Meme-teoric: 'Shiba inu' tokens gain 87,000,000% in a year

Dogecoin, watch out! Meme-based cryptocurrency shiba inu soared more than 45 per cent over the last 24 hours, muscling its way into the top-10 largest digital tokens by market capitalisation. Shiba inu is a spinoff of dogecoin, itself born as a satire of a cryptocurrency frenzy in 2013, and has barely any practical use.

Yet, its price has rocketed around 190 per cent in the last seven days, according to CoinMarketCap, leapfrogging dogecoin to become the 8th most valuable cryptocurrency with a total value of $44 billion.

Bitcoin, the biggest cryptocurrency with a market cap of $1.2 trillion, was up a little over 4 per cent on Thursday, but below the record high it hit last week. Known as “shib” to a growing army of retail investors, Shiba inu coins are worth fraction of a cent. Its website calls it “a decentralised meme token that has evolved into a vibrant ecosystem”.

Driving the gains, analysts said, is the promise of quick gains — also a factor behind the broader explosion of cryptocurrencies during the Covid-19 pandemic. Others said crypto specialist market makers were trading large volumes of the token.

“People are always looking for ‘the next Bitcoin’,” said Mati Greenspan, founder of crypto analysis and advisory firm Quantum Economics. “Get rich quick is a very powerful motivator.”

Apart from shiba inu and dollar-pegged stablecoins, seven of the top-10 cryptocurrencies were trading lower on Thursday morning. The global crypto market cap declined 4 per cent, slipping below the $2.5-trillion-mark, as compared to the previous day. However, the total crypto market soared about 65 per cent to $187.64 billion.