Bitbns announces free trading for Shiba Inu and Dogecoin during Diwali

By Leandra Monteiro

In view of the global rally and the growing investor sentiments in regard to meme tokens such as Shiba Inu and Dogecoin, Bitbns – one of India’s leading cryptocurrency exchanges has introduced free trading (zero trading charges) in SHIB and DOGE for traders and investors on its platform.

As Bitbns offers the highest liquidity in SHIB trading in India, users can avail the best price each time one buys or sells the tokens on Bitbns. Owing to high liquidity, investors can seamlessly buy or sell tokens worth half a million dollars in less than 2% range.

Investors trading on Bitbns can deposit or withdraw their SHIB tokens seamlessly, a service not offered by any other exchange in the country. This has received traction from crypto enthusiasts, all across the country. Besides investors can deposit through their UPI app too, making the process transparent and seamless.

The exchange has also introduced additional benefits whereby investors trading in excess of INR 100,000 and depositing 10K INR can avail freebies such as a Shib t-shirt, whereas all users participating can avail airdrops worth 2.7 million INR on the platform. To scale up the excitement, the exchange has also introduced a contest whereby contests predicting the exact price pf SHIB can receive exciting rewards of up to 4000x the value of the token.

On the occasion, Gaurav Dahake, Founder & CEO, Bitbns said, “At Bitbns we closely assess risk management associated with less popular or newly launched coins, to deliberate unforeseen spikes and evade high volatility associated with them. SHIB is no longer is an unpopular crypto coin, infact Google search trends indicate that SHIB has even surpassed Flipkart during its recognized Big Diwali Sale. With Shiba Inu and Dogecoin entering the top list of global cryptocurrencies, we are extremely bullish of the potential of these tokens and want to encourage retail investors to build wealth with these cryptocurrencies.”

“Besides offering the highest liquidity, Bitbns is the only exchange in the country to offer deposits and withdrawal of Shiba Inu. With trading volumes pegged at about $600 million across platforms in India alone, the investor sentiments have been growing rapidly and we want investors to seize the opportunity and make the best of it,” he further added.

Shiba Inu (SHIB), a meme token, was developed with Dogecoin (DOGE) inspiration. With a dog as a symbol, it has inspired millions to trade in it. It has surpassed tokens like Uniswap, Luna, USD Coin, Polkadot and XRP and is now the 10th largest cryptocurrency in the world, right behind Dogecoin.

Diwali, the five-day Indian festival of lights, has arrived, with the most important occasion of “Lakshmi Pujan” – worship of the goddess of wealth and prosperity – falling on Nov. 4. The auspicious day is considered the best time to invest in financial assets and has scores of people purchasing gold and stocks each year.

This time, Indians also appear to be flocking to meme cryptocurrency shiba inu (SHIB), whose current market capitalization of $39.13 billion is bigger than the market value of Indian fast-moving consumer goods giant ITC, auto sector heavyweight Maruti Suzuki and one of the country’s top lenders Axis Bank. According to local observers, the lure of making big money on a relatively small investment is drawing investors from all walks of life to SHIB.

“The SHIB FOMO [fear-of-missing-out] is absolutely real,” said Keshav Aggarwal, a crypto investor and founder of Bitcoin Investor Group, a premium WhatsApp group for crypto traders, exchanges, and crypto project founders. “SHIB is the cheapest and the most hyped (marketed) coin available on Indian exchanges.”

At press time, SHIB was changing hands at rupee (₹) 0.005624 ($0.00007026) on Binance-owned Mumbai-based WazirX exchange. Meanwhile, its rival dogecoin was trading at ₹21 ($0.28) and bitcoin was priced at ₹4,871,529 ($65205).

According to International Monetary Fund estimates, India’s per capita income or the amount of money earned per person in inflation-adjusted terms during 2020-21 is ₹86,659,($1160), or 1.77% of bitcoin’s going price. So, it’s no surprise that SHIB, with its much cheaper valuation, is drawing strong demand in the festive season.

