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What happened
Shares of Shiba Inu (CRYPTO: SHIB) continued to trend lower today as one report showed that trading activity in the meme coin had hit a 12-month low, a sign that the meme-fueled boom that sent the cryptocurrency skyrocketing last year was fading. At the same time, the fallout from Robinhood's (NASDAQ: HOOD) layoff announcement last week also seemed to weigh on Shiba Inu as Robinhood had just started allowing users to trade SHIB, and many see the trading platform as synonymous with meme investing.
As of 5:31 p.m. ET, the cryptocurrency was down 3.2% over the last 24 hours.
So what
Shiba Inu joined Robinhood in April, but even that was only enough to generate a short-lived pop in its price and trading activity. Recorded transactions in the crypto fell 70% in the first quarter from the previous quarter, and in April 2022, SHIB transactions fell to 216,260 from 329,893 in March, according to Finbold.
That tracks with a broader decline in the value of SHIB, which is down more than 75% from its peak last October, as well as fading interest in cryptocurrency more generally.
Robinhood's first-quarter report, which came out last Thursday, also underscored that trading activity among the millennials that helped drive the crypto boom is drying up as the company's overall revenue fell 43% to $299 million, and crypto revenue declined 39% to $54 million.
Now what
There was some good news out for Shiba Inu as well, as 22 billion SHIB tokens were burned over the last week. With 549 trillion coins in circulation, trillions of them will need to be burned for the asset to have a chance at getting to $1, as bulls hope it will.
For now, though, headwinds seem to be mounting against SHIB, with both Robinhood and SHIB trading activity declining. The coin's days as a meme star could be over.
