Digital Asset Insights #39 Shiba Inu Reaches a New All-Time High: Unstoppable!

The Shiba Inu coin finally reached an all-time high (ATH) of $0.00004926 on October 26th, with a market cap dominance of $24,116,388,304, 0.87%, and a volume of 0.3895. The coin is now ranking at #11 in the cryptocurrency market and has made a 50% gain since its last ATL, which was on November 28^th, 2020. In the 24-hour period before it reached its new ATH, Shiba Inu had done $10,420,000,000 in trading volume. This is far more than the top guns in the Crypto space. Whales are buying it, and many investors are drawn in since the coin has too many zeros to miss out on investing in it. The meme coin had a massive 24-hour gain of 14%. and a 30-day gain of 5559.9%. Even ETH could not stop the rise of Shiba Inu. After Elon Musk shared a tweet that he does not own any Shiba Inu, the coin fell. However, following a massive whale buy of about $267 billion last month, many people took an interest in the coin. A majority bought the coin during the bull market and are continuing to do so. So far, the coin has performed well during October, and early last week, the coin made a 50% gain.

Many cryptocurrency traders on Twitter confess that Shiba Inu has made them millionaires and that they will continue to make more. The Shiba Inu pack is awake, and the buying continues … massive gains in trading markets usually mean that banks and huge financial institutions are buying an asset. In the cryptocurrency space, however, such large price movements mean that large investors have entered the markets. This means that Shiba Inu may be a meme coin, but it will develop a use case. The silent buying shows that crypto investors are planning to use the dog-coin to make something meaningful for dog-lovers in the crypto space; and, like packs of dogs, these investors in the coin will create an actual use case. As many pros like to say, everybody is early to Bitcoin; likewise, it seems, everybody is early to Shiba Inu. The zeros are too many to miss out on investing.

On October 21^st, 2021, the crypto exchange Binance US experienced a Bitcoin flash crash which had BTC’s price drop by over 80%. The industry is maturing, but these occurrences are reminiscent of the times when a crypto flash was business as usual. A report by Arcane Research dives deeply into the event, starting from the time it happened on the 21^st at 11:34:17. At that time, the research firm claims that a “sudden massive selling pressure cleared the order book” on the exchange. This caused Bitcoin to crash all the way down to $8,200 for an entire thirteen seconds. This was enough for Binance US to experience a spike in its trading volume and 550 BTC changed hands. Arcane Research compared the normal Binance US sell volume to that of this event. The former stands at 0.74 BTC in a 4-hour timeframe, “illustrating that this massive sell order (550 BTC) was extraordinary.” Arcane Research then added the following: “What caused the crash? A fat finger by someone meaning to place a limit sell order at $82,000? An engine error? A combination? Binance has stated that it was caused by a bid in the trading algorithm of one of the institutional traders on the exchange.”

Whoever this entity was, they created a domino effect which caused havoc across all Bitcoin exchange platforms. Arcane claims that the price of BTC dropped $1,000 as a result of this bug. Even after the event, there were irregularities with different exchanges. Kraken saw its BTC/USD pair trading at a “growing discount,” Arcane Research said. On this platform, Bitcoin traded at $55,500, while other exchanges were trading at $64,000 per BTC. The Kraken discount eventually stabilized, but Arcane Research pointed out that this exchange operates with less efficiency during volatile markets. Brett Harrison, president of the crypto exchange FTX US, explained the different trading orders and how they operate when Bitcoin increases its volatility levels. In this case, the price of BTC trended to the downside, reducing the liquidity in the market as it moved further down. Harrison said, “Those trade prices will trigger stop loss or take profit orders, which themselves are market orders and will cause even more liquidity to be taken. The combination of market orders and lack of liquidity cause the price to spiral downwards in an extremely quick fashion.”

