Shiba Inu

Shiba Inu is a popular meme coin that has skyrocketed in price, creating a lot of hype online and in the media. At one point, it had such a massive price hike that it made many people rich. However, is it worth jumping on the Shiba Inu bandwagon? What is Shiba Inu, anyway?

What Is Shiba Inu?

Shiba Inu is a meme coin, meaning its value primarily lies in its meme value. Meme coins are coins based on popular internet memes. One of the most famous meme coins is Dogecoin, which has its base in the famous “doge” meme.

Like other cryptocurrencies, Shiba Inu is decentralized, meaning that no single entity controls its price or keeps track of its transactions. Instead, when you buy or sell Shiba Inu, the blockchain records the trade so the public can keep track of it. That is called decentralization, which is how cryptocurrencies can operate without a central authority regulating them.

The origins of Shiba Inu are not entirely clear. Its release was in 2020, and it then served as a response to the popular Dogecoin meme coin. Dogecoin, or DOGE, originates in the populair internet meme featuring a Shiba Inu.

Who Created Shiba Inu?

The person who created Shiba Inu went by the name Ryoshi. However, not much else is public about this person. It is not entirely clear if Ryoshi was operating alone or if they created Shiba Inu in partnership with someone else. We also do not know if Ryoshi is a male or a female.

Not only that, but it’s even possible that Ryoshi is not an individual but a group of people. In any case, we are unlikely to ever find out, as Ryoshi ended up exiting the Shiba Inu project when it lost its value during one of its dips.

Why did Ryoshi want to be anonymous? We’re not entirely sure why, but in a blog post that he or she deleted, titled “I AM RYOSHI,” Ryoshi said that they were a nobody and unimportant and that even if efforts to unmask their identity were successful, the results would be underwhelming.

Ryoshi also shared their vision for Shiba Inu. According to the blog post, Ryoshi wanted to create a cryptocurrency that ran on its own, unlike other popular cryptocurrencies with a famous CEO or founder. Ryoshi wanted Shiba Inu to have nobody in charge and for the average user to be responsible. They wanted everyone to walk alongside them and be equal in this journey.

It’s also likely that Ryoshi got their inspiration from the founder of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. Nobody knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is, which was by design.

Ryoshi did run an anonymous blog at one point on Medium. In their blog posts, they explained how Shiba Inu, or SHIB, works and gave updates about the project.

However, Ryoshi later deleted that blog, although archives remain on the internet. For example, you can read an archive of the “I AM RYOSHI” blog post here.

How Does Shiba Inu Work?

SHIB originates from the popular internet meme featuring Shiba Inus, a type of dog breed. In that sense, it is similar to Dogecoin. The difference is that Shiba Inu runs on the Ethereum network. Without getting too technical, SHIB also has some unique characteristics.

Shiba Inu is not just a coin but an entire ecosystem. Other currencies in the Shiba ecosystem include LEASH and BONE.

LEASH is another token in the ecosystem. Holders of LEASH who supply LEASH to the liquidity pool, which enables constant trading, get rewards in the form of LEASH tokens. There are only 107,646 LEASH tokens in supply, a far cry from the number of SHIB tokens on the market.

BONE tokens are governance tokens. Holding BONE tokens will allow you to vote on the future of the Shiba Inu ecosystem.

Shiba Inu even has its own trading platform: ShibaSwap. However, buying Shiba Inu on ShibaSwap is quite complicated. You must create a MetaMask wallet, add Ethereum to your wallet, connect your wallet to ShibaSwap, and then swap ETH for SHIB.

That can all be too overwhelming for the newbie user, although ShibaSwap does allow users to earn rewards through the WOOF Returns program.

Instead, you can buy Shiba Inu from an exchange like Knaken, which makes the process a lot easier.

What Is the Shiba Inu Coin Used For?

You can use Shiba Inu for any purpose, such as buying stuff or supporting friends, by sending it from your wallet to another. However, it’s less of a transactional coin and more of a currency you can trade by buying high and selling low, using short-term or long-term trades.

What Is Shiba Inu Trying To Solve?

Since Shiba Inu is a meme coin, it isn’t trying to solve any problem in particular. One of the unique characteristics of meme coins is that they are funny and humorous internet jokes. That’s not to say that a meme coin like Shiba Inu can’t be practical as a decentralized peer-to-peer currency, but that’s not usually the primary purpose of a meme coin.

What Makes Shiba Inu Unique?

Ryoshi created SHIB to be a “Dogecoin killer,” and it does have some improvements over DOGE. For example, it uses Ethereum as its base.

In addition, Ryoshi burned a large portion of the initial supply. Burning tokens happens when you send them to a dead wallet that doesn’t exist, so nobody can recover them.

By “burning” tokens, Shiba Inu can remain deflationary, which helps keep the price high, unlike Dogecoin, which is inflationary. Shiba Inu continues to burn tokens, helping to reduce the total supply.

Also, one advantage of Shiba Inu is that it is not just a single token. Instead, it is an entire ecosystem, as you already read above. This ecosystem can continue improving and adding features, helping keep the Shiba Inu project alive and giving it new purposes, making it more attractive to investors.