If you bought $1,000 of this in March, you'd have $3.5 million today
(Kitco News) - The SHIBA INU coin made headlinesin recent weeks, having climbed 780% in the last month alone.
The coin, created by an individualor group known as Ryoshi, was intended to be a satire on the popular Dogecoin,itself another joke, or "meme coin".
The price performance in the lastyear, however, was no joke. If one had invested $1,000 on March 1, that accountwould be up to $3.5 million today on November 1.
Social media has been abuzz withreports of one particular crypto address that had supposedly bought $8,000worth of SHIBA INU last year. This address is now worth more than $5 billion.
SHIBA investors, colloquiallyknown as the "SHIBA army", have now pushed the coin up to becoming the 9thlargest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, now at close to $39 billion,according to data from Coinmarketcap.com, ahead of its predecessor, Dogecoin.
Earlier last week, the surge inSHIBA INU's trading volume crashed Coinbase, one of the crypto largestexchanges in the U.S.
SHIBA'S recent surge come as otheraltcoins rallied as well. Ethereum, for example, hit a new all-time high lastFriday.
Other newtrending coins include Squid Game coin, based on the popular Netflix series"Squid Game."
The coin climbedmore than 75,000% last week before crashing back down this week as theanonymous creators behind the project "pulled the rug" on the project; afterclimbing to a high of $2,861 it crashed back down to $0 around 5:40 am ET.
The Squid Gamecoin is now hailed as a scam after it was evident that investors could not sellafter buying in. The scammers behind the coin supposedly made off with $2.1million of investor funds.
Massive ralliesand hype surrounding altcoins highlight the power of social media, said BenSamaroo, CEO of WonderFi.
In an interviewwith David Lin, anchor for Kitco News, Samaroo said that "the lesson fromthat...shows how much the social media universe plays into finance now. We see incryptocurrencies with coins like this and we've seen it with GameStop andRobinhood. It just solidifies that finance has changed and it is very socialnow, and that is who holds the power, it is the crowd that holds the power."
By David LinFor Kitco News
Follow @davidlin_TV
dlin@kitco.comwww.kitco.com