Harrison clarified that the Binance US Bitcoin crash was caused by an institution setting a large number of market orders that “cleared the bid side” for the BTC/USD trading pair order book. This triggered a liquidation cascade and therefore BTC’s price dropped in the platform. Harrison reminded that the U.S. futures market used to suffer from this problem until it implemented “guardrails.” He felt that a similar use of this measure by crypto exchanges could “help prevent short term microstructure issues;” and the implementation of these types of solutions, in combination with others, could help bring more “maturity” into the crypto market.

Wall Street has previously not been at the forefront of Bitcoin trading; however, that looks poised to change. The approvals of three Bitcoin ETFs at the start of last week have brought about much institutional interest in the digital asset, and Wall Street brokers are starting to turn their attention to the cryptocurrency. The first Bitcoin ETF recorded trading volumes of over $1 billion on its first day. Analyst Christopher Brendler sat down with Coindesk to talk about the future of Bitcoin on Wall Street. Wall Street brokers are getting increasingly positive about BTC investments, according to Brendler. It is important to note that Bitcoin has outperformed both the Nasdaq and the S&P year-over-year, as seen in a report from Wealthier Today. Brendler had been previously collating data regarding how the Bitcoin mining industry was being viewed by players on Wall Street, and he found that brokers had a positive view of the industry in the short term. Brendler estimated that about 15% of Wall Street brokers were beginning to take investments in the cryptocurrency more seriously. This number had been at a meager 5% of Wall Street brokers at the beginning of the year.

Interest has mostly grown due to the growth of Bitcoin in the past year. Bitcoin’s price had been below $30,000 at the beginning of the year and has grown over 100% to a new all-time high in October. It has not been the only one to record tremendous growth in recent months as mining stocks have also benefitted from the market rally. The report stated that the mining stocks Marathon Digital and Riot Blockchain have seen growth up to 1,500% and 600%, respectively, in the past year, considerably higher than even BTC. Institutional investors have continued to come to the table, and this has translated into more interest in the market from Wall Street brokers. Bendler did make note of skepticism from some of these investors, however, they still remained bullish on the digital asset in the long term. “While most investors are still new to this area, there was also quite a few already involved and able to dig deep into our new coverage,” Bendler said. As interest from Wall Street grows, it is expected that we will see more inflows in Bitcoin. The money coming in will help to drive the price up both in the short and the long term.

Bendler finished the interview by explaining that investors most familiar with the market were bullish crypto miners, and although they erred on the side of caution when it came to valuation, this has not caused them to shy away from the space. With returns from the crypto market thumping traditional investment vehicles, it seems very likely that it will only be a matter of time before Wall Street is fully invested in the market.

Creatd has announced its second NFT drop featuring three photographs of Donald Trump, including one that displays him signing the chest of a model. The NFT is currently priced at 240 Ethereum, which is roughly $1 million in US prices. Headquartered in New Jersey, Creatd has managed to draw considerable attention from Wall Street by selling an NFT featuring young Donald Trump. The digital image will include three natural photos of Trump, taken long before he became the president of the United States. The NFT will include a high-resolution JPEG and the buyer will also get a large 1/1 print of the said photograph in a gilded frame. Non-Fungible Tokens, or NFTs, are soaring high in value and have become increasingly popular. A non-fungible token is a unique digital identifier that cannot be replicated or copied. It provides authentic sole ownership of digitized products such as images, audio, files, videos, and artworks to consumers. Share prices for Creatd received a powerful boost amidst its latest NFT drop and the company’s stock was heading 7.5% higher at the end of last week.

Creatd will be selling its collection of NFTs on the popular NFT marketplace called OpenSea. The photos of Trump have come from their OG collection which holds thousands of photographs, illustrations, and videos from the archives of Bob Guccione, an artist and photographer who once owned publications like Viva and Penthouse. Jeremy Frommer, the CEO and founder of Creatd Inc. stated the company is still in the early stages of understanding the concept of the NFT as valuable crypto assets. Meanwhile, the company had recently concluded their first NFT drop featuring six digital images, which have all been sold. Creatd intends to expand its NFT platform by enhancing its library collection and collaborating with potential creators to create an extraordinary set of digital collectibles.