Shiba Inu jumps 50% to record, becomes 11th largest crypto coin

According to CoinGecko.com’s pricing, SHIB was up 50% in the 24 hours as of 7:45 a.m. New York time on Sunday, reaching a record high in that hour.

A petition on Change.org asking Robinhood to list SHIB on its platform has garnered nearly 300,000 signatures. The token has grown by over 40,500,000% in the past year.

“Memes have value and are an investable thesis in 2021,” Jonathan Cheesman, head of over-the-counter and institutional sales at crypto-derivatives exchange FTX, said in an email on Sunday. He said that “low dollar-priced tokens are attractive for retail” because investors can still buy more than 20,000 SHIB for $1.

The SHIB ecosystem has also dropped several non-fungible tokens, or NFTs – and a page for them says they are currently sold out, though promises other packs are coming soon.

Vijay Iyer, head of Asia-Pacific with crypto exchange Luno Pte, said in a message on Sunday, “It is difficult to speculate completely honestly on the real causes of price movements with such Memecoin.” But “there are some interesting communities built around them.”

Shiba Inu was founded in 2020 by an anonymous person named Ryoshi, and Coin’s website refers to it as “a decentralized meme token that has grown into a vibrant ecosystem.”

It seems to be built in the vein of Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency that was created as a joke in 2013, and also has a Shiba Inu theme. Dogecoin has since become a popular token used for payments by some sports teams, AMC theaters, and others.

According to CoinGecko, Dogecoin has also increased in the last 24 hours. Its market value is around $33 billion, while that of the Shiba Inu is around $21 billion. Both can be quite volatile.

“Yes, that’s right – there are two doggy meme coins in the top 10” excluding stablecoins in crypto, Cheesman said. “Don’t Do the Little Things Millennials Think Are Funny.”