There’s a new crypto on the block that has been shattering the windows of the crypto sphere in the past few weeks. This doggy coin, with a canine as its symbol has a name eponymous with the animal that represents it, Shiba Inu. What is the Shiba Inu token and why has it generated so much frenzy? Is it truly the Dogecoin killer?

Sharing the same face with Dogecoin is a sure cause for comparison, as Shiba Inu is one of the many cryptocurrencies created as a parody of the more pensive big brother, Bitcoin.

How Did Shiba Inu Blow Up?

The Shiba Inu cryptocurrency is one of many coins based on the popular ‘Doge’ meme. However this token takes one step further by taking its name directly from the breed of the dog. At some point in 2020, the cryptocurrency was worth only 0.000002 cents.

Shiba Inu is a crypto currency started as a satire on the fun Currency, Dogecoin. 

Launched in August 2020 by a anonymous developer using the alias “Ryoshi,” SHIB will become the “Dogecoin Killer”, as stated in the manifesto, by surpassing this popular coin in terms of total market cap. But dreams paled in contrast with reality, as it failed to match or even get within touching distance of DOGE in its individual coin value.

SHIB was built to accomplish this difficult task through the “Shiba Inu ecosystem” which is made up of its own “SHIBSwap” stock exchange and a decentralized organization called the “SHIB army.” This army is a loosely organized gang of software developers, avid investors in cryptocurrencies as well as fans of the doggy coin and its countless meme contemporaries.

Ryoshi wrote his vision for SHIB in a manifesto aptly called the “woofpaper” describing it as an experience of “spontaneous community building.”

Unprecedented Boom

Shiba Inu (SHIB) has long remained in the shadows, in lax contrast with the hype created around its alter ego, Dogecoin. But this did not last, because armed with its screeching bark, the price of the token literally exploded from 0.0000015 to 0.00003791 dollars, an increase of 1900%, in the space of 5 days between May 6 and 11.

This rise was driven by the growing craze on social networks as well as the addition of the token to the exchange platforms OKEx, Huobi, FTX, Poloniex and even Binance.

The bloom has been ear-piercing and as characteristic of every crypto bullish run, largely benefitted early investors. One of those beneficiary was a user who bought 202 billion tokens for a whopping 0.04 ETH, or about $15 (₦5700) in October 2020. On May 11, his SHIBs were worth approximately $6.5 million or 2.86 billion naira, which is quite a plus.

The army tag also is no fluke, as followers of the Shiba Inu meme regularly get together in a cohort not different from the military. The largest of such congregation can be found on /r/SHIBArmy subreddit. As of this week, more than 87,000 people are visiting the subreddit, with an average of 5,000 permanently active at any daylight hour.

The most talked about topics on the subreddit shouldn’t come as a surprise: cryptocurrencies, the cryptocurrency market, and an incredibly optimistic attitude toward buying Shiba Inu coins, which should expectantly go ‘all the way to the moon’ in terms of value, another allusion to Dogecoin, as popularised by crypto enthusiast, Elon Musk.

According to data from Coingecko, the price of SHIB has increased by 11,014.3% in the last 30 days. To emphasize: a month ago, a coin of SHIB was worth around 0.000002 cents; today , the coin is worth around 0.000018 US cents. This amount still seems very small, but a zero has already been obliterated from this figure, making a huge significance for whales.

The rapid increase in popularity of SHIB is mainly due to Chinese crypto-investors. A group of traders on the Chinese Huobi cryptocurrency exchange recently traded the highest number of Shiba Inu coins.

On Thursday, May 14, the meme currency’s total market cap was a whooping $7.9 billion. On that day alone, an exchange volume of 8.3 billion Shiba Inu coins was reached. This enabled SHIB to enter the top 20 of the world’s largest crypto currencies.

The meteoric rise has been so unprecedented that major cryptocurrency data aggregators like Coindesk, are yet to recognise the token on their platforms.

