The world’s largest cryptocurrencies all lost value on Wednesday, from Bitcoin and Ethereum to Ripple and Dogecoin.
But one currency continued to soar, defying expectations and making a name for itself as the next big meme coin.
Shiba Inu Coin gained another 30 per cent, meaning it has now surged by a ridiculous 60,000,000 per cent over the last year.
CoinDesk now has it valued at $0.000069, with a market cap of $38.5 billion – more than companies like HP and Nokia.
But what exactly is behind its success? Here’s what you need to know.
What is Shiba Inu Coin?
On its website, Shiba Inu Coin calls itself “an experiment in decentralised spontaneous community building”.
It was launched in August 2020 and is listed on its own decentralised exchange called ShibaSwap.
According to Binance, the total supply of Shiba Tokens is one quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) and the current circulating supply is 100 per cent.
The Shiba Token website says 50 per cent of the total supply has been locked to Uniswap, a decentralised finance protocol that facilitates automated transactions between cryptocurrency tokens on the Ethereum blockchain.
The remaining 50 per cent was burned to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.
“Everyone has to buy on the open market, ensuring a fair and complete distribution where devs don’t own team tokens they can dump on the community,” the website states.
However, according to Binance, “the top no 1, no 2 and no 5 wallets hold 50.5 per cent, 7 per cent and 3 per cent of total supply respectively”.
The coin’s mascot is the shiba inu dog, the same breed that represents Dogecoin. It has also nicknamed itself the “Dogecoin Killer”.
Why is Shiba Inu rising?
Some investors find coins like Shiba Inu attractive, as they offer the opportunity for quick gains. However, you can also lose all your money in little more than an instant.
Jonathan Cheesman, head of institutional sales at crypto-derivatives exchange FTX, told Bloomburg of Shiba Inu Coin’s rise: “Memes have value and have been an investible thesis in 2021. Lower dollar-price tokens are attractive to retail.”
The market has also been buoyed by rumours it may soon be added to the popular trading platform Robinhood.
More than 300,000 people have signed a Change.org petition calling for its addition, and while Robinhood is yet to respond, its CEO Vladimir Tenev said earlier this week that the platform will “carefully evaluate whether we can add new coins in a way that’s safe for customers and in line with regulatory requirements”.
He added: “We feel very, very good about the coins that we’re currently listing on our platform. And for any new coins that we add, we want to feel equally, if not more good.”
It does not take much to move Shiba Inu’s market – earlier this month its price shot up purely because Elon Musk tweeted a picture of his puppy. Musk has revealed that he does not own any Shiba Inu Coin himself, but does have Bitcoin, Ethereum and Dogecoin.
Should I invest in Shiba Inu?
People invest at their own risk and cryptocurrencies are not regulated by British financial authorities.
All crypto investments are risky, but meme coins like Shiba Inu are particularly volatile, and you should be prepared to lose everything you invest.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) warned in January: “Investing in cryptoassets, or investments and lending linked to them, generally involves taking very high risks with investors’ money.
“If consumers invest in these types of product, they should be prepared to lose all their money.”
Susannah Streeter, senior investment and markets analyst, Hargreaves Lansdown previously explained the risks to i.
She said: “On top of being extremely volatile, most cryptocurrencies are unregulated, which not only adds another layer of uncertainty but also means that investors have little or no protection against fraud.”