Inu being listed on investment platform Robinhood in the coming weeks.
The enigma of cryptocurrency
It is a strange market that reacts so forcefully to the words of one individual, yet that is the relationship that Elon Musk and cryptocurrency share.
In May, Musk managed to single-handedly crash the price of Bitcoin by tweeting that Tesla would no longer accept Bitcoin as a form of payment, due to growing environmental concerns. The result of this tweet was an immediate 15.6% plunge.
However, Musk's presence also works in reverse. On 4 October, Musk posted an image to Twitter of a Shiba Inu dog basking inside a Tesla vehicle. The picture was accompanied by the rather ambiguous caption "Floki Frunkpuppy".
What seems to be a fairly innocuous tweet may have actually played a major role in the Shiba Inu cryptocurrency's 100% price rise so far in October.
The Robinhood rumours
Robinhood is one of the most popular platforms for buying and selling cryptocurrency, with the company reporting an active user base of 22.5 million in 2021. Given the high profile of the investment app and its large user base, the addition of new cryptocurrencies can result in their price rising.
Rumours are floating around that Robinhood plans to add Shiba Inu to its list of available assets in the coming months. This speculation is largely fuelled by Robinhood's new crypto wallet feature and continued reference to the coin in dealings with the public.
A petition imploring Robinhood to start accepting the purchase and sale of Shiba Inu coins was created earlier in the year. It has since exploded over the past 24 hours, acquiring over 200,000 signatures.
Coin development
Dogecoin started off as a "joke" coin, and Shiba Inu was minted as a spin-off of Dogecoin. In that sense, it's a joke of a joke.
In spite of its origins as a meme, the Shiba Inu development team plan to legitimise the currency and add a number of features.
The team has been working on a decentralised exchanged (DEX), ShibaSwap, that allows coin holders to use their Shiba for a number of purposes. This includes staking, providing liquidity and swapping SHIBA coins with a huge range of altcoins.
The developers are also jumping on the growing NFT bandwagon, with a platform for buying, selling and trading 10,000 unique NFTs known as "Shiboshis" under construction.
Interested in cryptocurrency? Learn more about the basics with our beginner's guide to Bitcoin, dive deeper by learning about Ethereum and see what blockchain can do with our simple guide to DeFi.
Disclosure: The author owns a range of cryptocurrencies at the time of writing
