Shiba Inu Coin Defined

SHIB is often referred to as a joke-influenced cryptocurrency that plans to outpace and be bigger than Dogecoin. The token working on the Shiba Inu blockchain is — as we know now — called SHIB, and it is an ERC-20 token.

How Does Shiba Inu Coin Work?

Shiba Inu is a project launched in the Ethereum network. This is the reason the consensus mechanism of Shiba Inu is the same as the consensus mechanism of Ethereum: Proof-of-Work (PoW) , transitioning to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) .

The PoW mechanism entails that the mining rewards are based on the computational power of the nodes. The PoS mechanism bases mining rewards on the number of coins that you stake in the network.

As noted above, SHIB tokens are ERC-20 tokens in the Ethereum network. Such tokens are fungible, meaning that they can be replicated because each one has an equivalent value.

Total Supply

The total supply of Shiba Inu is 1 quadrillion SHIB. This is an extraordinarily huge supply. Therefore, even though the supply of SHIB is limited, it is still large enough to have inflationary properties. As of May 29, 2021, the circulating supply of Shiba Inu is around 394.8 trillion SHIB.

50% of the total supply of SHIB is locked on Uniswap. The other 50% was sent to a crypto address belonging to Vitalik Buterin, an Ethereum co-founder. These coins sent to Buterin are considered “burned,” even though they are still available if Buterin decides he wants to utilize them.

The Origins of Shiba Inu Coin

Let’s begin with the origin of the name Shiba Inu. Shiba Inu is a Japanese dog breed. This breed inspired internet memes with the name “Doge” in the 21st century.

The meme became so big that it inspired some computer programmers to start a cryptocurrency based on it, which they called Dogecoin.

Initially, Dogecoin did not have any noticeable success. As the years went by and its community increased, Dogecoin started to become a serious investment.

This influenced other people to launch their own cryptocurrencies based on memes, or simply based on Dogecoin itself. In this way, Shiba Inu was created.

The founder of Shiba Inu is anonymous and goes by the pseudonym of Ryoshi. But unlike other Dogecoin-influenced coins, Shiba Inu actually has a specific goal: surpassing Dogecoin.

Shiba Inu plans to achieve this by providing more and better services than Dogecoin. Such services might be the very ones ShibaSwap soon plans to implement.

The project did not hold an ICO or any other sort of development funding. This might be one of the reasons why some of its features, such as ShibaSwap, are going to be added over time and were not included in the initial launch of the project.

The 50% of the total supply that went to Vitalik Buterin was initially considered as burned tokens. This was not the case when Vitalik Buterin actually used 50 trillion out of the 500 trillion to fund a Polygon charity that battles COVID-19 struggles in India.

Buterin’s donation accounted for approximately 1$ billion worth of tokens. While this might have had a slightly negative impact on the price of SHIB, it helped to expand the Shiba Inu community even more.

Shiba Inu Coin Price History

SHIB started its price journey in August of 2020 with a price lower than $0.00000001. These very low prices persisted throughout 2020 and into the beginning of 2021.

The price followed the bullish trend of the market as it started increasing, reaching $0.000003 in April of this year. After the price dipped for about two weeks, it finally began its biggest increase of all time on the May 7, where the price was around $0.000001.

By May 11, the price had reached $0.00003. This marked a 3,300% price increase within a week. The price has slowly decreased since then.

Shiba Inu (SHIB) price history. Source: CoinMarketCap

As of May 29 of this year, the price of SHIB is around $0.000007. With a supply of around 394.8 trillion, the market capitalization of SHIB is near $2.9 billion, while the fully diluted market capitalization is around $7.5 billion. This market cap places SHIB at number 33 in the crypto market cap ranks.

Shiba Inu Coin Current Projects

Currently, Shiba Inu is working on its finalization of ShibaSwap. Along with ShibaSwap, Shiba Inu is also working on the new tokens that are expected to launch presently in the Shiba Inu blockchain, such as the BONE and TREAT tokens.

The launch of the ShibaSwap DEX and the aforementioned tokens are likely to make Shiba Inu look like a much more serious project, as the field of DeFi seeks utilization.

Shiba Inu has developed another project named Shiba Inu Rescue. This project involves rescuing actual Shiba Inu dogs that are lost or in need of rescuing. Using AmazonSmile is a platform, people can help out by donating to this project.

The best part about the project is that it does not require any direct donations at all. Whenever you use AmazonSmile to order a product, you can type Shiba Inu Rescue along with the organization name, and a percentage of the money you spend on buying the product goes to the Shiba Inu Rescue.

Such a project establishes a positive and trustworthy environment within the Shiba Inu community. Projects like these are one of the reasons why some people no longer look at Shiba Inu as a joke cryptocurrency, but as something much more serious in the long run.