SHIB Token Goes Green and Holders Get Profitable Amidst Bitcoin-driven Market Momentum

On Tuesday, Bitcoin surged above $28,000 in the largest short squeeze of this month and is now nearing $29k. With 24-hour gains of 8%, BTC/USD went as high as $28,995 on Wednesday as trading volume jumped by 146% to $26.37 billion.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $28,960, up over 74% in 2023 so far, according to CoinGecko. “Currently, all eyes are on the $30k mark. Relatively few holders historically acquired at these prices, which means less potential resistance,” noted IntoTheBlock.

Ether has also risen but only by 5%, and its year-to-date (YTD) gains are at just 51%, while the total crypto market cap reached $1.178 trillion following a 5.9% surge.

With this, Bitcoin dominance, which is the measure of how much BTC makes up of the total crypto market cap, has breached the 50% mark. The latest cryptocurrency, with a market cap of over $562 billion, has been rising in dominance since Nov. 2022 following the FTX collapse and is now amidst the ongoing mounting regulatory scrutiny of crypto assets in the United States.

MicroStrategy co-founder and Bitcoin bull Michael Saylor believe that Bitcoin’s market dominance will top 80% in the coming years as increasing regulatory pressure from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) causes stablecoins and the majority of other crypto assets to “go away.”

Saylor then blamed the lack of any “mega institutional money” entering the crypto space on the “confusion and anxiety” brought by thousands of other cryptocurrencies that have positioned themselves as alternatives to the crypto king.

“Bitcoin is the universally, globally-acknowledged digital commodity in this industry,” Saylor added.

The latest pump in BTC price has been primarily due to asset manager giant BlackRock which has $9 trillion in assets under management (AUM), filing for a spot Bitcoin ETF. But this isn’t all.

Charles Schwab (SCHW), Citadel Securities, and Fidelity Digital Assets-backed crypto exchange EDX Markets started offering trading with BTC and ETH this week. Banking giant Deutsche Bank also announced on Tuesday that it had applied for a digital asset custody license in Germany.

There are even rumors that the world’s third-largest asset manager with $4.24 trillion in AUM Fidelity may also be considering either filing an application for the Bitcoin spot ETF or buying out Grayscale itself.

Meanwhile, investment management company Invesco (IVZ), which has $1.4 trillion under management, reapplied for a spot Bitcoin ETF. Elsewhere, Grayscale, which has sued the SEC over its rejected bitcoin spot ETF, expects a decision in the case by September.

All these developments sent the prices higher, costing traders who were positioned for prices to drop lost some $36.6 million in liquidations over the past 24 hours, the largest amount of short liquidations since May 28, according to data provided by CoinGlass.

Interestingly, these large financial services institutions announced major crypto initiatives amidst the U.S. regulator’s crackdown on crypto platforms.

Meme Coin: SHIB Price Performance

As Bitcoin price jumped to a six-week high and sentiment in the crypto market improved after interest from major players from the traditional financial sector, altcoins are also experiencing the greens as well.

The likes of Flow (25%), Bitcoin Cash (21.2%), Stacks (21%), Conflux (20.6%), and Optimism (15.5%) led the gains among the top 100 crypto assets in the past 24 hours.

Meme coins also went green, with the likes of WSB (30%), LADYS (26%), and PEPE (14%) surging the highest. The total market cap of meme coins jumped 3% to surpass $14.76 billion.

Among the top meme coins, SHIB also managed to record gains of 2.4% in the past 24 hours against USD to now trade at $0.00000733, but it is still in the red by 5.4% and 2.5% against BTC and ETH, respectively, during this period.

With a market cap of $4.36 billion, SHIB is the 17th largest cryptocurrency which registered $105.6 million in trading volume, representing an increase of 13.60% from a day ago.

Much like the broad crypto market, SHIB started 2023 on a positive note. The price of SHIB started the year at $0.00000810, and by the first week of Feb., it had reached $0.00001473. The next month, the price dropped $0.00001013, and after a brief reprieve to $0.00001161, it then continued on a downtrend for the next two months.

On June 10th, in tandem with the majority of crypto assets, SHIB’s price plummeted to $0.00000591. Since then, it has surged 24.2% in value but is down 13% this month. So, while up by 9% in the past week, SHIB is down by 8.88% YTD and 10.7% in the past year.

