Meme coins are nothing new, but they’ve recorded a resurgence over the last few months, with an ever-growing number of investors interested in buying, selling, and trading these assets. Shiba Inu is one of the better-known assets out there as a result of evolving into a multibillion-dollar ecosystem in spite of its relatively humble beginnings. The coin is powered by a layer-2 blockchain and has a wide range of use cases. However, while there’s no denying the asset’s popularity, it’s essential to remember that digital assets remain highly speculative and record fluctuations much more often than their more traditional peers. So, before you rush to purchase this asset, take some time to look into the Shiba Inu coin price and decide if the timing is optimal for the ventures you have in mind.
What is SHIB?
Shiba Inu is a cryptocurrency or, more specifically, a meme coin that depicts a Shiba Inu dog, a Japanese breed that was originally intended for hunting due to its agility, alertness, and adaptability to hiking trails and mountainous terrains. All meme coins have internet culture behind them, with this being the feature that gives them their popularity and contributes to the hype they have generated. The coin was originally built on the Ethereum blockchain, a platform known for its innovative developments and penchant for innovation, but later moved to Shibarium, a layer-2 solution built on Ethereum. Due to the similarities of their mascots, SHIB has been compared to Doge, the original meme coin and the asset that kickstarted the phenomenon.
The main difference between the two is that Shiba Inu started as a parody that aimed to address concepts such as decentralization and trust. It wasn’t meant to have any kind of use case at all, but the investors naturally had other plans. The coin has evolved to have real-world utility, being used for online purchases through specific platforms. Having the backing of a highly engaged community with a robust social media presence has made SHIB highly visible and allowed potential investors to learn about it in the first place.
The beginnings
Shiba Inu is a relatively new addition to the cryptocurrency ecosystem, having arrived to the marketplace in August 2020. Much like the creator of Bitcoin, SHIB’s inventor has also chosen to remain anonymous and goes by the pseudonym Ryoshi. The mystery surrounding the developer has led investors and analysts to question whether Ryoshi is an individual or rather a group of people who created Shiba Inu as a joint project. The idea for the meme coin came from the belief that a new but similar asset could be brought to the ecosystem in light of Dogecoin’s popularity.
In the beginning, SHIB focused on community-driven decentralization, but in 2023, Shibarium had its launch. The aim of this development was to boost scalability and improve efficiency in order to provide faster transactional speeds and lower costs overall. Being a layer-2 solution, Shibarium is connected to Ethereum but operates entirely independently from it and is able to handle transactions off-chain. Periodically, though, some of them can be settled on Ethereum for security. The community, known as “ShibArmy,” has continued growing under the leadership of another mysterious figure only known as Shytoshi Kusama.
Since its launch, SHIB’s popularity has continued to soar, and there are currently more than 500,000 active projects and users, which include the ShibaSwap DEx, Shiboshis non-fungible tokens, and Shib: The Metaverse.
Tokenomics
The concept of tokenomics refers to the analysis of the economic aspects of digital assets and blockchain projects. The main focus is on the distribution of native cyber currencies as well as the ways in which these coins impact the larger aspects of the systems they inhabit. Their ability to provide resources, the behavior associated with the economic agents, the efficiency associated with the procedures, and the manner in which the system interacts with external processes have all been studied.
At the time of its launch, Shiba Inu had a total supply of one quadrillion tokens, half of which were locked in Uniswap in order to ensure liquidity. In May 2021, the creators sent the remaining amount to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. He burned approximately 90% of the coins in order to boost their value and then donated what was left. Buterin’s donations amounted to 50 trillion SHIB (which was worth more than $1 billion at the time) to the COVID-Crypto Relief Fund in India and $665 million worth of SHIB to the Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit organization that seeks to ensure transformative, cutting-edge tech goes towards benefitting life and avoids large-scale risks such as the potential existential threats arising as a result of AI.
The ecosystem
SHIB is the primary cryptocurrency in the ecosystem, functioning as both a store of value and an exchange medium. LEASH was created to track the price fluctuations of Dogecoin and ensure community members get certain benefits, such as liquidity, NFT minting, and exclusive access to sales taking place on the metaverse. BONE is the designated governance token that lets users cast votes through the DAO. As a result, the more BONE tokens you own, the more certain you can be that your vote carries plenty of weight.
There have been concerns regarding the potential for centralization when it was discovered in 2021 that a single whale holds billions worth of SHIB, as well as about the potential for poor decision-making as a result of the FOMO associated with Dogecoin’s competitor.
Is it for you?
There’s no denying the meteoric and highly impressive rise of the Shiba Inu coin. It started as a fringe project and ended up becoming one of the most popular digital coins in the world. Before Shibarium was released, SHIB didn’t have any clear value, and many people hesitated to buy the coin, but things are very different now. SHIB can serve as a way to diversify your portfolio and ensure your assets are more stable.
As with any other cryptocurrency, though, you must be aware of its unpredictability and the fluctuations that can appear. Before you invest, make sure you come up with a strategy that is perfectly tailored to your financial needs and goals in order to increase your likelihood of success.