“The motivation to buy SHIB is to earn good profit in a short time,” Dharmesh Barot, a SHIB investor and a real estate professional, told Coindesk. “Yes, it’s cheap money too, easy to bet on.”

SHIB, an ERC-20 token created by an unknown person named Ryoshi in August 2020, has chalked up a near ten-fold rally in the past four weeks, outperforming bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies by a big margin. Last week, the cryptocurrency briefly replaced its rival dogecoin as the ninth largest digital asset. The team behind SHIB has also launched decentralized exchange ShibaSwap, which allows users to stake coins.

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According to Defi Llama, the total value locked in ShibaSwap has doubled to over $500 million in the past four weeks.

The sentiment is quite bullish in the retail crowd, as evidenced by the recent comments in Aggarwal’s WhatsApp group. “DOGE, SHIB ki behen, chacha, fufa koi nikla hai to batao, pura khaandan kharid lenge [let us know if SHIB, DOGE’s sister, uncle, have been launched, we will buy entire family],” one member jokingly said in Hindi, revealing his/her bullish bias on meme coins.

Members of a Telegram-based Shiba Inu India (Official) group have planned a community buying effort at 6:30 PM UTC on Nov. 3 – a day before Lakshmi Pujan. “We can all do this,” said a group member.

“The major motivation is always the money for people,” Rajat Lalwani, Community Admin & Moderator, Growth Breed at SHIB India, told Coindesk in a Telegram chat. “The price is relatively cheap than a lot of coins, and people feel if the zeros keep getting eaten, then they can make 10x, 100x or even 1000x on their investment long term.”

Peak retail interest

Google Trends currently shows a value of 100 for the India search query “SHIB” over the past 12 months – a sign of peak retail interest mostly seen at market tops.

“Cheap price has been the biggest factor, and to see $100 becoming $1000 in no time is driving madness,” Siddharth Menon, co-founder of WazirX, said. “We had seen this with DOGE in 2017, where memes became life-changing for some. I missed out on that hype back then too.” The exchange published a blog post on Nov. 1 explaining how to buy SHIB in India.

Some investors have been drawn to SHIB by dogecoin’s meteoric 15-fold rise to ₹58 in April-May. “The motivation to buy SHIB came when DOGE coin made an immense amount of money and SHIB was coming into the limelight and was being referred to as the DOGE killer. It was then I thought of investing into it,” said Gurpeet Singh, an audio engineer from the Indian state of Punjab.

There is more to it than low price

According to Lalwani, demand for SHIB stems from the community’s active approach in dealing with the excess supply situation.

“In May, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin burned 45% of SHIB’s supply to a dead wallet. That started a cult-like revolution of burning tokens to increase the price by decreasing supply,” Lalwani said. “Buterin burned a total of 405 trillion, and the community has burnt close to 6 trillion already.”

Buterin had been given half of SHIB’s total supply in May in a supposed marketing stunt. Coin burn refers to the process of removing tokens from circulation and is the crypto market’s equivalent of a stock buyback.

“I am holding a good quantity of SHIB, more than 200 million, and I am looking to add more in Diwali while the price is ranging,” said Jiren Singh, a 36-year old accounts professional and a member of Shina Inu India (Official) Telegram group said. “Cheap price is indeed a reason, but my primary motivation is its strong community base and token burns.”

A petition at Change.Org urging Shiba Inu to develop a policy to burn a significant amount of the token supply is gaining traction, garnering over 13,000 votes in less than 24 hours.

“The Shiba Inu pricing is aiming for the $1, but when it will reach that threshold exactly is anybody’s guess,” the petition says. “Developing a policy that could burn some Shib’s circulating supply will let Shiba Reduce for example this ten year period to five years.”

Currently, there are 549 trillion SHIB in existence , according to data provided by CoinGecko. That number is significantly higher than bitcoin’s circulating supply of 18.85 million. Assuming the petition is approved, there would still be plenty SHIB in the market relative to other cryptocurrencies, limiting its price prospects. However, Indian investors think otherwise.

“Circulating Supply of SHIB is very less for 1.30 billion Indian SHIB army,” one SHIB fan tweeted.