The Shiba Inu cryptocurrency is now the world’s 12th-biggest by market value and has more than tripled in the past week, partly fueled by Elon Musk’s latest tweet about his own puppy.The SHIB token has risen more than 70% in the past 24 hours as of 10:55 a.m. Hong Kong time,surpassing the likes of Litecoin and Avalanche’s AVAX to become the 12th-biggest cryptocurrency by market value, according to CoinGecko pricing. The development, comes days after Musk tweeted a picture of his puppy, Floki.
SHIB, which uses a meme of the Shiba Inu breed of Japanese hunting dogs, is up about 367% in the past seven days amid enthusiasm from that post. The jump comes at the same time the wider crypto market is surging as well; Bitcoin is up about 30% in the past seven days and trading in the mid-$50,000s, and second-ranked Ether has been gaining as well. Shiba Inu was founded by an anonymous person going by the name Ryoshi last year, and the coin’s website refers to it as “a decentralized meme token that evolved into a vibrant ecosystem.”