This speculative nature keeps legendary investors such as Warren Buffett away from crypto. Shiba Inu spiked in price during September 2021, when it was added to the Coinbase platform. Since then its price has fallen along with the broader rout in cryptocurrencies. The comments, opinions, and analyses expressed on Investopedia are for informational purposes only. As of the date this article was written, the author does not own cryptocurrency. Some trades have become the stuff of investing legend, such as George Soros’ wager against the British pound in 1991 or the short subprime mortgages trade by John Paulson from 2007 to 2009.
But for all that, it remains a “joke token” propelled by retail investor sentiment. It’s a similar phenomenon to the WallStreetBets movement that saw Reddit traders “ape in” to stocks such as GameStop and AMC because it amused them, or Crypto Twitter snapping up stocks of tungsten cubes. The first iteration of the DAO will enable the Shiba Inu community to vote on which crypto projects will be added to the DEX’s liquidity pools, and how rewards in its BONE governance token will be distributed among them. SHIB’s price jumped in May 2021, soon after being listed by Binance following apparently immense user demand. During an episode of the Up Only podcast, Buterin explained the technical process he went through to access and burn the SHIB tokens, which involved buying a new laptop to complete the transaction. Alongside SHIB, Ryoshi has also created the “Dogecoin killer” token LEASH, albeit in limited quantities, while BONE launched alongside the ShibaSwap decentralized exchange (DEX).
In terms of sheer percentage gains, a purported trade in Shiba Inu by an unknown trader puts even those legendary trades in the shade. The trader bought about 70 trillion SHIB tokens for approximately $8,000 in August 2020. One year later, that stake accounted for about 13% of SHIB’s total circulation of 550 trillion and gained a staggering how to buy electroneum with usd value of $5.7 billion. In January 2023, the Shiba Inu community leadership introduced Shibarium, a layer two blockchain designed to run on top of Ethereum. It is supposed to reduce congestion, introduce staking into its ecosystem, lower gas fees, and provide a framework for decentralized applications and Web 3 expansion.
Shiba Inu is one of a newer wave of cryptocurrencies, riding a surge of interest in digital assets. If you’re looking to trade the cryptocurrency — or really any digital currency — it’s important that you understand what you’re investing in and what the potential risks are. Crypto is volatile and it’s not typically backed by any assets, so avoid wagering money that you can’t afford to lose. In keeping with the dog theme, the aforementioned Shiba Inu woof paper uses canine terms to describe how returns can be generated from one’s Shiba Inu tokens. On ShibaSwap, these tokens can be used to “dig” (provide liquidity), “bury” (stake tokens), and even “fetch” (exchange one token for another). Tokens used in these strategies generate “Woof” returns in the form of Bone tokens that are distributed to token pools known as “Puppy Pools,” according to the woof paper.
Hence, where Dogecoin is forked from Luckycoin, which itself forked from Bitcoin-spinoff Litecoin, SHIB is an ERC-20 token running on the Ethereum blockchain. Bankrate.com is an independent, advertising-supported publisher and comparison service. We are compensated in exchange for placement of sponsored products and services, or by you clicking on certain links posted on our site. Therefore, this compensation may impact how, where and in what order products appear within listing categories, except where prohibited by law for our mortgage, home equity and other home lending products. Other factors, such as our own proprietary website rules and whether a product is offered in your area or at your self-selected credit score range, can also impact how and where products appear on this site. While we strive to provide a wide range of offers, Bankrate does not include information about every financial or credit product or service.
Because Shiba Inu is an Ethereum-based ERC-20 token, it was created on and hosted by the Ethereum blockchain instead of its own blockchain. Ryoshi states in the paper that he chose to build the Shiba Inu ecosystem on Ethereum because it was already secure and well-established, and it allowed the project to stay decentralized. The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. But that might not matter if this new wave of meme-drive retail investment turns out to be the future of finance, and not—as some caution—a herd-driven bubble akin to the tulip mania of the 1600s. “If people care enough about a joke,” the exec pointed out, “it becomes real.” Shiba Inu’s developers have continued to build on their commitment to a project that’s “100% run by its community”.
Its price soared in 2021, multiplying many times over, but still trades for tiny fractions of a cent. The year 2022 has been rough for Shiba Inu, with its price plummeting, but it still remains one of the world’s most popular cryptocurrencies, according to CoinMarketCap. But don’t get this coin confused with the Japanese dog breed that inspired its name. On the other hand, with cryptocurrency such as Shiba Inu, your investment is not backed by any asset or cash flow at all.
- Like many other cryptocurrencies, Shiba Inu operates on a decentralized computer network running a database called blockchain.
- The astronomical figures being bandied around in relation to a dog-themed meme coin may seem ridiculous.
- “If people care enough about a joke,” the exec pointed out, “it becomes real.”
- Rather than looking at the price gains and falling into fear of missing out, it’s vital to understand what you’re buying and why it may or may not rise in value.
- But they certainly seem to be a world away from staid investment terms such as return on investment and liquidity.
Rather than looking at the price gains and falling into fear of missing out, it’s vital to understand what you’re buying and why it may or may not rise in value. In the case of most cryptocurrencies, they’re not guide to crypto day trading for 2021 2020 backed by the assets or cash flow of an underlying business. SHIB’s meteoric rise has made some people very rich indeed; one wallet saw its holdings rise from around $8,000 to over $5 billion in 400 days.
