Emirates and Crypto.com have launched Crypto.com Pay for flight bookings in the UAE, moving the airline’s crypto payments initiative from memorandum stage to a live checkout option for eligible UAE residents. The service is limited to bookings priced and settled in UAE dirhams through Emirates’ website and app, with Crypto.com converting customers’ crypto into dirhams rather than Emirates holding digital assets. The checkout option supports 30 cryptocurrencies, including Shiba Inu, BTC, ETH, USDT, XRP, USDC and DOGE. The launch implements a partnership announced in July 2025 and aligns with Dubai’s Cashless Strategy under the D33 Economic Agenda. Separately, Shiba Inu drew increased market attention as Santiment said the token was among a small group seeing elevated social discussion over the past 24 hours. The analytics firm linked that activity to large transfers by a visible whale wallet identified on-chain as 0x8382...7b03. SHIB rose more than 37% over the weekend before giving back part of the advance, while social dominance reached 0.084%, its highest since April 2. Santiment also said SHIB recorded 52 whale transactions in a day, the most since March 31. Heading into the U.S. interest rate decision, SHIB was up 8% over seven days, outperforming major cryptocurrencies that showed little movement over the same period.