Key takeaways
- Shiba Inu reached 11th spot and seems to be challenging Dogecoin.
- Elon Musk’s tweet once again responsible for pumping the memecoin.
- Despite the growth, SHIB has also received its fair share of criticism.
According to data from cryptocurrency market analytics website CoinGecko, the meme token Shiba Inu (SHIB) reached 11th position in the ranking of cryptocurrencies by market cap yesterday, having surpassed Luna briefly to sit one position below Dogecoin.
The surge in the dog-themed meme token that has been called the “DOGE killer” has market observers speculating that it is positioning to challenge Dogecoin, the current leader of the dog pack. However, there is still some distance between them as Dogecoin still has a higher market cap. The market cap of SHIB at the moment is around $14 billion. Dogecoin’s market capitalization stands at around $29 billion
SHIB, which was created last year as a joke based just like Dogecoin, has seen its value rise meteorically this year. Last week, it gained over 350% in value. However, it then experienced the largest retracement in its history, dropping around 40%. This week, it is trading at around $0.000028 having added another 31.3% in the last seven days, it is also currently sitting at the 12th spot.
Many market observers have pointed to Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX who is also a serial meme poster, as being responsible for the surge of SHIB last week. The billionaire shared a picture of his Shiba Inu breed puppy Floki on Twitter. This is not surprising as the billionaire’s previous Twitter activity has been responsible for pumping the price of meme coins. Recall that when Elon Musk started to talk about Dogecoin earlier this year, the price surged massively.
The Stumbling Block
Despite its massive growth, SHIB has still been the object of a lot of criticisms from skeptics. Michael Burry, an investor famed for being one of the people who foresaw the 2008 financial crisis and gained massively from it, has called the Shiba Inu token “pointless.” According to a Business Insider report, the “Big Short” investor in a now-deleted tweet criticized the meme coin supply cap of over 1 quadrillion as a compelling argument against the coin’s value ever reaching reasonable highs.
Meanwhile, in what seems to be a response to the criticism, Shiba Inu recently announced that it was working on solving the problems of its overabundant supply. The developers behind the cryptocurrency have partnered with NowPayments to burn a percentage of SHIB tokens with each transaction as they revealed in a tweet.
