Shiba Inu is one of the most popular meme coins for crypto investors and one of the rising coins in the market that saw a significant price increase. Tweets from Tesla founder Elon Musk provided major impetus for the meme coin’s price surge. SHIB hit all-time highs above $0.00008 in early November 2021, successfully surpassing its main competitor Dogecoin’s market cap. At the time, its market cap was over $40 billion, ranking it in the top 10 most valuable cryptocurrencies.

What is memecoin?

Shiba Inu and Dogecoin are meme coins, which are cryptocurrencies that are associated with some theme. Shiba Inu coin is named after the Shiba Inu, a Japanese breed of dog originating in the Chūbu region, the same breed that is depicted in Dogecoin’s symbol, itself originally a satirical cryptocurrency based on the Doge meme. Memecoins are often launched as a parody or inside joke rather than as a digital product that actually has some utility. For more information, please refer to another article “What is memecoin”.

What is Shiba Inu Coin?

Shiba Inu was created in August 2020 by an anonymous individual or group called Ryoshi. According to the “woof paper”, Shiba Inu was developed as the answer to a simple question: “What would happen if a cryptocurrency project was 100% run by its community?” 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 could ever create.
Because Shiba Inu is an Ethereum-based ERC-20 token, it is created on and hosted by the Ethereum blockchain. SHIB had a total supply of 1 quadrillion. When it was first launched, Ryoshi locked 50% of the total supply in Uniswap to provide liquidity. The other 500 trillion SHIB were sent to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who decided to burn 90% and donate the remaining to the India COVID-19 relief fund.

What does the Shiba Inu ecosystem consist of?

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. For example, these tokens can be used to “DIG” (provide liquidity), “BURY” (stake tokens), and even “FETCH” (exchange one token for another).
The Shiba Inu ecosystem consists of three tokens: Shiba Inu (SHIB), Leash (LEASH), and Bone (BONE).

Shiba Inu (SHIB), this is the project’s foundational currency. Starting with a supply of 1 quadrillion, Ryoshi locked 50% in Uniswap, then “burned” the other half to Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin for safekeeping.

Leash (LEASH), the second token in the Shiba Inu ecosystem. With a total supply of 107,646 tokens, it represents the other end of the ecosystem’s spectrum. The LEASH price is controlled by an algorithm which constantly tweaks the supply of the LEASH token. This algorithm ensures that the LEASH price is always 1,000 times larger than DOGE’s.

Bone (BONE), the latest token in the Shiba Inu ecosystem. With a total supply of 250,000,000 tokens, BONE is designed to fit perfectly between SHIB and LEASH in regards to circulation supply. BONE is a Governance token which will allow the ShibArmy to vote on upcoming proposals on Doggy DAO.
Except three tokens, the Shiba Inu Ecosystem also includes:

ShibaSwap, launched in July 2021, ShibaSwap is the native decentralized exchange (DEX) of the Shiba Inu coin project. SHIB, LEASH, and BONE, come together to create ShibaSwap which gives users the ability to DIG (provide liquidity), BURY (stake), and SWAP tokens to gain WOOF Returns through passive income reward system.

Shiba Inu Incubator, previously known as the Artist Incubator, Shiba Inu Incubator is the proposed NFT project of the ecosystem. This is where the ShibArmy members can express their creativity and build their artworks which will later be displayed, sold, or auctioned through ShibaSwap.

Shiboshis, these are a collection of 10,000 Shiba Inu-generated non-fungible tokens (NFTs) written on the Ethereum blockchain, with different traits that make each Shiboshi unique and collectible. They can be purchased and traded on OpenSea without fees, as well as on ShibaSwap.

What is the price history of Shiba Inu Coin?

Like every other memecoin, Shiba Inu didn’t begin with a flying start. In fact, basically nothing happened from its creation in August 2020 until Elon Musk posted on March 14, 2021, which said “I’m getting a Shiba Inu #resistanceisfutile.” And so begins Shiba Inu’s parabolic run.
On April 20, Jordan Belfort, aka the Wolf of Wall Street, tweets “SHOW ME THE SHIBA INU.” On this day, a single SHIB costs $0.000004058. The $100 of SHIB bought on Aug. 1, 2020, would already be worth $795,686.
On May 7, the number of wallets holding the SHIB token increased to 150K. The next day, another 50K wallets pick up some SHIB, bringing the total to 200K holders. On the same day, SHIB’s market cap crossed $10 billion.
On May 11, a single SHIB costs $0.00003571. The $100 in SHIB bought on Aug 1, 2020, would now be worth $7,001,960. This is an eightfold increase in less than a month.
On May 12, an article was published on the Fortune magazine website titled “What is the Shiba Inu coin? Experts weigh in on the ‘Dogecoin killer’ hype.”
On the same day, Vitalik Buterin put his SHIB to good use by donating 50 trillion SHIB to the India Covid relief Fund. This was about 5% of the total SHIB tokens in circulation.
Shiba Inu’s price soared more than tenfold in October 2021, its value increased 240% over the week, giving it a peak market capitalization of $41 billion (on October 29, 2021).
On November 1, Shiba briefly overtook Dogecoin as the NO.1 memecoin, featuring in the top 10 cryptos when measured by market cap. Keep in mind that Dogecoin had a 7-year head start on Shiba.
At its all-time high, the Shiba Inu price reached a market cap of around $51.4 billion, or 19607X to reach BTC’s market cap. Shib price reached $0.00008845 at ATH. However, Shiba Inu has fallen harder than most other cryptocurrencies with the most recent correction in April 2022. It currently sits around $0.000009851 per token which is nearly 90% less than its all-time high price.

Conclusion

SHIB gets its name from its similarity to Dogecoin, it has been an amazing investment for anyone who purchased the token before its initial explosion in May. However, it is a very risky, speculative investment. Despite the crash price, Shiba Inu has very limited utility, and its value is based mainly on a social-media-fueled speculative frenzy. There have also been concerns about the concentration of the coin with a single “whale” wallet controlling billions of dollars’ worth of the token, and frenzied buying by retail investors motivated by fear of missing out (FOMO). Therefore, be cautious and DYOR before investing.