The healthcare services firm “Ask the Doctor” recently added 31 billion Shiba Inu (SHIB) tokens to its balance sheet. However, the company’s support towards the memecoin did not last much.
The fact that Shiba Inu’s founders have not revealed their real identities shows that the project is a scam, “Ask the Doctor” claimed. The latter even vowed to take it a step further and go to court.
From Approval to Denial
Until today, the Toronto-based telehealth company – “Ask the Doctor” – seemed like a crypto-friendly entity that supports a variety of digital assets. At the beginning of December, it purchased 31 billion Shiba Inu tokens worth about $1.5 million (at the time of the deal).
The firm disclosed that it also holds Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Cardano (ADA), Polkadot (DOT), Polygon (MATIC), Dogecoin (DOGE), and Floki Inu (FLOKI). “As technology evolves, we believe we need to as well,” the team said at the time.
In a sudden twist of events, today (December 21), “Ask the Doctor” withdrew its support for Shiba Inu, describing the memecoin as a scam since Shytoshi Kusama and the rest of the founders have not revealed their true identities. As a result, the Canadian company said it had “officially eliminated SHIB off” its balance sheet.
Why is @ShytoshiKusama not revealing himself? Easier for scammers to hide from law enforcement and people coming after you? $shib is a scam #shibarmy, the 1% real is brainwashed and 99% is bots.
— Ask The Doctor ® (@askthedr) December 21, 2021
In the following hours, “Ask the Doctor” launched a bashing manifest and posted numerous tweets against Shiba Inu. In one of them, the firm revealed it had sent emails to leading cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance, Kraken, and CryptoCom to delist the self-proclaimed Dogecoin killer from their platforms.
The healthcare company even claimed that the creators of the scam project Squid Game (SQUID) had “laundered” some of their fraud proceeds by purchasing Shiba Inu tokens.
The change of heart is somewhat surprising since “Ask The Doctor” has been an advocate of memecoins in the previous months.
In November, it enabled users to pay in Dogecoin (DOGE) for medical assistance. Shortly after, the firm asked the community whether to extend the cryptocurrency offerings and embrace Floki Inu and Shiba Inu as payment methods, too. The overwhelming majority of the poll participants voted in favor, while “Ask the Doctor” tweeted:
“Looks like we have to add SHIB as well […] Long live the memes!”
It’s worth noting, though, that Ask The Doctor knew that Shiba Inu’s team was anonymous when they decided to purchase $1.5 million worth of SHIB.
Shiba Inu Spreads Globally
Despite the legal war that it might start with “Ask the Doctor,” Shiba Inu has continued to grow in recent months.
A few weeks back, the Luxembourg-based digital asset trading venue – Bitstamp – enabled its users to trade SHIB against the US dollar and the euro.
Shortly after, the leading Spanish cryptocurrency exchange – Bit2Me – and the Indian platform – Unocoin – also listed the memecoin citing increased interest from customers as a reason.
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