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Shiba Inu's lead developer, Shytoshi Kusama, hinted at potential collaborations in the Middle East in a recent X post. This caused a flurry of speculations about the meme coin's future as well as a 8+% price surge for SHIB. The meme coin sector has been extremely active over the past few weeks with DWF investing millions into Floki, celebrities being pulled into meme coin scams and Roaring Kitty returning to the scene. However, the rise in meme coins has also attracted fraudsters, leading to warnings about fake tokens like TREAT.
SHIB Speculations
Shytoshi Kusama, the lead developer of Shiba Inu (SHIB), has sparked a lot of excitement in the crypto community after his recent visit to the Middle East. In an X post, Kusama hinted at potential collaborations, which then caused a lot of speculation about possible developments for the meme coin.
Naturally, the Shib Army has been abuzz with discussions about potential partnerships or new use cases for Shiba Inu in the Middle East. Kusama’s references to “cousins” and the Arabic phrase “inshallah” (God willing) have fueled rumors about possible connections with the Middle Eastern crypto community, including partnerships with regional exchanges, investment firms, or government entities. However, no official announcements have been made just yet.
Earlier this year, the Shiba Inu development team participated in Token2049 in Dubai, a major international crypto and blockchain conference. People in the crypto space now speculate that It is possible that the team started discussions and explored potential collaborations during the event, and this recent trip could be focused on solidifying those relationships and finalizing agreements.
The attention now directed at the meme coin has pushed its price up by more than 8% over the past day of trading. As a result, SHIB was worth about $0.00002579 at press time.
DWF Labs’ $12M Floki Investment
SHIB is not the only meme coin picking up some steam. DWF Labs, an investment firm and market maker, announced that it has made a very generous $12 million investment in Floki. This comes after DWF Labs’ previous purchase of $10 million worth of FLOKI tokens in February, which boosted the token’s price by 50%.
The partnership between Floki and DWF Labs started in May of 2023 when the firm initially bought $5 million in FLOKI tokens. Since then, DWF Labs has also committed to a $10 million investment in Floki’s sister project, TokenFi, over the next two years.
DWF Labs’ involvement has been a huge help with securing key exchange listings and industry partnerships, which has been very beneficial in boosting the Floki ecosystem. As a result, the price of FLOKI has surged by more than 900% over last year.
Meanwhile, DWF Labs is not solely focused on FLOKI. Just last week, a wallet linked to the firm received over $500,000 worth of LADYS tokens. Further analysis by Lookonchain revealed that another DWF wallet transferred $5 million in USDT to the LADYS meme coin developer’s wallet.
A recent announcement from DWF Labs proves that the firm is very serious about investing in meme coins. On May 28, managing partner Andrei Grachev hinted at this new strategic focus in a post on X. Grachev confirmed the investment in FLOKI and LADYS, and stated that the firm is now moving to the third step of its strategy.
Other meme coin communities, like TURBO, are also waiting for DWF Labs’ involvement, and they hope to see similar positive gains as with FLOKI and LADYS.
Meme Mania
Over the past month, meme-related news has been the talk of the town. Roaring Kitty, the face of the 2021 GameStop rally, returned to X, and Pump.fun, a meme coin launchpad, was exploited for $1.9 million by a former employee. Tragically, the Shiba Inu dog Kabosu, the face of Dogecoin, also passed away. The approval of the spot Ethereum ETF and positive inflation data from the U.S. this month fueled the meme fire as well.
Meme activity remained strong in the past week. In the PolitiFi subsector, meme coins linked to legislators by name picked up a lot of momentum, especially after former President Donald Trump’s guilty verdict in his hush-money trial.
Celebrities have re-entered the crypto scene, too. Caitlyn Jenner launched her token on pump.fun. Jenner then later launched the token on Ethereum, using the fees to support Trump. Meanwhile, rapper Iggy Azalea independently launched her own token MOTHER on Solana in response to a scam promoter trying to launch an IGGY token.
Pump.fun saw an impressive resurgence over the past month as well. After its exploit, pump.fun posted its highest revenue day on May 30, bringing in $1.48 million.
This spike in revenue suggests that there are many users launching tokens in the hopes to create the next big meme coin. According to DeFiLlama, pump.fun has generated $32.51 million in revenue since its launch. Additionally, almost half a million tokens were created on Solana in the past month alone.
The Serial Scammer Banned from X
Social media platform X suspended the "@Habibi_Comm" account of Sahil Arora, an alleged serial scammer. The account has been implicated in endorsing celebrity meme coins that have faced scam allegations, violating the platform's regulations.
Despite these accusations, Arora has continued to advertise allegedly fake partnerships and launch more celebrity meme coins. He promoted a partnership with BingX on Jun. 3, but the cryptocurrency exchange denies this.
Arora then promoted another celebrity meme coin project based on rapper Offset, who has accused Arora of fraud. A Solana-based memecoin project claims to have been introduced to Offset by Arora in March and sent $20,000 to an address provided by Arora, but Offset said he did not receive the payment. The project claims they have since been blocked by both Arora’s account and Offset.
Despite the suspension, Arora does not plan to go down easily as he is believed to have multiple accounts on X and has already been directing followers to a new account on his Telegram channel. He also recently promoted relationships with boxing legend Floyd Mayweather and actor Lindsay Lohan before his social media ban.
Fake Token Alert
Unfortunately, as meme coins gain more momentum, so do scammers. On Jun. 2, Shibarium team member and developer DaVinci issued a warning to the Shibarium community about malicious activity on the network involving the release of a fake TREAT token.
DaVinci reminded investors, speculators, and the community that this token, which is named after an actual token being developed by the Shibarium team, has not been officially launched. He also made it very clear that any new TREAT listings have nothing to do with the official development on Shibarium.
The malicious actors actually used the official shib.io address in their online posts to make the fake token appear legitimate. Even CoinGecko has now posted a warning for the TREAT token, stating: “This token is not affiliated with Shiba Inu nor their upcoming privacy-focused Layer 3 blockchain. Please DYOR before trading the token.”
The actual TREAT token is still in development, and is one of five tokens in the Shibarium ecosystem, alongside SHIB, BONE, LEASH, and the SHI stablecoin. TREAT is intended as a reward token for the Shiba Lands metaverse and the Shiba Eternity card game, and will also help balance the SHI stablecoin, which is also under development.
Additionally, the TREAT token will be used to power Shibarium’s planned privacy layer, providing on-chain anonymity for Shibarium users once it goes live.
