With this year’s Diwali festival, which is celebrated throughout India, set to start on Thursday (November 4), it appears that interest in dog meme-based cryptocurrency Shiba Inu ($SHIB) is especially high there at the moment.
According to a report by Hindustan Times, “one of the most significant rituals of this five-day festival is the Lakshmi Puja, which this year falls on November 4. This is when “devotees pray to the Goddess of Wealth for blessing them with health, wealth, and prosperity.” It also the day on which “people visit their families, relatives, and friends on this day to offer them gifts and sweets.”
And a report by CoinDesk published yesterday (November 2) says that this “auspicious day is considered the best time to invest in financial assets and has scores of people purchasing gold and stocks each year.”
The CoinDesk report goes on to mention that currently Indians seem to be “flocking to meme cryptocurrency shiba inu (SHIB), whose current market capitalization of $39.13 billion is bigger than the market value of Indian fast-moving consumer goods giant ITC, auto sector heavyweight Maruti Suzuki and one of the country’s top lenders, Axis Bank.”
India-based crypto investor Keshav Aggarwal, who is the founder of Bitcoin Investor Community, told CoinDesk:
“SHIB is the cheapest and the most hyped (marketed) coin available on Indian exchanges.“
One of India’s most popular crypto exchanges is Binance-owned WazirX, where SHIB-INR is currently (as of 17:55 UTC on November 3) trading at rupee (₹) 0.005093 (or $0.00006421).
$SHIB investor Dharmesh Barot told CoinDesk:
“The motivation to buy SHIB is to earn good profit in a short time. Yes, it’s cheap money too, easy to bet on.“
And Rajat Lalwani told CoinDesk via Telegram:
“The major motivation is always the money for people. The price is relatively cheap than a lot of coins, and people feel if the zeros keep getting eaten, then they can make 10x, 100x or even 1,000x on their investment long term.“
WazirX co-founder Siddharth Menon, had this to say to CoinDesk about the reason for the huge interest in $SHIB in India:
“Cheap price has been the biggest factor, and to see $100 becoming $1,000 in no time is driving madness. We had seen this with DOGE in 2017, where memes became life-changing for some. I missed out on that hype back then too.“
And finally, if you are one of the more than one billion people celebrating this holiday, then Happy Diwali!
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.
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Featured Image by “confused_me” via Pixabay