In December 2021, the devs announced the first iteration of Doggy DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization aimed at handing over control of the project’s ShibaSwap DEX to the Shiba Inu community. Of the $1 billion worth of SHIB he donated to charity, $100 million in the stablecoin USDC was subsequently returned to Buterin, to be donated to “higher-risk higher-reward covid science and relief projects worldwide.” According to its official website, SHIB was created as an “experiment in decentralized spontaneous community building” by pseudonymous developer Ryoshi (which means “fisherman” in Japanese). Leading the pack is Shiba Inu (SHIB), which exploded onto the scene in 2021, jockeying for position with Dogecoin as top dog. Adding Shiba Inu (SHIB) to MetaMask allows you to view your token holdings, trade on decentralized exchanges, and more.
You can copy SHIB’s contract address (0x95ad61b0a150d79219dcf64e1e6cc01f0b64c4ce) and import it manually, or if you’ve installed MetaMask’s chrome extension, add SHIB to MetaMask with one click on CoinGecko. As a result of that, Vitalik proceeded to donate 10% of his SHIB holdings to a COVID-19 relief effort in India and the remaining 40% is burnt forever. That donation was worth about $1 billion at that time, which makes it one of the largest donation ever in the world. While the coin’s price may eventually reach the moon – the odds against it are astronomically high. But this compensation does not influence the information we publish, or the reviews that you see on this site. We do not include the universe of companies or financial offers that may be available to you.
The only way you make money is if someone comes along and is willing to pay you more for your coins. Traders win when they can get someone else to buy cryptocurrency for more, or what’s called the greater fool theory of investing. Institutional investors, meanwhile, want nothing to do with meme coins and tokens; one exec working on institutional crypto custody told Decrypt that “zero” clients are looking to allocate a portion of their portfolios to SHIB. For cryptocurrency enthusiasts, part of the allure of meme coins is that they reject conventional protocols, and this unconventional approach may extend to the use of canine terms to describe return strategies.
What Is Shiba Inu (SHIB) in Cryptocurrency, and How Does It Work?
Shiba Inu is a cryptocurrency which, at its creation in 2021, had no use or value. By the end of 2023, it was being traded in large volumes to take advantage of microscopic price movements and used as a payment method. Shiba Inu is continuously being developed and improved by a dedicated community to have utility and use cases, so there is a distinct possibility that it will remain one of the more popular cryptocurrencies on the market. Investing in cryptocurrencies is risky enough because of their massive volatility and lack of regulation. Investing in the altcoin/meme coin space presents an additional challenge because of a lack of differentiation and the fact that most of their value is based on trading by their followers. Unlike Dogecoin, it’s a token—a cryptocurrency that runs atop another blockchain’s infrastructure—rather than a coin, which exists on its own blockchain.
Shiba Inu is an Ethereum-based altcoin (a cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin) that features the Shiba Inu—a Japanese breed of hunting dog—as its mascot. Shiba Inu is widely considered to be an alternative to Dogecoin; in fact, proponents of Shiba Inu tout it as “the Dogecoin killer.” The price of Shiba Inu (SHIB) is calculated in real-time by aggregating the latest data across 128 exchanges and 234 markets, using a global volume-weighted average formula. Shiba Inu has risen substantially during its brief existence, before plunging almost as fast.
Breed Explorer
The astronomical figures being bandied around in relation to a dog-themed meme coin may seem ridiculous. But Dogecoin was long considered a “joke” cryptocurrency before it became 2021’s breakout coin and the talk of fans like Mark Cuban and Elon Musk. At times the cryptocurrency has entered the top 10 coins ranked by market cap and even passed Dogecoin in the rankings, propelled by listings on major crypto when and how to choose html for form validation logrocket blog exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase. The price movements of meme coins are frequently linked to sentiment around breaking news and influencer activity on social media. Shiba Inu itself is named after the eponymous dog breed, which became the face of the “doge” meme that inspired the creation of Dogecoin. Shiba Inu is one type of cryptocurrency, or digital currency, that is available only online.
GETTING STARTED IN DOG SPORTS
With a stock, you’re investing in the future of that business, so if it does well, your investment will do well over time. Shiba Inu also has other aspects of a community, including ShibaSwap, its own decentralized platform for trading coins, and Shiboshis, a type of non-fungible token (NFT). Like many other cryptocurrencies, Shiba Inu operates on a decentralized computer network running a database called blockchain. This blockchain database tracks and manages the crypto coin, verifying transactions and recording every transaction that occurs with it. So the database ends up being a long-running record of the movement of the cryptocurrency. Specifically, Shiba Inu runs on the Ethereum blockchain, offering the safety and functionality of that platform.
But they certainly seem to be a world away from staid investment terms such as return on investment and liquidity. Dogecoin (DOGE) was the original meme coin, but since its rise to prominence, a number of rival dog-themed cryptocurrencies have emerged as challengers for its crown, including Doge Cash, Akita Inu, and Dogelon Mars. Some traders see it as a type of crypto lottery ticket because they can afford, for example, 1 million of these coins (at a cost of $12). Like with penny stocks, they think that if the coin just went up to one cent, they’d make a lot of money. Or even if Shiba Inu went to where Dogecoin was trading, they’d cash in their chips. That backing by assets and cash flow is something that differentiates a traditional investment from a cryptocurrency.