Shiba Inu's (CRYPTO: SHIB) official X account highlighted on Wednesday the approval of a new exchange-traded fund that could hold SHIB, signaling growing institutional recognition for the memecoin.
SHIB Achieves Regulated Entry In Wall Street
The SEC approved the T. Rowe Price Active Crypto ETF last week, which is slated to list on the NYSE Arca exchange under the ticker TKNZ.
The T. Rowe Price Group Inc. (NASDAQ:TROW), a global investment firm with over $1 trillion in assets under management, is expected to hold multiple cryptocurrencies in the fund, with SHIB classified as one among the many “eligible” assets.
“‘Just a meme coin,’ they said,” SHIB’s X account noted, countering the long-standing skepticism that memecoins work purely on speculation and are not fit to be institutional-grade assets.
SHIB’s inclusion would be its first regulated ETF exposure in the U.S. Note that SHIB does not have an approved standalone spot ETF in the U.S., and no major asset manager has filed for one as of this writing.
Trading for the fund is yet to begin.
SHIB’s Dramatic Decline
Weak price momentum pushed SHIB off its perch as the second-most valuable memecoin, with MemeCore (M) moving into the No. 2 spot.
The dog-themed memecoin has lost 29% of its value year-to-date and over 58% in a year.
Sentiment took a big hit after last year's breach of its Layer-2 network, Shibarium, during which over $4 million in cryptocurrency was stolen.
The reduced visibility of Shytoshi Kusama, one of the key figures of the Shiba Inu ecosystem, also appears to have dampened enthusiasm.
Kusama steered the SHIB ecosystem ever since the abrupt exit of Ryoshi in 2022. But they have been less active on X lately, redirecting their attention to AI projects.
Price Action: At the time of writing, SHIB was exchanging hands at $0.000004874, down 1.35% over the last 24 hours, according to data from Benzinga Pro.
Photo courtesy: CryptoFX on Shutterstock.com
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