Binance lists ‘Dogecoin killer’ Shiba Inu (SHIB) and its perpetual futures

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Cryptocurrency exchange Binance quickly jumped on the sudden Shiba Inu (SHIB) bandwagon today, listing the much-hyped canine token in the “Innovation Zone” and adding the corresponding perpetual contracts to its futures platform.

#Binance Will List @Shibtoken $SHIB in the Innovation Zonehttps://t.co/EXxM5rwFRK

— Binance (@binance) May 10, 2021

According to the description, Binance’s Innovation Zone is a “dedicated trading zone where users are able to trade new, innovative tokens that are likely to have higher volatility and pose a higher risk.”

“SHIB is a relatively new token that poses a higher than normal risk, and as such will likely be subject to high price volatility after the Binance listing. Please ensure that you exercise sufficient risk management, have done your own research in regards to SHIB’s fundamentals, and fully understand the project before opting to trade the token,” Binance additionally warned all potential traders.

Growing army of crypto dogs

Shiba Inu—touted by its developers as a “Dogecoin killer and obviously designed to resemble its “ancestor” as much as possible—quickly rose to prominence over the past few days on the heels of DOGE’s ongoing price rally. Among other things, SHIB proponents are currently trying to push the token as “the next best thing” for people who missed the Dogecoin hype train.

Notably, the price of SHIB has surged from $0.00000006 in early April to a new all-time high of $0.00003671 today, according to CoinMarketCap—an eye-watering increase of more than 61,000% in just over 30 days.

After its listing on Binance, SHIB’s price has retraced to around $0.000029 at press time. However, the token is still up roughly 110% on the day and more than 1,600% over the past week. The latest mania has also pushed SHIB’s total market capitalization to over $12 billion, making it the 17th largest crypto.

Simultaneously, Binance also launched 1000SHIB, USDT-margined perpetual futures contracts with a leverage of up to 25X.

#Binance Futures Will Launch USDT-Margined 1000SHIB Perpetual Contracts with Up to 25X Leverage $SHIB @Shibtoken

➡️ https://t.co/2vFTZ5Uwfk pic.twitter.com/zoW8eDlilC

— Binance (@binance) May 10, 2021

“1000SHIB perpetual contracts are USDT-margined futures contracts that use USDT as collateral. The notional value of the 1000SHIBUSDT contract is 1,000 SHIB each. The underlying index price of 1000SHIBUSDT is 1000 times that of the SHIB/USDT spot index,” the exchange explained.

Futures are a type of financial derivatives contracts that allow users to trade certain assets at a predetermined price on a specific date in the future. Basically, traders can bet on upcoming price movements by setting a “strike price” for an asset. If the actual market price is higher when a futures contract expires, then the seller gets a profit—and vice versa. In their turn, perpetual futures work mostly the same but have no expiry date, meaning that traders can hold their positions indefinitely.

Meanwhile, the trading craze surrounding SHIB continues to dumbfound even some of the crypto industry veterans.

“276 days ago someone put 10 ETH into SHIB and now it’s worth $460 million. How’s your life going?” ironically tweeted EthHub co-founded Anthony Sassano today. And as it turned out, this is far from the biggest profit made off SHIB so far.