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SHIB Jumps 36% on South Korean Buying Spree With No News

The rally was mostly driven by South Korean trading on Upbit, which triggered short liquidations. There was no Shibarium update or any other project news at all.

By Zenz van der Wielen
• 2 min read
SHIB Jumps 36% on South Korean Buying Spree With No News

Key Takeaways

  • Shiba Inu (SHIB) jumped 36% on Sunday to around $0,0000057, adding roughly $1 billion in market value in one day.
  • The rally was mostly driven by South Korean trading, with Upbit as the biggest market and a small premium versus other exchanges.
  • There was no project news or new boost from Shibarium; liquidations followed the move, but they do not fully explain it.

Shiba Inu (SHIB) surged 36% on Sunday to about $0,0000057 (€0,000005), lifting its market value by roughly $1 billion (€0.9 billion) in just one day. Even so, there was no announcement or project update behind the move, despite SHIB briefly becoming one of the most heavily traded tokens in the market.

Korean Trading Takes Over

The rally seems to have been led mostly by South Korean traders. On Upbit, the SHIB/KRW pair was the largest market, with about $62 million (€54.5 million) in volume, accounting for more than 10% of global trading. Prices there also traded at a slight premium compared with Binance and other dollar-denominated exchanges.

That lines up with a pattern crypto traders know well: South Korean retail activity can quickly amplify volatility in tokens like SHIB, especially when liquidity is thin. The move began late Saturday, went quiet for nine hours, and then picked back up during the Asian morning.

Liquidations Followed the Move

The sharp climb caught short sellers off guard. Roughly $6 million (€5.3 million) in SHIB and 1000SHIB positions were liquidated across about 2,300 traders, with around $5 million (€4.4 million) of that coming from short positions. Most of those liquidations happened after the price had already moved higher, so they do not fully account for the rally.

The wider dog-token market also did not show a strong follow-through. Dogecoin gained 6% over the same period, while smaller tokens rose as much as 10%. That points to a move that was specific to SHIB rather than a broader shift into memecoins.

Shibarium Still Is Not Helping

Within the Shiba Inu ecosystem, there was no fresh lift from Shibarium, the project’s layer-2 network. That is notable because Shibarium and the token’s broader setup have long struggled to build real momentum. Earlier market data also showed that South Korea’s crypto market has actually seen less retail activity, while institutional players have become more important there.

For European crypto readers, the takeaway is simple: a token can still move fast without any news when one trading region takes control of the market. It also shows that SHIB continues to trade more on sentiment and order flow than on usage data from its own ecosystem.

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