Additionally, SHIB has lost 91.4% of its value since hitting its all-time high (ATH) at $0.00008616 on Oct 28, 2021. The meme coin, however, is still up a whopping 13,136,075% from its all-time low of $0.000000000056366 in late Nov. 2020.

According to IntoTheBlock's “In/Out of the Money” (IOM) indicator, approximately four trillion SHIB tokens are floating at the $0.000007 price level. The indicator identifies the average cost at which tokens were acquired and then compares it with the current price. If the current price is greater than the average cost, the address is considered to be “in the money,” and if the current price is below the average cost, the address is “out of the money.”

The majority of SHIB holders are in losses, with more than 80% of all addresses with some balance of SHIB appearing to be underwater. With SHIB token holders currently trading at a loss, the next price threshold of $0.00008 won’t be smooth sailing for SHIB and would require a considerable inflow of buying power to overcome this price level.

The Market Value to Realized Value (MVRV) ratio, which is seeing some incline, also remains below the neutral line, suggesting losses across the network.

Still, the recent uptrend in its price, which saw it break through the crucial resistance level at $0.000007, has over a trillion SHIB tokens regaining their initial value. About 18.58 trillion SHIB tokens moved into profitable territory with the surge in price, accounting for a substantial 40.9% of all “profitable” Shiba Inu tokens in circulation.

The price action and trading volume have further SHIB climbing the ranks in terms of social and market activity. According to blockchain intelligence firm LunarCrush, SHIB is actually among the top positions on crypto social and market activity out of the top 4,481 coins tracked by the platform.

The last spike in SHIB’s price has the token rising to its highest levels since the dump on the second weekend in June when not only altcoins but also majors were under intense selling pressure due to SEC suing crypto giants for trading in unregistered securities.

With this surge in price, Shiba Inu’s burn rate has also increased, with Shibburn, a Twitter handle that tracks the burn rate, reporting that the burn rate soared 730% over the past 24 hours.

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Shiba Inu Ecosystem

SHIB was one of the most volatile crypto assets in 2021 as around the month of May, SHIB’s price rose from $0.00000172 to $0.00003532 only to quickly plunge to $0.00000793.

Interestingly, Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk isn't only responsible for dogecoin’s massive price surges but also for affecting SHIB. He even got a Shiba Inu puppy named Floki Frunkpuppy, triggering market movement.

SHIB is an ERC-20 meme token that is named after the Shiba Inu dog. It started as an Ethereum-based alternative to Dogecoin (DOGE), the popular, original meme coin, and has been referred to as the “doge-killer.”

Unlike the largest cryptocurrency Bitcoin, which has a limited supply and is designed to be scarce, SHIB has a total supply of one quadrillion. However, in May 2021, the pseudonymous creator of SHIB sent half of the total supply to an Ethereum co-founder, who burned 90% of his tokens right away, permanently removed them from circulation, and donated the remaining 10% to charity. Currently, there are 589,340,122,190,400 SHIB tokens circulating in the market.

While most meme coins don't have any utility, Shiba Inu is more than just a meme coin and has a community-driven rescue campaign for Shiba Inu dogs as well as an ecosystem of products and services.

The ecosystem supports projects such as a decentralized exchange (DEX) called ShibaSwap, an NFT art incubator, a layer 2 known as Shibarium, and a DAO-based governance system for the Shiba ecosystem.

Since its launch on March 11, Shibarium beta has processed over 20 million transactions, according to PuppyScan. There are presently 1,355,085 total blocks and 13,359,604 wallet addresses.

Meanwhile, Shibarium's blockchain explorer, Puppyscan, has been reset and updated, reported Shiba ecosystem official Lucie. The Shibarium testnet called “Puppynet” is currently hitting new milestones.

SHIB, however, isn’t the only token in the Shiba Inu ecosystem. There are two others, BONE, and LEASH. Users can deposit, swap, or stake these tokens into liquidity pools on the ShibaSwap to earn interest and rewards.

BONE is a governance token with a total supply of 250 million. Token holders can propose and vote on changes to the Shiba protocol through the Doggy DAO. BONE is also used to reward liquidity providers on its DEX. LEASH was originally a rebase token pegged to dogecoin but now, with a limited supply of just 107,647 coins, it acts as a store of value coin in the Shiba ecosystem.

While the Shiba Inu community continues to build, the market is eagerly watching to see if this positive momentum will continue and take the prices even higher. For now, it all depends on Bitcoin as it is leading the crypto market, and it remains to be seen if altcoins, especially SHIB, will be able to not only see further upside but even retain their gains.

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