SHIB surges 20%, DOGE up 5% as traders continue to Ape into Meme coins

The market’s love affair for all things Shiba Inu is continuing, with big gains in SHIB and DOGE during the last 24 hours.

The Shiba Inu (SHIB) token is up over 20% in the last 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data, with Nansen reporting heaving trading on both decentralized and centralized exchanges. Nansen reports that nearly $1.1 billion in SHIB has traded hands between January 17-January 18.

SHIB trading volume (Nansen)

Traders are likely anticipating the launch of the upcoming layer 2 network Shibarium, which puts a canine-themed twist on building on top of Ethereum. A testnet is expected to launch in the coming weeks.

Following SHIB, traders also pushed DOGE up nearly 6% in the last 24 hours per CoinGecko data. The original Shiba Inu-themed token is up nearly 23% in the last two weeks.

BONK, which mixes the market’s love for Shiba Inus, and disdain for FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried, is down 2% in the last 24 hours.

Bitcoin is up 22% in the last week. In December, blockchain analytics firm Santiment published a note which suggested that Dogecoin serves as a contrarian indicator to the market, prompting investors to trim bullish positions.

"Every time that [the] price of DOGE starts rising rapidly, there's a market-wide crash following just moments later," the firm wrote.

While Bitcoin continues to outperform DOGE, one has to wonder if new meme tokens like SHIB and BONK will validate this thesis and bring the market to the dogs.