Elon Musk has once again moved the crypto market in a big way as he tweeted on Friday that he would name his Shiba Inu — the dog breed that the joke meme coin is named after — “Floki” and set off a SHIB price rally.
Fast facts:
- Shiba Inu’s price went to US$0.00000827 in a matter of hours following Musk’s tweet, though quickly fell back again. But SHIB prices continued to track upwards over the weekend and was trading at US$0.00000776 at publishing time.
- Dogecoin seemed initially unaffected by the news, but rose roughly 10% on Monday morning, from US$0.2434 to US$0.2655. It’s currently trading at US$0.2567 at press time.
- Shiba Inu’s are at the center of the “memecoin” phenomenon, being the basis for the once popular “Doge” memes of the early 2010s, which Dogecoin is based on. Dogecoin, which started as a joke on Bitcoin in 2013, itself spawned SHIB as its own joke-of-a-joke spin off when its popularity soared earlier this year. At one point last month, DOGE was the fourth-largest coin by market cap. Dogecoin is still the sixth most popular cryptocurrency in the world as of this publishing time.