Shiba Inu (SHIB) Faces Big Hurdles Despite New Japan Milestone

Shiba Inu fans have had a mixed week. On the bright side, Japanese e commerce giant Rakuten added a physical SHIB token to its Real Coin series, giving the memecoin some premium global exposure. However, the excitement was quickly overshadowed when global money manager T. Rowe Price launched its new crypto ETF and left SHIB off the list of underlying assets, disappointing many in the community.

Beyond the ETF disappointment, on chain data shows some worrying trends for the ecosystem. Shibarium, the layer two scaling network that once handled millions of transactions daily, has seen its daily activity drop to just a few hundred transfers. To make matters worse, the weekly SHIB burn rate fell by 54 percent, showing a clear drop in network activity.

The market is also tracking a recent wallet move. The United States government transferred 250,000 dollars worth of SHIB, which was previously seized from FTX and Alameda Research. Blockchain data indicates this crypto will likely be used to repay creditors in the FTX bankruptcy case. Meanwhile, SHIB's price is down about 17 percent over the past month, trading around 0.000004078 dollars, which is a 95 percent drop from its 2021 peak.

Despite these bearish pressures, the SHIB community continues to grow. The total number of SHIB wallets recently hit a new high of nearly 1.7 million, boosted by a single day influx of 75,000 new holders. Traders will want to watch if this growing holder base can help spark a recovery, or if the slow network activity will continue to drag the price down.