Shiba inu coin price hits a new record as Robinhood petition gains popularity

By Diksha Madhok, CNN Business

Shiba inu coin soared to a new record on Wednesday, capping a surge of over 60,000,000% over the past year.

The parody cryptocurrency — which appears to be inspired by dogecoin, another meme cryptocurrency — is up almost 30% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. It has pared back some of its gains since hitting its all-time high early morning US time, but remains the 11th biggest digital currency by market capitalization.

The token, which was launched last year, has surged roughly 100% in the last seven days, and now has a a market value of about $26 billion.

Like dogecoin, shiba inu coin features the Shiba Inu dog as its mascot. Its meteoric rise has made some investors millionaires overnight.

The coin has also won a handful of celebrity backers, from former boy band stars to pro athletes.

Earlier this year, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin made headlines by donating $1 billion worth of shiba inu coin to a Covid-19 relief fund in India.

Its dramatic rise this week coincides with rising support for a Change.org petition urging trading platform Robinhood to list shiba inu coin on the site. The petition has garnered 334,500 signatures so far.

In 2018 , Robinhood started expanding its crypto offerings beyond bitcoin and ethereum to include currencies including litecoin and bitcoin cash.

This year, dogecoin’s record rise put so much pressure on the platform’s crypto trading systems, that it was briefly broken. It said this week that cryptocurrencies accounted for nearly 20% of its transaction-based revenues in the third quarter, or about $51 million. That’s an 860% increase from the same period last year.

A Robinhood spokesperson declined to comment on the petition.

But during an earnings call this week, CEO Vladimir Tenev said that his platform will “carefully evaluate whether we can add new coins in a way that’s safe for customers and in line with regulatory requirements.”

“We feel very, very good about the coins that we’re currently listing on our platform. And for any new coins that we add, we want to feel equally, if not more good,” he added.

Shiba inu coin also surged earlier this week, but lost some recent gains after Tesla CEO Elon Musk — who is a big fan of dogecoin — tweeted that he does not own any shiba inu coin. In a follow up tweet, he added that he has bought “Bitcoin, Ethereum & Doge. That’s it.” Musk’s tweets have frequently moved crypto markets.

Other popular virtual currencies have also seen explosive growth. Bitcoin, the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency, hit an all-time high of nearly $67,000 per coin last week, topping the previous record set in April.

Bitcoin prices have surged 50% this month, from just under $44,000 at the end of September. Bitcoin is currently trading at almost $60,000.

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