Canadian online medical service provider Ask The Doctor announced that it had added $1.5 million (roughly Rs. 11.26 crore) worth of Shiba Inu (SHIB) to its balance sheet. According to the disclosure, the foray saw the healthcare startup acquire approximately 31 billion SHIB token via well-known crypto exchange Kraken, as the healthcare company prepares to start accepting the token as a payment option from its partners within three days. Ask The Doctor began accepting payments in Bitcoin back in 2016, making it the first healthcare company in Canada to do so back then.
The announcement comes within hours of the startup tweeting that it had been receiving numerous demands from crypto users, specifically by the “SHIBARMY” to start accepting payments in the token.
Ask The Doctor has added ~$1.5M USD (approx 31B $shib) to our balance sheet via Kraken.
We are 72 hours away from accepting #SHIB with our healthcare partners. pic.twitter.com/NHG17druCh
— Ask The Doctor ® ???????? (@askthedr) December 1, 2021
So why add Shiba Inu and not its popular rival Dogecoin? Apparently, the decision to add Shiba Inu to its balance sheet came as the company was deciding between adding it or Dogecoin. The firm decided to ask its 27,000 strong followers via Twitter to clarify which one they preferred to be added in balance and nearly 90 percent of the 10,156 respondents voted for SHIB over DOGE.
That said, the move isn’t to suggest that the company is shutting out Dogecoin payments. The healthcare firm, which has most of its users in Canada has in the recent past been championing cryptocurrencies, even adding some as a payment option for services rendered.
Last month, it started accepting Dogecoin for healthcare services with its partners, with its founder Prakash Chand expressing his confidence in the utility and scalability of the coin. “I’m convinced doge will have the highest utility as a global currency because of their speed to settle a transaction and low fees per transaction,” he had said, ”Possible larger market cap than Bitcoin as the community grows,” he stated.
Ask The Doctor is an online healthcare startup, based out of Toronto, that was founded in 2010 and allows clients to communicate with medical specialists via text messaging or video streaming. Former NBA player Israel Idonije and former NBA ace Dikembe Mutombo are among their co-founders.
