With this spectacular rally, Shiba Inu has scaled a lifetime peak of $0.00008. Its market cap is now hovering around the $50 billion mark, which makes it the seventh largest cryptocurrency on the basis of market capitalization.
Sharat Chandra, a blockchain and emerging tech evangelist, said the recent rally in the “Dogecoin killer” has been surreal and it has raced past other altcoins like Uniswap, Luna, Polkadot and XRP.
Shiba Inu has dethroned Elon Musk’s favourite Dogecoin to become the most valued meme token. Dogecoin plunged over 10 per cent, falling to 11th spot in the crypto ladder.
Shiba Inu, for the first time, has a higher market cap than Dogecoin now. It is now more valued than several Indian bluechip stocks like Wipro, HCL Tech, Avenue Supermarts, Asian Paints, Bajaj Finserv and L&T.
Vikram Subburaj, Co-founder and CEO of Giottus Cryptocurrency Exchange, said the rally has been fuelled by a strong urge amongst its fanbase and a petition to list Shiba Inu on the Robinhood platform in the US.
The cryptocurrency has soared more than 200 per cent in the last seven days. It has rallied more than 1,200 per cent in just the last three months.
According to data from WhaleStats, which tracks activities of the 1,000 largest Ether wallets, an anonymous crypto whale purchased 276.6 billion Shiba Inu tokens for about $11.5 million, which sparked the rally further.
“While no one can explain the rationale behind this parabolic rise of Shiba Inu,” Chandra said. “The rally isn’t sustainable and a fall is imminent. It’s hard to put a timeline to it.”
Since its listing on Coinbase on January 30, 2021, it has soared 7,99,900 per cent in merely nine months. Shiba Inu has turned an investment of Rs 1,000 into Rs 80 lakh during the period under review.
“Given many traders have made good returns, a sell-off usually gets triggered after such rallies,” warned Subburaj. “Also, Dogecoin fans will likely react soon and we may see a competition between fanbases to outdo each other.”
Analysts say investors should understand that memecoins do not have any intrinsic value and only grow because of the network effect of a strong community and fan base. These are not viable assets to hold and grow wealth over time.
Subburaj believes that there is more growth potential in these tokens, but is unlikely to repeat this feat in near future. “Timing is key with such cryptos given their movements can’t be predicted,” he added.
Shiba Inu was recently snubbed by the Tesla boss Elon Musk when he revealed that he does not own any Shiba Inu tokens and is holding Dogecoin, other than Bitcoin and Ethereum.
