What Is Shiba Inu SHIB in Cryptocurrency, and How Does It Work?

As of the date this article was written, the author does not own cryptocurrency. The space constantly undergoes changes and reacts, almost explosively, to the news.

  1. We are compensated in exchange for placement of sponsored products and services, or by you clicking on certain links posted on our site.
  2. Whether or not SHIB is a good investment depends on your investing goals, risk tolerance, strategy, personal preferences, and outlook.
  3. As of the date this article was written, the author does not own cryptocurrency.
  4. We do not include the universe of companies or financial offers that may be available to you.

The most popular exchange to buy and trade Shiba Inu is Binance, where the most active trading pair SHIB/USDT has a trading volume of $441,247,067.84 in the last 24 hours. The Shiba Inu team launched a decentralized exchange called Shibaswap with 2 new tokens, LEASH and BONE. More recently, the team has also launched Shibarium, this country could soon make bitcoin its official currency a dedicated L2 chain surrounding the Shiba Inu (SHIB) token. 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.

But don’t get this coin confused with the Japanese dog breed that inspired its name. 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 how to buy sell and trade cryptocurrencies 2020 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. On the other hand, with cryptocurrency such as Shiba Inu, your investment is not backed by any asset or cash flow at all.

Trending Coins

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. 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. Shiba Inu has risen substantially during its brief existence, before plunging almost as fast.

What Is Shiba Inu (SHIB)?

Shiba Inu is widely considered to be an alternative to Dogecoin; in fact, proponents of Shiba Inu tout it as “the Dogecoin killer.” You can purchase SHIB on several exchanges using their wallets, such as Binance, Coinbase, KuCoin, and Kraken, to name a few. You can also set up a MetaMask wallet and connect it to Shiba Swap, the exchange recommended (and created) by the Shiba Inu community. The trading volume of Shiba Inu (SHIB) is $1,585,772,929.37 in the last 24 hours, representing a 0.10% increase from one day ago and signalling a recent rise in market activity. If the well of traders runs dry, then they won’t keep running into the market to push up the price.

While we strive to provide a wide range of offers, Bankrate does not include information about every financial or credit product or service. Shiba Inu is one type of cryptocurrency, or digital currency, that is available only online. 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.

The Bankrate promise

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. 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.

One year later, that stake accounted for about 13% of SHIB’s total circulation of 550 trillion and gained a staggering 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 an Ethereum-based altcoin (a cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin) that features the Shiba Inu—a Japanese breed of hunting dog—as its mascot.

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

While the coin’s price may eventually reach the moon – the odds against it are astronomically high. Shiba Inu spiked in price during September how much does it cost to build your own cryptocurrency 2021, when it was added to the Coinbase platform. Since then its price has fallen along with the broader rout in cryptocurrencies.

This speculative nature keeps legendary investors such as Warren Buffett away from crypto. Whether or not SHIB is a good investment depends on your investing goals, risk tolerance, strategy, personal preferences, and outlook. 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.

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. 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). 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. 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.

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 backed by the assets or cash flow of an underlying business. 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. 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. 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. Any estimates based on past performance do not a guarantee future performance, and prior to making any investment you should discuss your specific investment needs or seek advice from a qualified professional. 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. 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.