Beginers guide - What is the Shiba Inu coin?

The Shiba Inu coin, launched less than a year ago and named after the dog breed, is a cryptocurrency that trades as SHIB and champions itself as the ‘Dogecoin killer.’ A single SHIB coin is nearly worthless—less than $.000029 as of Wednesday—but its trading surged this week after it was added to cryptocurrency trading platforms OKEx and Binance. Chinese traders have helped propel SHIB’s rise, with the Chinese-founded exchange Huobi, which is popular among Chinese traders, handling the largest share of SHIB’s trading volume in recent days. We all have heard about Dogecoin and Shiba Inu is kind of in the same range. It is a meme cryptocurrency that has given staggering returns in the past few weeks.

It was made purely for comical purposes, just like Dogecoin. And just like Dogecoin, it also received huge popularity as the price surged and gave colossal returns to investors. The website of the currency claims it to be a decentralized community building. It is only an ERC-20 token that allows users to holds billions and trillions of coins. Shiba Inu has been listed on some centralized exchanges, but their website says it’s best to buy it from Uniswap or 1Inch.

Buying cryptocurrencies, like any investment, is a risky business and making money is never guaranteed so you'll need to be prepared to lose what you put in.

Ryoshi has promoted the coin's nickname as a 'Dogecoin killer,' arguing that SHIB's technology is more "community-driven" than its counterpart, which uses the Shiba Inu as its mascot. And Ryoshi has heralded its minuscule worth. “We have the ability to outpace the value of Dogecoin, exponentially, without ever crossing the $.01 mark,” the founder wrote in a SHIB ‘woofpaper,’ better known as a white paper.

Ryoshi, in the paper, says that the coin, along with the ‘Shiba Inu Ecosystem,’ that includes the ShibSwap exchange and a decentralized Shib Army of developers, coin holders, and fans, was an experiment in "spontaneous community building." Ryoshi says in the paper that Shiba Inus are “incredible dogs” and encourages people to donate to the Shiba Inu Rescue Association. Ryoshi could not be reached for comment on this article.

“SHIB coin is a meme coin and embraces that,” says Caselin, referring to the new class of coins based on memes and promoted on platforms like Tiktok and Reddit. "The meme coin movement rejects formalities and protocol...hence Dogecoin started off as a joke and the Shiba white paper is called the woofpaper," he said.

Ryoshi claims to not hold any coins and gave 50% of the coins to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin after creating the currency. In theory, the move gives Buterin the ability to single-handedly control the market and crash SHIB’s value should he sell off his holdings. But giving Buterin this power was intentional.

That’s wild for a coin that seemingly came out of nowhere. While still well short of Dogecoin’s current market cap of $65.5 billion, making it the 4th most valuable coin as of this writing, Shiba Inu has also seen wilder gains of late. After all, Dogecoin’s price is only up 687% over the last 30 days, per CoinGecko, and barely 14% in the last week. SHIB buyers seem to be looking to duplicate the kind of rapid and sizable returns that DOGE has provided at times this year.

Shiba Inu may be new to some investors but the platform is quite interesting and may have some future potential value to offer. The Shiba Inu token, or SHIB, is listed and incentivized on ShibaSwap, a decentralized exchange. SHIB is a new token that is banking off the popularity of fellow dog-themed Dogecoin. It may take some time for large investors to appreciate its features. In the meantime, the company has not yet released a product to its community. If a lot of this seems ridiculous or even nonsensical, you’re probably not alone in that thinking. 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. Can Shiba Inu follow a similar trajectory? At least when it comes to startling price surges, it’s already happened.

According to its website, they're cryptocurrency tokens and allow users to hold trillions of them.

Shiba tokens are listed and incentivized on ShibaSwap, its own decentralized exchange.

The tokens feature the same Shiba Inu dog as Dogecoin, which has rocketed in popularity recently.

Susannah Streeter, senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, told The Sun: "The Shiba Inu coin appears to have been created just to give Dogecoin a run for its money.

"It features the same dog which became a meme, and aims to replicate Dogecoin’s success of turning a joke into a money-making machine."

This is something to be aware of when you're considering its legitimacy when making an investment.

The Shiba token website said: "Nicknamed the DOGECOIN KILLER, this ERC-20 ONLY token can remain well under a penny and still outpace Dogecoin in a small amount of time (relatively speaking)."

Investing is always a risk but investing in cryptocurrency is an even higher risk as they are VERY volatile, so you should be prepared to lose cash.

There is also no guarantee that you can convert cryptoassests back into cash, as it may depend on the demand and supply in the existing market.

Plus, fees and charges may be higher than with regulated investment products.

Cryptocurrency firms aren't regulated in the way that other financial firms are. This means that you won't have any protection if things go wrong.

Ms Streeter said: "Investors should treat trading in crypto currencies with extreme caution, and dabble at the edges of their investment portfolio, only with money they can afford to lose."

While Nigel Green, chief executive of deVere Group, added: "Extreme caution should be exercised before investing in un-tested cryptocurrencies.

"The price swings can be expected to be wild and there’s a legitimate risk that investors could get burned.

SHIB’s future is uncertain, and experts caution that it may already be too late to get in on the action. Even though it is said that Shiba Inu is a competitor of Dogecoin, it is not necessary that the price of the coins have to be the same. It’s all about the market cap that means the total supply and price per token. Shiba has a much bigger supply than Dogecoin, and that makes it incredibly difficult to reach the same price as Dogecoin. At present, Dogecoin has a market cap of around $58 Billion at a price of $0.44. And on the other hand, we have Shiba Inu with a market cap of $8.9 billion at a price of $0.000022.

This means if Shiba does reach even 1 cent, its market cap will be larger than that of BTC. So, that you know, the market cap of BTC is just under $1 trillion after the recent market dip. So, it is not practically possible for Shiba Inu to reach the price of 50 cents like dogecoin. Hence, if you have missed out on the gains that Dogecoin gave in the last few months and are exploring other options, don’t expect Shiba to reach 50 cents or even 1 cent and make you a millionaire.