Shiba Inu price continued its strong sell-off as the crypto fear and greed index turned red for the first time this year. 

SHIB is now down for three straight days and reached a low of $0.00001271, its lowest level since March 1st. It has dropped by almost 70% from its highest level this year, drastically underperforming major coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum. 

Crypto fear and greed index has fallen

Shiba Inu’s price has dropped amid fear spreading in the crypto industry. The crypto fear and greed index has now dropped to 38, its lowest level since November last year. It is now down notably from its peak in the extreme greed zone of over 90. 

Shiba Inu’s drop coincides with several headwinds both in and out of the crypto universe. In crypto, Bitcoin balances in exchanges have risen as the German government, Mt.Gox, and Bitcoin mining companies move coins to exchanges. 

The other bad news is that spot Bitcoin ETFs have continued to lose assets. The most recent data shows that the eleven funds hold 865,947 coins valued at almost $50 billion. 

July 4 Update:9 ETFs decreased 609 $BTC(-$35M).#Grayscale decreased 535 $BTC(-$30.7M) and currently holds 274,724 $BTC($15.76B).https://t.co/RNb9HiUF7I pic.twitter.com/VRq4PXP2c3

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) July 4, 2024

Further, there are signs that the Federal Reserve will maintain interest rates for longer than expected after Friday’s relatively strong inflation and non-farm payrolls (NFP) data. The numbers revealed that the economy added 206k jobs in June, beating the consensus estimate of 191k.

Shiba Inu’s weak fundamentals

SHIB price has also dropped because of its weak fundamentals. In the first place, recent data has shown that demand has waned. In most days, its volume has been overtaken by other newer meme coins like Pepe and Dogwifhat. 

On Friday, Shiba Inu had a total volume of $500 million while Pepe and Dogwifhat had $1.3 billion and $913 million. Other meme coins like Floki and Bonk are also having higher volumes than SHIB. 

Shiba Inu’s Shibarium network is also not doing well. Data by DeFi Llama shows that Shibarium’s total value locked (TVL) has dropped to $1.35 million from the year-to-date high of $4 million. 

All dApps in Shibarium like WoofSwap, ChewySwap, Marswap, and DogSwap have had their TVL slump by over 40% in the past 30 days. 

Similarly, ShibaSwap’s assets have also dropped to $18.4 million from almost $2 billion at its peak in 2021. 

Shiba Inu price to form death cross

SHIB price chart

Worse, technicals point to more Shiba Inu price weakness. The chart above shows that the SHIB token is about to form a death cross pattern, when the 50-day and 200-day Exponential Moving Averages (EMA) cross each other. If this pattern happens, it will raise the possibility of the token falling to $0.0000085, its lowest point this year.