Outlining India’s apparent obsession with Shiba Inu

Lavina Daryanani
Shiba Inu
Source: Pixabay

Shiba Inu, the market’s second-largest meme coin, has had a wild 24 hours. After posting an 11% rise in DoD, it became quite apparent that SHIB was desperately waiting for Bitcoin’s pu(m)p to aid it to recover from its downtrend phase.

Despite the macro-downtrend witnessed, market participants’ interest in this coin has been on the rise. In effect, a host of exchanges all across the globe have started listing Shiba Inu to cater to the growing demand for the coin.

Shiba Inu – India’s most favourite dog breed?

At this stage, exchanges in India are quite impeccably jumping onto the SHIB listing bandwagon. Giottus, for starters, launched SHIB deposits just a day back at 7 PM IST.

Notably, in mid-December, the platform also added support for Floki Inu – another prominent dog-themed meme crypto. Giottus was, as such, launched back in 2018. It had a very rough start, for it went live right after the RBI ordered financial institutions to cut ties with entities and individuals dealing with cryptos.

The exchange was set to launch as a spot exchange, but owing to the ban, it was forced to start operating as a P2P exchange. However, post the Supreme Court revoked the RBI ban in 2020, Goittus managed to start gaining traction. In effect, it started recording growth in, both, trading volume and monthly registrations.

Prior to Goittus, Shiba Inu was also listed by major Indian exchanges including the likes of Unocoin, ZebPay, and CoinDCX. On ZebPay, for instance, this token managed to stand right behind the big coins in terms of volume.

In fact, a recent Economic Times’ report noted,

“Among the tokens, behemoths like Bitcoin and Ethereum were the most traded on the platform, followed by altcoins like India’s Polygon (MATIC), memecoin Shiba Inu and Basic Attention Token (BAT).”

The said SHIB obsession was perhaps at its peak during the festive season as Indians gradually opted to buy this meme coin over gold and other traditional assets.

Well, the Indian Parliament’s Winter session ended in December without introducing the much-awaited bill to regulate digital assets. Despite the hazy crypto regulatory environment, Shiba Inu continues to hold a place in the wallets of Indian HODLers.

Traditional media outlets paying heed to this token and are trying to stay abreast of the trend. With a mainstream focus on Shiba Inu, its popularity could sky rocket this year.