The cold, crypto winter may finally be over for at least one dog-themed coin.
The price of Shiba Inu coin, which trades as $SHIB, is up 25% in the past 24 hours, helping it overtake Avalanche to become the world’s 12th most valuable coin with a $9 billion market cap. The Shiba Inu coin was also the top gainer on CoinMarketCap on Monday as of 2 p.m. in Hong Kong.
Shiba Inu’s sudden surge contrasts with a monthslong slump that mirrored the crypto market’s wider downturn. Even with the recent rise, the Shiba Inu coin is currently trading at $0.00001630 per coin, down 81% from its all-time high last October, and down 50% from this year’s peak in March.
Buzz about a new Shiba Inu–focused game is one reason for the coin’s rise. In recent days, the Shibarmy, self-described Shiba Inu devotees, have released early details about a new online game they are developing called Shiba Eternity. Shytoshi Kusama, the Shibarmy’s lead influencer, announced the new game earlier this month, and over the weekend, users in Vietnam posted videos of themselves playing the game after developers released it in the country for testing. Shiba Eternity appears to be an online card-based battle game, similar to blockchain games like Axie Infinity, but will be released on mobile before it is eventually on the blockchain, according to Kusama.
Some analysts argue that Shiba’s rise may be more related to crypto giant Ethereum, which provides the underlying blockchain for Shiba Inu and related coins like Bone and Leash. Ethereum developers recently announced that a long-awaited upgrade to its blockchain may come as soon as mid-September after passing a major technical test. Ethereum’s price was up 1.6% on Monday, while Dogecoin, another dog-related meme coin on Ethereum’s blockchain, surged 2.5% on Monday.
“Dogecoin and Shiba Inu have both broken out over the weekend, clear evidence that the retail investor is back,” Hayden Hughes, CEO of social-trading platform Alpha Impact, wrote in a note on Monday.
No matter the cause, the Shibarmy are pleased about the recent bull run.
At the same time, it’s important to not read too much into Shiba Inu’s rise. The Shiba Inu coin is a highly volatile, “meme coin” with little underlying value despite its large and enthusiastic group of followers. Some traders cashed out their savings at or near the top of the market and made millions. But others lost their life savings on Shiba and other meme coins after the crypto market began tanking earlier this year.
At least some people in the Shibarmy Reddit community warned traders that the coin remains a risky bet despite its current bull run.
“I don’t know what’s happening [right now], but it seems to be a pump and dump,” wrote one user on Reddit, saying that SHIB’s value could drop as quickly as it rose. “A day like today presents amazing selling opportunities for lots of people.”
Shiba Inu Price Recovers Almost 30%
As SHIB rises by 30%, holders are wondering what is causing this Shiba Inu price spike.
Well, there’s no particular SHIB-specific news behind this massive increase just yet. Previous spikes have come after the Robinhood listing or a Shiba Inu roadmap announcement, but this recovery is different.
Indeed, this could just be a natural recovery for SHIB alongside the more general cryptocurrency recovery. After its RSI level was oversold, perhaps holders followed Shytoshi Kusama’s tweets. Shytoshi said the bear market is the best time to buy SHIB.
However, it does seem that whales are responsible for at least starting this SHIB recovery, buying SHIB at a lower price and pushing it up further.
What makes this spike even more significant is that it is a deviation from most other cryptocurrencies SHIB is now the fourth-largest gainer of the past 24 hours. It is behind only TitanSwap, Waves and Celsius Network – which is still enthralled in its withdrawal controversy. Bitcoin and Ethereum are only up 4% in the last 24 hours.
With a trading volume of $1 billion in the last 24 hours, SHIB has reached a market cap of $6.2 billion. It is currently trading at $0.0001052.
Is now the time to buy SHIB?
During the past two weeks, Shiba Inu has added a couple hundred new wallets each day pushing the total number of SHIB wallets to 1,206,272, shows CoinMarketCap data when viewed on the one-month timeline.
While things have been quiet for SHIB lately, it’s possible that this steady increase in wallets reflects positive announcements for the meme token earlier this year such as its metaverse launch, success of its NFT collection, its listing on the Robinhood trading app, and chatter surrounding the rumored rollout of its own blockchain.
In spite of those developments, SHIB is deeply discounted from its peak price of $0.00008845 in October 2021 by more than 81%. Keeping in mind that this is not financial advice and investors should be aware of how much they can comfortably risk to invest, the Shiba Inu project has a lot of uncertainty — even for the crypto space. So, it’s probably best for average investors to let the price of this sleeping dog token continue to lie until there’s noteworthy news and clearer reasons to jump in.
