SHIB Climbs 36% in Sudden Rally Fueled by South Korean Demand

The rally appears to lack a clear driver, with no announcements to explain it, limited gains across other dog-themed tokens, and trading activity heavily concentrated on South Korean exchanges.

Shiba Inu rose 36% on Sunday to around $0.0000057, adding roughly $1 billion to its market capitalization in a single day despite no obvious catalyst.

The token now carries a market value of about $3.4 billion, supported by nearly $380 million in daily trading volume — its highest level in months.

There have been no notable updates from Shibarium, the project’s layer-2 network, and the broader memecoin sector has underperformed. Dogecoin gained just 6% over the same period, while smaller tokens rose as much as 10%, suggesting the move is largely isolated to SHIB rather than part of a wider trend.

South Korean demand stands out as a key factor. The SHIB/KRW pair on Upbit is the largest market, accounting for about $62 million in volume — more than 10% of global trading — and trades at a slight premium compared to Binance and other USD-based venues.

Korean traders are known for fueling sharp, momentum-driven rallies in volatile assets, and SHIB’s price action fits that pattern: an initial spike late Saturday, a period of consolidation, followed by another push during Asian trading hours.

Short sellers were caught in the move, with around $6 million in SHIB and 1000SHIB positions liquidated across roughly 2,300 traders. About $5 million of that total came from short positions, with the heaviest liquidations occurring during the second leg of the rally. However, these liquidations appear to have followed the price rise rather than caused it and are too small to fully explain the scale of the move.

Shiba Inu launched in August 2020 as an Ethereum-based token created by the anonymous developer Ryoshi, marketed as a “Dogecoin killer” without a defined product.

Since then, the project has introduced Shibarium, a layer-2 network, and expanded its ecosystem. Even so, SHIB remains well below its 2021 peak and continues to trade largely on retail sentiment rather than underlying fundamentals.