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What is Shiba Inu (SHIB)?

Carla Moretti
Carla Moretti
With almost two decades of experience in the fast-paced financial industry, Carla has established herself as a powerhouse and an innovative leader.
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      The last few years have been a rollercoaster ride for the cryptocurrency industry. We saw the total market cap for cryptocurrencies rise from $110 billion in March 2020 to the $3 trillion mark on November 10 2022. 

      During this time, we saw a vast number of crypto projects emerging in the crypto space and skyrocket through the roof within a few months. One of the cryptocurrencies that attracted the most attention in the community is Shiba Inu

      Though many experts are critical of Shiba Inu and the Shiba Inu coin, the cryptocurrency gained massive retail interest when SHIB experienced more than a 1,100% price increase in less than a month at the start of Q4 2021

      This article will dive deep into the project and discuss everything you need to know about it before investing. 

      What is Shiba Inu?

      Founded by an anonymous person or group known as Ryoshi, Shiba Inu is a decentralized altcoin cryptocurrency built on Ethereum’s ERC-20 token standard.

      Being decentralized means that the project is not owned or controlled by any central authority, while ERC-20 is a set of rules that allow the creation of fungible tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. 

      Shiba Inu was released in August 2020 and quickly gained momentum the following year, becoming one of the most popular projects in the crypto space. At the time of writing this article, Shiba Inu is the 12th largest cryptocurrency, with a market cap of almost $8.5 billion. 

      As predictable by the name, Shiba Inu features the Shiba Inu dog – a Japanese dog breed. The mascot was inspired by the famous doge meme on the internet. It is widely considered an alternative to Dogecoin, as the two meme coins share many similarities. Interestingly enough, even in the official Shiba Inu whitepaper, named WoofPaper, the cryptocurrency is presented as “the Dogecoin killer.”

      According to Ryoshi in the whitepaper, Shiba Inu was developed to discover how a cryptocurrency would perform if it was 100% run by its community. The mission is to “experiment in decentralized spontaneous community building.” The project has a community of over 585,000 members, all of whom firmly believe in the three core principles proposed in the WoofPaper:

      1. Shiba Inu started from zero with an objective to create something out of nothing.
      2. The Shiba Inu team was a fresh group of developers, designers, and marketers. It was not created by an existing community or preassembled team. 
      3. The entire community loves Shiba Inu dogs.

      What are Meme Coins?

      Meme Coins

      Simply put, meme coins are cryptocurrencies that are inspired by an internet meme or joke. These cryptocurrencies have minimal utility or use cases, and often their price is driven by pure speculation. For example, Dogecoin – the most popular meme coin with a market cap of $9.6 billion – was started as a satire on cryptocurrency technology. The currency has no actual use case except for crypto gambling and online payments. 

      Most meme coins usually have really high or unlimited supply with a straightforward and quick mining procedure. Moreover, these cryptocurrencies rarely have any burning mechanism. As a result, the number of circulating tokens keeps increasing at a rapid pace. These factors make meme coins inflationary, which is also why they are usually worth a fraction of a dollar. 

      Meme coins or tokens are considered highly risky investment options since their prices experience high fluctuations all the time. Many celebrities and public figures also play a prominent role in driving their prices up or down. For instance, Elon Musk’s tweets favoring Dogecoin resulted in a surge in its price many times.

      What Blockchain does Shiba Inu (SHIB) Use?

      Ethereum Blockchain

      As mentioned before, Shiba Inu doesn’t have its own decentralized blockchain ledger. Instead, it is an ERC-20 currency, which means the project is built on the Ethereum blockchain. This makes the cryptocurrency a part of the most prominent decentralized ecosystem in the blockchain space today. 

      As per their whitepaper (Woof Paper), the reason for Ryoshi to choose the Ethereum blockchain to develop Shiba Inu is the fact that it is already a well-established, secure, and fully-decentralized project. Moreover, unlike many other blockchain networks, Ethereum is purposeful and straightforward. 

      Over the years, Ethereum has proved itself as one of the fastest growing and developing blockchain networks in the world. The project has undergone multiple development phases. Building Shiba Inu on Ethereum allows it to benefit from all these improvements. For example, the upcoming change of ETH from the way it works now to a new method called Proof-of-Stake will also make SHIB a faster and more affordable cryptocurrency.

