Shiba Inu’s circulation market capitalization increased to $11.08 billion earlier this week and is now over $10 billion, placing it in the top-20 by market capitalization for the first time. As a consequence, the Dogecoin-inspired meme cryptocurrency outperformed prominent blockchain projects like Stellar, Polygon, and Tron in terms of market capitalization.
A tweet from Elon Musk drove up the value of Shiba Inu, increasing its market capitalization. On October 4, the Tesla CEO shared a photo of his Shiba Inu dog with the caption “Floki Frunkpuppy.” SHIB’s share price increased by over 40% within an hour after the tweet. Cryptocurrency investors often read much too much into Musk’s comments. For instance, earlier in 2021, the wealthy entrepreneur played an important role in driving the price of Dogecoin (DOGE) up through Twitter.
After starting the fourth quarter of 2021 at $0.00000725, the SHIB price increased by almost 400% in one week. As a result, on October 7, the token hit a five-month high, rising to $0.00003528. Despite this, SHIB saw a 40% price fall on the same day that some traders chose to dump their spot holdings for temporary gains.