The price of SHIB, the native token of the Shiba Inu ecosystem, has been staging a rally on the back of a bullish announcement from developers that has increased anticipation of a likely return to bullish trading.
Following the announcement of updates on the SHIB metaverse project yesterday, the dog-themed memecoin has risen around 1.65% in the last 24 hours to trade at around $0.000011, per data from crypto price aggregator CoinMarketCap.
In the update, the SHIB developer team unveiled the concept art for a new location in the SHIB metaverse. This comes after the August unveiling of two other virtual environments in the metaverse — WAGMI Temple and Rocket Pond hubs.
As the metaverse is to be a crucial part of the SHIB ecosystem and will also give more utility to SHIB, as well as BONE and LEASH — the two other SHIB ecosystem tokens — announcements around the project have often elicited price rallies.
SHIB rally also part of broader crypto market surge
While SHIB looks ready to take off, danger still lurks in the market for the token. For one, on-chain data noted by WhaleAlerts shows that a mysterious whale wallet sent over 1 trillion SHIB tokens — worth around $12.15 million at the time of writing — to Coinbase. Unloading these tokens on the market could cause massive sell-side pressure.
Meanwhile, the SHIB rally has been part of a broader crypto market rally. Bitcoin (BTC), the benchmark cryptocurrency — along with others of the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap — have been trading in the green on the day. SHIB's lingering correlation with BTC makes the possibility of the memecoin sustaining its current gains unlikely if the crypto market turns negative.
Alex Dovbnya
Denys Serhiichuk
Tomiwabold Olajide