Shiba Inu (SHIB) Has Its Own Elon Musk

If Dogecoin had Elon Musk as the primary influencer, Shiba theirs in the figure of billionaire, Charles Xue Biqun. Similarly if Twitter is Musk’s medium of promoting the Doge, Biqun utilising the encompassing tentacle of Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter.

With more than 11 million followers, the Chinese ‘influencer’ was one of the most relevant figures to join the Shiba Inu frenzy.

As Shiba grew in popularity and its value skyrocketed, more people were encouraged to participate. This madness for Shiba caused the gas price to inflate since unlike Dogecoin, Shiba is based on the Ethereum blockchain, as broken down by Explica.

Brought Down to Earth

At one point, Ryoshi decided to toss his own share of the coin, half of which were scooped by Ethereum founder and youngest known crypto billionaire, Vitalik Buterin. Another 50% of the tokens were deposited on a Uniswap pair, whose private key has been deleted.

This gave Buterin extraordinary control over the SHIB parts market. In other words, if he had to sell everything, he could single-handedly bring down the coin.

And so he did. 

In magnanimous generosity, Buterin donated $1.1 billion in Shiba Inu coins, or more than 50 trillion coins, to a Covid-19 fund in India called the India Covid-Crypto Relief, to help the country in its fight against the virus. As a result, the price of the said currency fell some 35% on Wednesday, May 12.

While some of seen this as a generous tribute others have earmarked it as a simple marketing measure.

World’s Second Most Populous Country Hops on the Bandwagon

The Shiba Inu community is sure going to gain a lot of Indian siblings. And a lot means about half of the 1.3 billion persons living in the country.

This was a ripple effect of Buterin’s action, as shortly after, WazirX, the largest crypto exchange in India, decided to include the currency on their platform.

“In undertaking this action, Buterin succeeded in passing the Chinese influence to India and linking Shiba with humanitarian action.” – Then24

In India, trading in cryptocurrencies has been prohibited for a while. However, the Indian government is still discussing the closure of digital coin trading. These plans still face strong internal resistance.

This week, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, owned by Chinese-Canadian businessman Changpeng Zhao, also began offering the Shiba Inu, with Coinbase showing an eager willingness to follow suit.

Binance defined the new currency as thus:

“SHIBA INU (SHIB) is an experiment in building decentralized communities and another meme currency similar to Dogecoin. SHIB is the native token of SHIBA INU and will be the first token to be listed and used as an incentive to use ShibaSwap , a decentralized exchange.”

This move stirred criticism from experienced investors who warned against hopping on the hype and thus allowing inexperienced investors run hammock into the slaughterhouse.

Should I Buy Shiba Inu Coin?

In the end, the SHIB has done neither better nor worse than the myriads of meme coins that have emerged in recent times. But its important to put in mind that Dogecoin started out like this too, and yet the doggo has gone a long way.

The proof is an open secret of Dogecoin and its many new millionaires who must certainly benefit from their crypto heritage.

However, experts at Then24 have issued a timely but grim warning:

Vitalik’s action has highlighted the dangers of these memecoins and how they can go from offering huge returns to significant drops overnight. The Shiba Inu project continues with its initial proposal but Vitalik’s “scare” would have made many investors rethink their position .

The massive sale is of course causing the price to plummet.

Not everyone likes that and it fractures the Hype. However, in the long term, the dissolution of the large stock could even benefit the coin.

The current price of Shiba Inu ?

Shiba Inu  current price today is $0.00001759 with a 24-hour trading volume of $2,073,666,274. SHIB price is currently down  by -13.0% in the last 24 hours.The entire crypto market is bearish, so its not a new trend to the entire crypto community. It has a circulating supply of 500 Trillion SHIB coins and a max supply of 1 Quadrillion. Binance is the current most active market trading it.

Want to start trading with SHIB crypto pairs? here are few of  top exchanges for trading in SHIBA INU, they include Binance, Huobi Global, OKEx, BiONE, and Hotcoin Global.

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