Shiba Inu rose about 36% to $0.0000057 on Sunday, adding roughly $1 billion in market value in a single day despite no clear fundamental catalyst, announcement or development tied to the move.

The token’s market capitalization reached about $3.4 billion, while daily trading volume approached $380 million, marking its highest turnover ranking in months. In the absence of project news, the scale and source of trading activity became the main context for assessing the move.

The move appeared concentrated in SHIB rather than across dog-themed tokens more broadly. No new development had emerged from Shibarium, the project’s layer-2 network, and comparable tokens posted smaller gains over the same period. Dogecoin rose 6%, while smaller-cap tokens gained as much as 10%, suggesting the rally was specific to SHIB rather than a broader rotation into memecoins.

South Korean trading activity was a notable feature of the rally. Upbit’s SHIB/KRW pair was the largest market for the token, with about $62 million in volume, accounting for more than one-tenth of global SHIB trading. The pair also traded at a slight premium to Binance and other dollar-denominated venues, making the regional venue mix one of the clearest observable differences during the advance.

South Korean traders have previously been associated with sharp rallies in high-volatility tokens. SHIB’s move followed a similar pattern, beginning with an initial push late Saturday, followed by roughly nine hours of flat trading, and then a second advance during the Asian morning session.

Short sellers were hit as the price climbed. About $6 million in SHIB and 1000SHIB positions were liquidated across roughly 2,300 traders, including about $5 million in short positions. The largest hour of liquidations came during the second leg of the move.

However, the liquidations appeared to follow the price increase rather than cause it. At that scale, they were not large enough to explain a move of this size, leaving spot-market demand and regional trading concentration as the more relevant data points to monitor.

Shiba Inu launched in August 2020 as an Ethereum-based token created by an anonymous developer known as Ryoshi. It was openly marketed as a “Dogecoin killer” and initially had no product behind it.

The project has since developed Shibarium, a layer-2 network, along with a broader token ecosystem. Even so, SHIB remains far below its 2021 high and continues to trade largely on retail sentiment rather than output from the ecosystem itself.