Shiba Inu's SHIB Rockets 26%, Leads Meme Coin Gains

Shiba Inu-themed tokens were the top gainers during early Asian trading hours on Monday, gaining as much as 26% in the past 24 hours, data from analytics tool CoinGecko showed.

The move came amid a broader recovery in the crypto market as bitcoin and ether regained the $42,000 and $3,000 price levels respectively. Gains in the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization ranged from a low of 1.6% for Terra’s LUNA to a high of 9.9% for XRP.

Meme coins led market moves outside of the top 10 cryptocurrencies. Shiba Inu’s SHIB tokens surged to $0.000029 during Asian trading hours from the $0.000022 level on Sunday evening, a surge of over 24%, while Dogecoin’s DOGE jumped to $0.169 from $0.145.

Price charts showed SHIB hit resistance at the $0.000029 level, causing a sell-off during the Asian morning hours that brought the price lower.

The price movement caused nearly $10 million in losses to liquidations for traders of SHIB-tracked futures products. In the past 24 hours, traders lost $4.31 million to Binance’s 1000SHIB futures product, which holds 1,000 SHIB per contract. Traders also lost $5.49 million in SHIB futures. Over 74% of SHIB futures were short, or betting against a price rally.

SHIB’s weekend surge came days after developers unveiled a tie-up with Welly’s, a fast-food chain selling burgers and fries. The partnership involves rebranding Welly’s stores to include Shiba Inu-themed products and imagery, and the issuance of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for customers, developers said. Community members can buy products using SHIB and participate in Welly’s expansion via Shiba Inu’s decentralized governance forum "Doggy DAO."

Elsewhere, the price of Floki Inu’s FLOKI – another Shiba Inu-themed token – rose 17% to $0.00004 during Asian trading hours, recovering some of its losses from last week after developers disabled its cross-chain bridge when they discovered an exploit. The bridge allowed users to transfer assets between the Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain networks. No FLOKI was affected in the attack, developers confirmed at the time.