      However, the blockchain network is not the only way Shiba Inu is linked to Ethereum. Interestingly enough, up until recently, Vitalik Buterin – founder of Ethereum – owned almost 500 trillion SHIB tokens which make up 50% of the total supply. Though handing over so much of the supply to just one person seems like a huge weakness, Ryoshi believed that “exposing Shiba Inu to this weakness would eventually become its greatest strength.”

      On May 12, 2021, Buterin made history by donating $1 billion of his SHIB holdings to the India Covid Relief Fund. Less than a week later, he made another historical record by burning over 410 trillion SHIB tokens. Permanently removing approximately 40% of the supply from circulation allowed Shiba Inu to truly become a completely decentralized currency.

      Shiba Inu Ecosystem

      Shiba Inu Coin

      Unlike traditional meme coins, Shiba Inu has an established ecosystem with multiple components that create demand for its cryptocurrency by providing actual use cases. 

      Contrary to the common misconception, the Shiba Inu ecosystem actually consists of three different crypto tokens. Apart from, which serves as the basis for the entire project, the other two tokens are LEASH and BONE.

      LEASH

      Leash, the second token in the Shiba Inu ecosystem, symbolizes the other end of the spectrum of the ecosystem in comparison to the billions of Shiba Inu tokens that are in circulation. The entire supply of LEASH tokens is just 107,646.

      BONE

      In terms of the overall amount of tokens in circulation, BONE falls somewhat in the middle of the spectrum, between the other two tokens, with a total supply of 250,000,000 coins. It is intended to function as a governance token and provide the SHIBArmy with the ability to cast votes on forthcoming proposals.

      The Shiba Inu ecosystem has three big plans to make more people want its tokens. They have ShibaSwap, Shiba Inu Incubator, and SHIBOSHIS. These projects are all about creating demand for their tokens.

      ShibaSwap

      Shibaswap

      You are able to engage in peer-to-peer trading through the use of ShibaSwap, which is a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange (DEX). This enables you to trade tokens directly on ShibaSwap, eliminating the requirement for a counterparty in the transaction. The majority of centralized cryptocurrency exchanges (CEXs) do not provide the level of privacy and safety that ShibaSwap does when it comes to trading your digital assets.

      Shiba Inu Incubator

      The Shiba Inu Artist Incubator is an initiative that encourages artists who are interested in training others, providing NFT support for their work, and later selling or auctioning these objects via the indigenous ShibaSwap decentralized exchange.

      SHIBOHIS

      The SHIBOSHIS is a collection of 10,000 non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that have been developed exclusively by Shiba Inus. They have a unique and irreplaceable spot in the community and will be recorded in perpetuity on the Ethereum Blockchain. You can buy, sell, and exchange SHIBOSHIS NFTs on the ShibaSwap exchange.

      Shibohis

      Shiba Inu (SHIB) Tokenomics

      Shiba Inu token (SHIB) is currently sitting at the 12th spot for cryptocurrencies with the largest market cap. The cryptocurrency has enjoyed great success with enormous price increases over the last two years. It is up by more than 1,000,000% since its launch in the cryptocurrency world. The token reached its all-time high of $0.000087 on October 27, 2021. However, ever since then, the Shiba Inu price has been moving downwards following the widespread cryptocurrency crash. Currently, it is being traded at around $0.00001556.

      The maximum supply for the SHIB token was capped at one quadrillion tokens. Only 549,063.28 billion of these tokens are left in circulation after the aforementioned  410 trillion tokens burnt by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. The cryptocurrency has a current market cap of $8,552,862,786 with a 24-hour trading volume of $1,382,363,461. 

      How to Buy Shiba Inu Coin?

      Buying Shiba Inu

      Shiba Inu coin can be bought with fiat currency (USD, EUR), cryptocurrencies (BTC, BCH), and other crypto coins like Bitcoin Cash or Litecoin. You can also buy it with credit cards or PayPal. You can also use your existing cryptocurrency holdings to buy the coin directly from exchanges like Poloniex or Binance. If you are new to crypto, then you might have heard of the term “exchange.” It is a platform that allows people to buy/sell cryptocurrencies and other digital assets.

