Shiba Token ($SHIB), the native token of meme-based Ethereum-powered 100% community-run crypto project Shiba Inu, has surged 50% in the past 24-hours to become the 11th most valueable cryptoasset (by market cap).

Here is how Coinbase described the dog meme-based cryptocurrency in a blog post on June 15 when it announced that SHIB would be listed on Coinbase Pro, its trading platform for experienced and professional traders:

“Shiba Inu (SHIB) is a token that aspires to be an Ethereum-based alternative to Dogecoin (DOGE), the popular memecoin. Unlike Bitcoin, which is designed to be scarce, SHIB is intentionally abundant — with a circulating supply of one quadrillion. The Shiba Inu Token ecosystem supports projects such as an NFT art incubator and the development of a decentralized exchange called Shibaswap.“

According to data by TradingView, on crypto exchange FTX, at 11:18 UTC on October 24, the $SHIB price reached $0.00004440 to set a new all-time high.

One-Day SHIB-USD Price Chart (FTX) by TradingView

Currently (as of 14:50 on October 24), SHIB-USD is trading around $.00004230, which means that it is up 50.21% in the past 24-hour period. What is even more impressive is that in the past one-month period, $SHIB has gone up 488.31% vs USD:

One-Month SHIB-USD Price Chart (FTX) by TradingView

With $SHIB’s powerful rally seemingly set to take the extremely popular meme-based cryptocurrency to the top 10 club, crypto analysts are struggling to understand what’s driving the $SHIB price higher.

For example, crypto influencer “Coin Bureau” (“@coinbureau” on Twitter), who has been bullish on Shiba Inu project over the past few months posted the following tweet earlier today:

In a video released on his YouTube channel “Coin Bureau“ on July 3, the show’s pseudonymous host told the channel’s over 1.14 million subscribers that “there might be more to this token that meets the eye.”

Here are some highlights of comments the crypto influencer made about SHIB:

  • Shiba Inu was created in August 2020 by pseudonymous programmer Ryoshi, who said in his first Medium post that this project was basically “an experiemnt in community governenance and decentralization.”
  • According to Ryoshi, the project got started after he had a discussion with an anonymous developer at Ethereum’s Devcon V conference (which took place in Japan) in 2019 and apparently this person created the Shiba Inu smart contract on Ethereum.
  • In February 2021, when there was huge interest in Dogecoin, Ryoshi wrote again about SHIB, saying that it “had caught fire.”
  • In April, the Shiba Inu community released version 1 of their white paper (or “WoofPaper v1”).
  • As the Shiba Inu website points out, SHIB is now more than just a meme token — it is “a decentralized meme token that evolved into a vibrant ecosystem.”
  • The majority of the focus of the Shiba Inu ecosystem is on decentralized finance (DeFi). The code for its decentralized exchange (DEX), which is called ShibaSwap, is currently being audited by CertiK.
  • Ryoshi is likely to be someone with “close connections” to important people in the Ethereum community and apparently owns zero SHIB tokens.
  • Unlike Dogecoin, Shiba Inu seems to have some seriously “prolific” developers working on it.

Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptoassets comes with a risk of financial loss.