Could Shiba Inu Finally Get Listed on Robinhood?

A news outlet tweeted yesterday that the "Dogecoin Killer" could be available on the exchange next month. No comment yet from Robinhood.

Supporters of the dog-themed cryptocurrency Shiba Inu (SHIB) have been clamoring for months to try and convince the popular mobile trading app Robinhood to list the meme coin. In fact, a petition launched last summer to persuade Robinhood to adopt the token currently has more than 555,000 signatures -- more than halfway to its target of 1 million signatories. It's possible those types of efforts may be getting traction.

High-traffic news outlet tweets Robinhood could list SHIB

Yesterday, the heavily trafficked global news website ZeroHedge tweeted to its 1.1 million Twitter followers this statement, "SHIBA INU ROBINHOOD LISTING SAID TO COME AS EARLY IN FEB - this is about 6 months too late." As of this writing, Robinhood has not replied to requests for confirmation or denial of the claim.

However, during its earnings call last October, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev stated that it is very cautious when considering whether or not to add new coins or tokens to its offerings. "We feel very very good about the coins that we're currently listing on our platform and any new coins that we add we want to feel equally, if not more good," Tenev said.

Regardless, yesterday's rumor pumped the price of SHIB more than 15%, but it has since retraced and is down 3.5% over the past 24 hours according to CoinMarketCap.com.

Shib has had its ups and downs -- more downs recently

SHIB was created anonymously in August 2020 as an Ethereum-based alternative to Dogecoin's Scrypt-based network. The Scrypt network has low function since it was designed for crypto mining of certain proof-of-work blockchains. In 2021, thanks to public support from Elon Musk and Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, SHIB became wildly popular and experienced a stratospheric price spike of 49,000,000% in a few months.

However, things just as quickly returned to earth for the self-proclaimed "Dogecoin Killer." SHIB is down 62% today since it hit a record high of $ 0.00008845 in October 2020. Along the way, SHIB developers have worked to build out the Shiba Inu ecosystem, launching its own decentralized exchange, a collection of 7,777 ShibaNFTs, as well as companion coins that complement SHIB. It's definitely striving to evolve a joke meme to a token with actual utility.

But is it enough? The Fed plans to jack interest rates three times this year, which will disproportionately affect highly speculative assets such as SHIB, as investors seek safer plays. A listing on Robinhood could be perfectly timed to help protect SHIB from further price slippage following inevitable interest rate hikes to attempt to slow eight straight months of 5%-plus year-over-year inflation. We'll have to see if this dog has its day on Robinhood.