Shiba inu coin jumped 30% and 'deleted a zero' after a tweet from Elon Musk sent the dogecoin spinoff surging
• The dogecoin spinoff shiba inu coin jumped 30% Monday following a tweet from Elon Musk.
• The Tesla boss tweeted a photo of his shiba inu pup, Floki, causing #SHIB to trend on Twitter.
• The altcoin has jumped nearly 8,000% in a year, Coinbase data show.
• See more stories on Insider's business page.
The dogecoin spinoff known as shiba inu jumped 30% after Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk tweeted another picture of his pup late Sunday.
Musk's dog, named Floki, is a shiba inu, which is the namesake of the coin and the iconic dog behind dogecoin. On Sept. 12, Musk first tweeted a picture of his shiba inu, saying "Floki has arrived."
The latest tweet caused the hashtag #SHIB to start trending on Twitter as retail traders cheered the price surge. The shiba inu coin, which was founded in August 2020 as an Ethereum-based alternative to Dogecoin, surged in comments on 4chan Monday as well, data from TopStonks.com showed.
On Twitter, many noted that the coin deleted a zero from its decimal. Even so, the coin is still worth less than a penny despite the jump, which took it to 0.00001090 cents. In the past year, the shiba inu coin has surged about 8,000% in a year, according to data from Coinbase.com.
Retail traders have been diving into altcoins such as dogecoin and shiba inu as the drastic price swings often bring big payoffs, unlike more established coins such as ether and bitcoin. One New York family made a $9 million fortune off the parody coin, Insider reported previously.
The "Elon Musk Effect" has been a key driver in dramatic cryptocurrency price swings this year, though his influence over the crypto market has been waning some. Others, including billionaire investor Mark Cuban and AMC CEO Adam Aron have stepped in to continue hyping up dogecoin.
