Meme coins burst onto the scene in early 2021 and helped kickstart the bull market after Dogecoin (DOGE) rallied above $0.01 to new highs while being shilled by the likes of Elon Musk and Mark Cuban.
Shortly afterwards, Dogecoin clones and other canine-themed tokens popped up to catch the wave of bullish momentum and Shiba Inu (SHIB) was one of the projects that quickly caught wind and sailed higher.
Now that Bitcoin (BTC) has hit a new all-time high again, it appears that the meme tokens are ready to continue their run and this time they’re not waiting for the big-name influencers to get on board. In the last two weeks, SHIB has rocketed to new highs and befuddled cryptocurrency traders are scratching their heads as to the exact cause.
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that since trading at a low of $0.0000069 on Oct. 1, the price of SHIB has scorched 914% higher to a new record high at $0.0000699 on Oct. 27 as its 24-hour trading volume surged 137% to $24.67 billion.
Three reasons for the surging price and trading volume for Shiba Inu include its listing on multiple exchanges, the launch of its own line of Shiboshi nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and SHIB’s surging open interest on derivative exchanges.
Exchange listings increase access to SHIB
One of the biggest factors helping to lift the price of SHIB over the past month has been the increase in user access to the token, thanks to its listing on multiple cryptocurrency exchanges.
Some of the new listings for SHIB and the protocol’s LEASH token include the BitKan exchange, AOFEX, StealthEx and CoinFlex. Change Now also launched a “flip DOGE for SHIB campaign” to celebrate its listing of LEASH.
The ecosystem also got a bump in momentum after it was announced that a partnership with the crypto payment provider NOWPayments made it so that SHIB and LEASH can be accepted as a form of payment, used for donations and is available to issue salaries in crypto via the mass payment feature.
As an added deflationary feature, 3% of the profit NOWPayments receives from all SHIB transactions will be burned.
Shiboshi NFTs
A second reason for the building strength of Shiba Inu was the launch of its own line of NFTs known as Shiboshi’s.
NFTs continue to be one of the most popular sectors of the cryptocurrency ecosystem and are a reliable way for projects to increase their community interaction and support.
The Shiboshi drop included 10,000 individual NFTs and community members had 24 hours to purchase them using the protocol’s LEASH token.
All Shiboshi’s have now been minted and listed on the OpenSea NFT marketplace.
Surging open interest
A third reason for the rising strength of SHIB has been the surge in futures open interest (OI) on multiple exchanges including OKEx, FTX and Huobi.
As seen in the chart above, the OI for SHIB has surged from $15.7 million on Oct. 3 to a record $178.95 million on Oct. 27 as the price of SHIB spiked to a new all-time high.
According to markets analyst and Cointelegraph contributor Marcel Pechman, “the open interest seems to be following the price pump instead of an actual increase.”
What is interesting to note is that while it’s “usually expected during bull runs for sellers to have their position liquidated,” that did not happen in this recent run-up which means traders either “doubled the short by adding more margin,” which Pechman sees as unlikely, or “those are market makers who are fully hedged and don’t care about the price.”
Pechman said,
“Longs are in huge profit, so it’s easier for them to keep buying spot and pushing the price up. There seem to be no ‘real’ short-sellers, only market makers. Had there been huge liquidations, the open interest would have gone down.”
VORTECS™ data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro began to detect a bullish outlook for SHIB on Oct. 24, prior to the recent price rise.
The VORTECS™ Score, exclusive to Cointelegraph, is an algorithmic comparison of historical and current market conditions derived from a combination of data points including market sentiment, trading volume, recent price movements and Twitter activity.
As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS™ Score for SHIB began to pick up on Oct. 23 and climbed into the dark green zone for a high of 89 on Oct. 24, around seven hours before the price increased 119% over the next three days.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.
By Jordan Finneseth