Could Robinhood add Shiba Inu to its service portfolio? It better shouldn’t

Key Takeaways:

• Shiba Inu gained 400% in the first week of Oct.
• Several other meme coins also gained, riding on social media frenzy and rumors.
• Meanwhile, Shiba fans are requesting Robinhood for a Shiba listing.

NEW DELHI (CoinChapter.com) — Meme-inspired cryptocurrencies, or Meme coins, have recently been all over the news. Of these, Shiba Inu (SHIB) has dominated nearly all the headlines with a 400% increase low($0.000007) to high($0.000035) in the first seven days of Oct.

The parabolic, or rather, exponential rally brought Shiba Inu very near its previous ATH ($0.00004), propelling the memecoin in the list of top 15 cryptocurrencies by market cap. After that, however, SHIB pulled back and is currently the 20th crypto by market cap.

Interestingly, it wasn’t only SHIB that took a rocket ride upwards on the charts. Once Shiba’s rally started, other memecoins (mainly Dog coins!) also took to the skies. Notable among them are Husky (430.5%), Safemoon Inu (346.5%), CateCoin (341%), and LabraCoin (248.8%).

The recent surge helped the ongoing demand for a Shiba listing on major cryptocurrency exchanges. Shiba fans went ahead and started a petition on change.org, urging Robinhood crypto trading app to list SHIB on its platform. The rumor mill went active as well, reporting “inside sources” that Robinhood was considering the listing.

Also Read: MATIC jumps 12% to a 3-week high of $1.42; strong price corrections ahead?

While Robinhood has listed Shiba’s rival Dogecoin, a SHIB listing does not seem likely. Although Shiba supporters feel that the meme token has ‘genuine potential,’ experts believe that the Shiba’s (and other canine-themed coins’) rally was mostly because of retail investors’ fear of missing out (FOMO).

What Is Shiba Inu?

Shiba Inu is a Japanese dog breed, but the Shiba Inu coin is a cryptocurrency spinoff of Dogecoin. Shiba’s White Paper, candidly named Woof Paper, defines SHIB as an ‘experiment in decentralized spontaneous community building.‘

An anonymous individual named Ryoshi created Shiba Inu as an ERC-20 token. Shiba started with one quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) tokens, half of which the organization gave to Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin as a sign of good faith. Though, the Ethereum founder donated about $1 billion worth of SHIB and burnt the rest.

The Shiba Inu ecosystem consists of three digital coins- SHIB, LEASH, and BONE and a decentralized exchange called ShibaSwap. In addition, Shiba has introduced staking on its platform as well, where users can earn rewards. Recently, the Shiba Inu ecosystem also launched NFTs on its network.

What Propelled The Recent Price Boost

Shiba’s recent near-vertical rally began when Elon Musk tweeted a picture of his new Shiba Inu puppy. In June, he had tweeted his decision to buy a Shiba Inu puppy. Tweets from the Tesla CEO have often impacted the already volatile crypto market, and this was no exception.

Floki Frunkpuppy pic.twitter.com/xAr8T0Jfdf

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 4, 2021

Investors should keep in mind that memecoins are an extremely volatile part of an already volatile crypto market. Cheap entry levels and strong community engagement are major attracting points for retail investors. As such, strong fundamentals hardly ever back memecoin price actions.

Also Read: Meme Token Shiba Inu(SHIB) gains 250% in less than a week to enter the Top 20 list.

An anonymous whale buying a mammoth 6.3 trillion SHIBs in two days might have been another reason for SHIBs recent rally. As prices surged, FOMO made traders panic buy without considering if the token had any intrinsic value itself.

$0.01 Per SHIB, Anyone?

For those who believe SHIB would soon reach $0.01, here is some food for thought. There are currently 394,796,000,000,000 SHIB in circulation. If the meme token’s price reached $0.01, SHIB would have a market cap of roughly $4 trillion.

The entire crypto market currently has a market cap of $2.33 trillion, including memecoins, stablecoins, and every other crypto coin. Simply put, Shiba would have to burn almost 99% of its current circulating supply to create the conditions needed for its price to reach the fabled $0.01 price mark.

Or, the ShibArmy would need to shell out some serious dough, boosting the overall crypto market cap and the prices of its rival memecoins in the process.

There is hardly any value in such meme coins. In the absence of any social media buzz, such coins find it difficult to survive.

Edul Patel, CEO of Mudrex

As such, the $0.01 price is still a distant dream. It is unlikely Robinhood should list the memecoin any time in the near or not so distant future. Furthermore, there is no use case or technical analysis that supports SHIB’s price action. Hence, crypto veterans advise investors to approach such tokens with caution lest they lose their hard-earned money.

Memecoins are dependent on social media for their fundamentals. So, traders investing in memecoins like Shiba Inu only to climb aboard the profits train might see their funds going to the dogs, pun unintended.