Cryptocurrency Shiba Inu soars to record high even after Elon Musk tweet

The growing clamor for Robinhood Markets Inc. to add the Shiba Inu coin to its platform is helping boost the cryptocurrency to record highs.

SHIB, as Shiba Inu is known, is currently the 11th-biggest cryptocurrency with a market value of nearly $24 billion.(Representational Image) (REUTERS)

The growing clamor for Robinhood Markets Inc. to add the Shiba Inu coin to its platform is helping boost the cryptocurrency to record highs.

The SHIB token, as it's known, has risen 13% in the past 24 hours, according to data from CoinGecko. It is currently the 11th-biggest crypto with a market value of nearly $24 billion.

A petition on Change.org asking Robinhood to list Shiba Inu -- a Dogecoin-inspired meme cryptocurrency -- now has more than 326,000 signatures. On the company's earnings call Tuesday, Robinhood Chief Executive Officer Vlad Tenev said it's “carefully” considering adding new coins 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.

Coinbase Global Inc. added the token last month. 

Crypto has become more critical to Robinhood's growth. Last month, the brokerage said it planned to offer crypto wallets, a tool that allows investors to send and receive digital currencies. The waitlist for that product has topped 1 million customers, the company said previously. According to its last filing, 64% of crypto revenue came from Dogecoin.

Trading in Shiba Inu has been volatile on its way up. The crypto slumped earlier this week after Elon Musk tweeted that he didn't own the coin. In a follow-up tweet, he said he had bought Bitcoin, Ether and Dogecoin, and “that's it.”

Robinhood shares drop below IPO price in after-market trading on crypto slowdown

(Reuters) -Robinhood Markets Inc's shares fell below their initial public offering price in after-hours trading on Tuesday after the retail broker reported softer revenue than expected for the third quarter as trading levels declined for cryptocurrencies like dogecoin.

Shares of Robinhood were down 8.77% at $36.10 following the release of the results, below the $38 they were priced at in the Menlo Park, California-based company's July IPO and well below the $85 they hit in August.

Robinhood, which owns the app that was at the center of January's trading mania for so-called meme stocks, said in August it expected retail investors to take a breather https://www.reuters.com/technology/robinhood-revenue-more-than-doubles-crypto-trading-boom-2021-08-18 in the third quarter.

The slowdown in retail trading, one of the standout market trends of the COVID-19 era, comes as vaccine rollouts in the United States have helped allow the country to ease pandemic restrictions and activities like sports and other entertainment to resume.

"Looking back at Q2, we saw a huge interest in crypto, especially doge, leading to large numbers of new customers joining the platform and record revenues," Robinhood Chief Executive Officer Vlad Tenev said on a call with analysts.

"In Q3, crypto activity came off record highs, leading to fewer new funded accounts and lower revenue."

Last quarter, trading in dogecoin - a token started as a joke - made up 62% of Robinhood's cryptocurrency transaction volume.

Crypto revenue rose 860% from a year earlier to $51 million, but was 78% off its second quarter level, Robinhood said.

Equities trading revenue fell 27% from a year ago to $50 million.

Total revenue rose 35% from a year earlier to $365 million.

Analysts had expected revenue of $431.38 million, according to IBES data.

Robinhood said it had 22.4 million funded accounts, down slightly from last quarter, but up 96.5% from a year earlier.

The retail trading slowdown has carried over into the current quarter, Robinhood said.