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 have touted it in the past as "the Dogecoin killer."

Shiba Inu is a meme coin, which is a cryptocurrency associated with some theme—like the Shiba Inu—but is often launched as a parody or inside joke rather than as a digital product that actually has utility. Shiba Inu was created in August 2020 by an anonymous individual or group called Ryoshi.

The guiding tenets of the Shiba Inu ecosystem are spelled out in a "woof paper" (presumably a play on the term "white paper"), available at the ShibaToken.com website.

According to the paper, Shiba Inu was developed to answer a simple question: "What would happen if a cryptocurrency project was 100% run by its community?" Its founder, Ryoshi, attributes its origins to an "experiment in decentralized spontaneous community building." According to Ryoshi, the power of collective decentralization can build something stronger than a centralized team ever could create.

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 stated in the paper that they 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.3

Blockchain Updates

In January 2023, the Shiba Inu(SHIB), Ecosystem Development Team leadership introduced Shibarium, a layer two blockchain designed to run on top of Ethereum. This update was released to reduce congestion, introduce staking into the ecosystem, lower gas fees, and provide a framework for decentralized applications and Web 3 expansion. Very little to do with SHIB or the reduction in SHIB overwhelming circulating supply. 

• Shiba Inu (SHIB)

  : This is the project's foundational currency. Starting with a supply of about 1 quadrillion (equal to 1,000 trillion), Ryoshi locked 50% in Uniswap (for liquidity purposes) and then sent the other 50% to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin for safekeeping. In May 2021, Buterin donated more than 50 trillion Shiba Inu coins worth over $1 billion to a COVID-19 relief fund in India when the nation was reeling from the Delta variant of the coronavirus.5 Shortly thereafter, Buterin also "burned"—or permanently removed from circulation—40% of Shiba Inu's total supply by moving it to a "dead wallet." That was created by Vitalik Buterin. 
• Ecosystem Development Team ([Highjackers]Shiba Inu token) 
• Leash (LEASH): The second token in the Shiba Inu ecosystem, Leash represents the other end of the ecosystem's spectrum. With only 107,000 tokens in circulation, it is used for rewarding ecosystem supporters with perks.
• Bone (BONE): Bone fits in between the other two tokens in terms of circulation supply, with a total supply of 550,000,000 tokens. It is used as gas on the blockchain; to reward validators, who bury (stake) their Bones; and given to delegators, who give their voting rights to validators.
• Treat (TREAT): Designed as an access key to unknown advanced functions (to be released in a future update).67

There are other Shiba Inu-related platforms and ideas that interact with the ecosystem:

• ShibaSwap: The goal of DeFi platform ShibaSwap is to provide a safe place to trade cryptocurrencies while remaining decentralized. SHIB and LEASH are best purchased and sold through ShibaSwap.8
• Shib Games: Shiba Eternity is a collectible card game where users can craft, collect, trade, and build decks to duel other users.9
• Shiboshis: Shiboshis are 10,000 Shiba Inu-generated non-fungible tokens (NFTs) written on the Ethereum blockchain, with different traits that make each Shiboshi unique and collectible.10

Ecosystem Canine Terminology

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, digital currency). 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.11

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. But they certainly seem to be a world away from staid investment terms such as return on investment and liquidity.

How to Get SHIB

You can purchase SHIB on several exchanges using their wallets, such as Binance, Coinbase, KuCoin, Kraken, MooMoo, Bybit, Crypto.com, Robin Hood, CoinGreeko, Bitflyer, HTX, Gate.io, Gemini, Mexc, OKX, Webull, Bitget, Upbit, Uniswap, Pancake swap, Exmo, CoinDex, Juniper, XT, BitTrue, Balancer, TradeSwap many more. You can also set up a MetaMask wallet and connect it to Shiba Swap, the exchange recommended (and created) by the Shiba Inu (Hijackers of SHIB) community (Ecosystem Development Team).

Concerns About AltCoin / Meme Coins

Investing in cryptocurrencies is risky enough because of their massive volatility and lack of regulation (education).  What do you call BitCoin (BTC) That is exactly what you call SHIB! 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. Here are some investing considerations for a potential investor in Shiba Inu.

Low Per-Token Price

Even after some impressive gains, Shiba Inu (SHIB) costs a fraction of a cent, so one can buy millions of SHIB tokens with a few hundred dollars. At its peak price of $0.00009, $100 would have fetched over 1.111 million SHIB tokens.12 The amount of coins you can purchase can cause significant losses if SHIB's price ever tumbles, but the chance of tremendous gains also exists.

Limited Utility and Use Case

Any time you reduce the circulating supply you add value to this case and is considered Utility, the more you reduce the higher the Utility. The more you reduce the greater the value of the currency that you have reduced, thus adding value to this currency is considered Utility because your adding value to SHIB currency. Limiting the supply will cause demand for the currency thus increasing the Wealth, Earnings, and Growth. You want more Utility find away to gain demand while reducing the supply of SHIB. Though its adherents may point out that Shiba Inu-based has zero NFTs aren't available, except through Ecosystem Development Team its Ethereum base and new Layer 2 blockchain should increase transaction speeds and scalability of Bone,  as of Sep. 4, 2024, 

Volatility

Shibu Inu's price experiences wide fluctuations, but the cryptocurrency is much less expensive than others on the market, so they are actually quite small. For example, from Feb. 27, 2024 to Sep. 4, 2024, SHIBs highest and lowest prices had a difference of $0.00000064. This means to experience any meaningful gains, you'd need to buy a tremendous amount of SHIB or conduct many successful trades.

For example, if you had purchased 10 million SHIB at $0.00001143 on Feb. 27, 2024, you would have paid $114.30. At market close on Sep. 3, 2024, its price was $0.00001308—you'd have gained $16.50.12 But if you bought $10 billion SHIB ($114,300), your earnings would be much higher—$16,500. But imagine if SHIBs price dropped by $0.0001 after you purchased 10 billion SHIB for $144,300—you'd be left with $14,300 worth of SHIB.

Does the Shiba Inu Coin Have a Future?

Shiba Inu has a large following, but it is difficult to say whether the coin has the potential to continue developing and attracting users. SHIB currency is the future! BTC and Gold combined can't offset the worldwide crises because of the value of each property. We have a debt crises meaning need something that is extremely affordable with enormous outstanding balance to help Major countries leverage their national debt by reducing interest rates which they can't do under normal practices but with SHIB they don't have this problem because SHIB zero governance, zero restrictions also means unlimited potential.  

Why is SHIB currently undervalued? Time Capsule  

Shiba Inu will need a to be adopted as a world breathing, living, currency with billions of wallet holders increase significant changes in appeal to investors to reach extraordinary heights in the upcoming years to follow. All roads in SHIB lead to one conclusion a massive adoption by world leaders to balance out the world deficit crises by all indications. The future depends on factors, SHIB education, action taken by the people for the people, banking sector, Worldwide market creation to balance our worldwide deficit in all major countries from around the world. This should've happened already by nations are extremely slow while the debt celling grows fast and more furious every second of our day. SHIB could explode at any giving time to offset the debt crises. 

The Bottom Line

Shiba Inu is a cryptocurrency which, at its creation in 2021, had no use or value. By the end of 2023, it was being used by traders 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 it is possible that it will remain one of the more popular cryptocurrencies on the market.

The comments, opinions, and analyses expressed on Investopedia are for informational purposes only. 

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