      The exchange you choose depends on your location and the availability of the coin. For example, if you are in the U.S., then Coinbase would be a good choice because it is easily accessible to users in the U.S. since 2012 and is one of the biggest exchanges out there. However, opting for Binance will be a better approach as its available globally.

      Following is a step-to-step guide to buying SHIB on Binance.

      1. Go to Binance.
      2. Click on the Bitcoin (BTC) market and search for SHIB.
      3. Click on BUY, and you will be taken to the Buy page, where you can enter the amount of SHIB that you want to buy in BTC or ETH.
      4. After entering your amount, click Buy SHIB and wait for the order to execute.

      How to Store Shiba Inu Coins

      There are multiple ways to store your SHIB coins securely:

      Hardware Wallets

      Hardware wallets are physical devices that store your private keys offline. They are extremely secure, as they do not have a network connection and cannot be accessed online by hackers. These physical devices allow you to store private cryptographic keys to your crypto funds, and only you have access to them. Your coins will always remain safe on these devices. The most acknowledged wallets that store SHIB is Trezor and Ledger.

      Software Wallets

      A software wallet is a type of digital wallet that can be installed on a computer, mobile phone, or other electronic devices. A software wallet can be made to run on as many devices as you want, and it will not need any external hardware to work. Popular software wallets for SHIB include wallets such as Metamask and TrustWallet.

      Crypto Exchanges

      The most common way to store SHIB is by using an exchange. Many SHIB exchanges will allow you to store your cryptocurrency. To mention a few, these crypto exchanges are Coinbase and Binance.

      Does Shiba Inu have a future?

      Though the Shiba Inu coin is worth just a fraction of a dollar, experts believe that the cryptocurrency does have a future thanks to the active and supportive community around the project.

      Is Shiba Inu a good investment?

      The short answer is no; Shiba Inu Coin is not a good investment. It is a new cryptocurrency that has only been available for purchase on the internet for the last two years. The price of this coin can also fluctuate wildly from day to day, so it is difficult to say whether or not you’ll make money from this investment. Of course, speculating on Shiba Inu’s price can generate short-term returns for retail traders.

      Moreover, the coin doesn’t have much value and no real use-case, at least not now. It’s not worth anything more than the cost of its transaction fees which are very low compared to many other cryptocurrencies on the market today. Other than that, the developers of the Shiba Inu Coin have made it clear that they do not intend to operate as an alternative to the dollar or any other fiat currency.

      However, they also want to make it clear that this does not mean that the coin will be completely immune from economic risks.

      Yet, Shiba Inu is developing other aspects of the project which should increase utility and adoption.

      Our extensive analysis of the different Cryptocurrencies doesn’t stop here. You can also check out our “What is Cardano (ADA)?” guide to know more about another promising project.

      Investors must be aware that investments in cryptocurrencies involve very high risk. It is recommended not to make any investment decisions without consulting a professional financial advisor.

      FAQ

      Most frequent questions and answers

      Currently, the Shiba Inu coin is being traded at around $0.000015. To be able to reach the price of $0.01, the cryptocurrency requires such massive inflows of capital that it seems very unlikely. For example, a $0.01 SHIB price would translate to a $3 trillion dollar market capitalization, which would be roughly 3 times greater than that of Bitcoin at the time of writing.

      After burning almost 40% of the total supply, about 549,063.28 billion coins are left in circulation.

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      Skrumble.com provides all its content for informational purposes only, and this should not be taken as financial advice to buy, trade, or sell any investment instruments or products, including but not limited to cryptocurrencies, or use any specific exchange. Please do not use this website as investment advice, financial advice, or legal advice, and each individual’s needs may vary from that of the author. Investing in financial instruments, including cryptocurrencies, carries a high risk and is not suitable for all investors. It is possible to lose the entire initial investment, so do not invest what you cannot afford to lose. We strongly advise conducting your own research before making any investment decisions. This post includes affiliate links with our partners who may compensate us.

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