Elon Musk is one of the few people on this planet that can influence the price of a cryptocurrency with a single tweet. The billionaire owner of Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter has done so many times in the past, whether he intended it or not. Most notably, the price of the Dogecoin cryptocurrency has seen big price movements following Elon Musk tweets.
This has led crypto investors to speculate if Elon Musk is also potentially involved with other cryptocurrencies. Let’s take a look if there’s any connection between Elon Musk and Shiba Inu, a cryptocurrency that’s similar to Dogecoin in many ways. Does Elon Musk hold SHIB and does he have any interest in the project? Let’s find out.
What is Shiba Inu?
Shiba Inu is a meme coin heavily inspired by Dogecoin. Like its popular rival, the Shiba Inu cryptocurrency also uses the popular Shiba Inu dog breed in its branding. Unlike Dogecoin, which has its own blockchain, Shiba Inu is issued as an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain.
The Shiba Inu (SHIB) coin was created in August 2020 by an anonymous person known as “Ryoshi”’. Another important person in the Shiba Inu project is “Shytoshi Kusama”, who is leading the project’s development.
Prior to Shiba Inu’s launch, a good number of meme coins were already in circulation, including Dogecoin. Meme coins are cryptocurrencies inspired by internet memes and jokes. In most cases, meme coins have a very large circulating supply, which results in a low price per coin (although their market caps can be substantial).
Though Shiba Inu shares similarities with other meme coins, it is unique in many ways. Unlike some meme coins that don’t offer much beyond branding, the Shiba Inu project has been developing several products. For example, Shiba Inu has a decentralized exchange (DEX) called ShibaSwap, which started off as a fork of SushiSwap. Shiba also has several other offerings, including NFTs.
The Shiba Inu team has several plans to make the SHIB ecosystem more robust and valuable. In a bid to expand the utility of SHIB tokens, the team introduced a metaverse. In addition, the Shibarium layer-2 scaling network is being built to house the entire ecosystem. These developments could be what it takes for Shiba Inu to become the next cryptocurrency to explode.
Shiba Inu’s explosive rally in 2021
Shiba Inu was one of the biggest winners during the 2021 crypto bull market. The meme coin recorded incredible price growth between April and December 2021. As of 12th April 2021, the coin was worth $0.000000105208 but by 12th May 2021, it had reached $0.00003078.
After its first bullish run, Shiba Inu’s price dropped and fluctuated throughout June, July and August. It started the upward trend again towards the end of September. On October 28, 2021, the coin reached its all-time high value of $ 0.00008819.
Shiba Inu’s meteoric market rally in 2021 made people realize that meme coins could be a lot more valuable than they are given credit for. Though the current price is about 89.47% lower than the all-time high price, SHIB still maintains a market cap of $4.85 billion at the time of writing.
It is important to state here that Shiba Inu’s 2021 explosive rally happened when the crypto market was very well across the board. Dogecoin also performed wonderfully at the time, but Shiba was somewhere at the top, among the highest gainers. The growth triggered the entrance of similarly-themed meme coins into the crypto space. Many traders and investors are even eager to discover the next Shiba Inu coin.
Does Elon Musk own Shiba Inu Coin?
Elon Musk has a soft spot for Dogecoin, which has led users to speculate if he is also a fan of Shiba Inu. However, there is currently no evidence to suggest that Elon Musk owns any SHIB tokens.
It is no secret that Elon Musk holds cryptocurrencies. At some point, his company, Tesla, was receiving payments in Bitcoin. An outspoken crypto enthusiast, Elon Musk has revealed severally that he holds Bitcoin, Dogecoin and Ethereum.
Regardless, it appears that Shiba Inu is not part of Elon Musk’s crypto portfolio. In October 2021, Musk was asked how many SHIB tokens he was holding. The billionaire entrepreneur simply responded by saying: “None”.
None
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 24, 2021
What Is Elon Musk’s involvement with Shiba Inu?
Elon Musk does not appear to be involved with the Shiba Inu project in any way. According to him, the only cryptocurrencies he owns are BTC, ETH and DOGE, and he has explicitly stated in the past that he does not own any SHIB tokens.
Of course, this is unlikely to quell speculation about possible links between Shiba Inu and Elon Musk. Rumors and speculation play an essential role in the crypto markets, especially when it comes to meme coins such as SHIB.
Wrapping up
Elon Musk’s public support for Dogecoin was a big factor in DOGE’s 2021 bullish rally. Dogecoin’s success also boosted other meme coins like Shiba Inu, so we could say that Elon Musk also had an impact on the SHIB markets in a roundabout way. However, we should be very clear that there’s currently no evidence that Elon Musk holds SHIB or is involved with the Shiba Inu project in any way.
So, if you’re wondering what needs to happen to take the price of Shiba Inu to $1, you probably shouldn’t be relying on an endorsement from Elon Musk to launch SHIB to the moon. A lot will depend on whether the team behind the project can continue hitting their milestones, which would make SHIB a more attractive cryptocurrency even without the influence of Elon Musk and other big-time crypto enthusiasts.
