The price of meme coin Shiba Inu (SHIB) has doubled in the last few days following reports of a huge whale purchase.

Investors continue to pour into the digital asset, which was thrust under the spotlight during the height of the Dogecoin explosion earlier this year.

In July, the TVL (total value locked) of SHIB jumped to around $2 billion. It has since shrunk to below $300 million, but that hasn’t prevented one mysterious whale from buying up massive amounts of Shibu Inu.

A recent transaction from late September showed that the unknown whale bought around 6.2 trillion SHIB for approximately $44 million.

Over the following days, the price of SHIB skyrocketed by 55%, from roughly $0.00000715 to a daily high of $0.00001315 at the time of writing.

However, it seems that it’s not only the whale purchase that has given SHIB a lift. Ishan Arora – a partner at crypto hedge fund Tykhe Block Ventures – says Shiba Inu may be launching a new project.

“It started as a meme coin with no use case but that is being changed as the team seems to be working on certain things like a decentralised exchange,” he said.

Meme coin craze

The so-called Dogecoin-killer was launched in order to take advantage of the ongoing meme coin craze.

Arora, though, warned investors away from such one-hit wonders until they have substance behind them.

“Most people do not have the grasp of their investment thesis and merely follow some influencer and buy such meme coins,” he said.

“However, early Doge investors last year did quite well, so it is not as black and white as most want it to be.”

The recent surge may even have something to do with Dogecoin advocate and Tesla CEO Elon Musk who decided to share a picture of his new family member – a Shiba Inu puppy called ‘Floki’.

Musk then tweeted another image of the pet with the title ‘Floki Frunkpuppy’.