One of the most important trends in the cryptocurrency space over the past year is meme coins. The rise of Dogecoin has led to the creation of a wide range of other meme coins as investors flocked to them in hopes of making money.
Dogecoin rallied by more than 7,000% at some point earlier this year, attracting more people to the cryptocurrency world. As a result, investors started to focus on other meme coins and invest in them looking to make as much profit as Dogecoin did.
One of the biggest meme coins in the market is Shiba Inu (SHIB), the coin designed to “kill Dogecoin” and overtake it in the market. However, for those who are hearing about it for the first time, here is everything you should know about Shiba Inu.
What is Shiba Inu?
Shiba Inu (SHIB) is an Ethereum-based cryptocurrency that features the Shiba Inu dog. SHIB is considered by many to be an alternative to Dogecoin. However, the Shiba Inu coin was created to be the “Dogecoin killer.”
SHIB is a meme coin based on the Japanese Shiba Inu dog. The meme coins are usually launched as an inside joke rather than as digital products with real-world utility although Dogecoin has been around since 2013, Shiba Inu was launched in August 2020 by an anonymous individual or group called Ryoshi.
According to the 28-page whitepaper or woof paper, the goal of Shiba Inu’s creator was to move away from the rigid social structures and traditional mindset. Shiba Inu is designed to be an experiment in decentralized spontaneous community building” and to give power back to the “average person.”Advertisement
How Does Shiba Inu Work?
Shiba Inu is an Ethereum-based token, which means that it is compatible with the vast Ethereum ecosystem. According to the developer, the Ethereum blockchain was the perfect host for Shiba Inu because it was already secure and well-established, and it allowed the project to stay decentralized.
The Shiba Inu ecosystem is comprised of three tokens and other services that users can enjoy. The three tokens are;
- Shiba Inu (SHIB): SHIB is the project’s main currency. It is the token that powers the entire Shiba Inu ecosystem and has a total supply of 1 quadrillion. However, the developer locked 50% of the supply in Uniswap for liquidity purposes while Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin was tasked with holding the remaining 50%. Buterin sold some of the tokens in his possession and donated the money to a Covid-19 relief fund in India, an act that further pushed SHIB’s price higher. Buterin burned 40% of SHIB’s total supply, reducing the possible amount available to users.
- Leash (LEASH): This is the second token in the Shiba Inu ecosystem and it represents the other side of Shiba. Its total supply is 107,646 tokens, far below the trillions of Shiba Inu tokens.
- Bone (BONE): This is the governance token of the Shiba Inu ecosystem. It allows the ShibArmy to vote on upcoming proposals and has a total supply of 250 million tokens.
There are other sides to the Shiba Inu ecosystem and they include;
- ShibaSwap: This is the decentralized exchange of the Shiba Inu ecosystem. This is an exchange designed to allow people to trade cryptocurrencies in a decentralized manner.
- Shiba Inu Incubator: The incubator is designed to discover ways to honor the creativity of artists outside of the traditional artforms. It aims to breed genuine creators of art and other content.
- Shiboshi: These are Shiba Inu-generated Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) available on the Ethereum blockchain each Shiboshi has a different trait, making them unique.
Is Shiba Inu Real Money? Why has it Rallied so Much?
It is tough to think of Shiba Inu as real money. The cryptocurrency space has evolved over the past few years to involve stablecoins. Stablecoins are digital currencies whose values are tied to fiat currencies. They are the most likely to be considered real money.
We also have some coins such as Bitcoin, DASH, Litecoin and some others that are designed to serve as currency and have received adoption in various parts of the world. However, Shiba Inu is a meme coin, and is hard to consider it as real money.
SHIB has been one of the best performing cryptocurrencies so far in 2021. Over the past three months alone, SHIB has added more than 500% to its value. It briefly overtook Dogecoin in terms of market cap.
The rally was caused by a wide range of things including getting listed on the Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange a few weeks ago. The rally brought so much media attention to SHIB and more investors flooded into the cryptocurrency.
Tesla founder Elon Musk added fuel to the fire when he tweeted a picture of his new Shiba Inu puppy Floki last month. thus, generating massive retail investor interest in the meme token.
The launch of the Shiba Inu NFTs also added to the excitement as NFTs are gaining popularity in the cryptocurrency space and beyond. There are currency unconfirmed rumors that popular stock and crypto trading app Robinhood is set to list SHIB on its platform. All these contributed to Shiba Inu recording massive gains in recent weeks.
Shiba Inu Wallet
As one of the top 20 cryptocurrencies in the world, SHIB is very valuable in the crypto space. It is an ERC-20 token, which means that it can be stored in numerous wallets that support Ethereum-based tokens. Some of the wallets you can use to store your SHIB tokens include;
- Ledger Nano X (cold storage wallet)
- Trezor (cold storage wallet)
- Trust Wallet
- Ellipal Titan (hardware wallet)
- MetaMask
- Coinomi
- Lumi wallet
- CoolWallet
- Guarda Wallet