Shiba Inu Coin

This article is not a joke. This is an article about a parody token that is now a real thing.

There are meme stocks, and there are meme tokens.

There is the argument out there that the flood of liquidity is giving these assets their time in the sun.

I am not saying these assets are great to buy and hold long-term, hardly not, but they do offer the volatility for traders to jump in and out of them for a nice profit.

Shiba Inu Coin (SHIB), a popular meme token based on another alternative coin, Dogecoin (DOGE), is a decentralized cryptocurrency created in August 2020 by an anonymous person or persons known as “Ryoshi.”

SHIB experienced its most explosive run during the 2021 meme-asset cycle and has since settled into a more mature, volatility-driven trading range.

While this dog-inspired cryptocurrency continues to see sharp rallies during periods of market enthusiasm, it remains well below its 2021 all-time high of approximately $0.000088.

Shiba Inu Coin now typically ranks around No. 34 by market capitalization, with a market value fluctuating between roughly $4.7 billion and $5.2 billion, still firmly placing it among the largest meme-based cryptocurrencies, but far from the very top of the market.

Before investing in any altcoins, it’s important to understand that these coins are a great deal riskier than something like Bitcoin (BTC).

It sounds funny just saying that but yes, there are different degrees of risk with different coins.

There has been a lot of hype surrounding the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) movement, but I would say, only deploy capital in altcoins if you are willing to write off the entire investment.

And I’ll say this, it’s a speculative investment in general, so at least do a little due diligence before you take the plunge.

Shiba Inu Coin is an Ethereum-based ERC-20 token, which means it was developed on the Ethereum blockchain, rather than its own blockchain.

Ryoshi decided to launch SHIB on Ethereum (ETH) because it’s “already secure and well-established,” according to the SHIB white paper, or, as its community calls it, the “woof paper.”

I have gone on record saying that Ethereum will go higher than Bitcoin in the future because it’s that attractive platform that every DeFi developer wants to build on, and SHIB is just one iteration of that.

Developers also choose to roll out their projects using the ETH platform because it’s way cheaper than building a platform from scratch.

SHIB launched with a total supply of 1 quadrillion tokens, though a meaningful portion has since been burned, bringing the circulating supply down to roughly 589 trillion SHIB over time.

Ryoshi is on record saying he doesn’t have any SHIB, and nearly half of its initial supply was locked in a liquidity pool on the decentralized exchange Uniswap.

The rest was sent to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.

According to SHIB’s white paper, Ryoshi sent tokens to Buterin with hopes that he’d keep the tokens.

However, Buterin did not.

He donated a significant amount to the India Covid Relief Fund and other charities, which goes to show that not all Covid Relief Funds are created equal.

This is not a joke, and some people might be laughing when they read what this coin is based on.

That is why altcoins may require additional caution due to their differences from something like Bitcoin, including their structure, supply, and utility.

SHIB supporters might point to a comprehensive ecosystem, which now includes smart contract functionality, NFTs, liquidity mining opportunities, and a dedicated Layer-2 network, Shibarium, aimed at lowering transaction costs and expanding real utility beyond pure community hype.

Another juicy piece of news saw rising support for a Change.org petition urging trading platform Robinhood to list SHIB on the broker’s platform.

That effort ultimately succeeded.

SHIB has been listed on Robinhood since 2022, improving accessibility and liquidity, though the listing did not translate into a sustained re-rating of the token’s price.

When asked by analysts, Robinhood CEO Vladimir Tenev had initially been noncommittal, but the listing was later approved as part of a broader expansion of the company’s crypto offerings.

That’s the thing about these altcoins — they can come out of nowhere, and even a “fake it till you make it,” SHIB created real wealth during its peak cycle for early participants.

Now the secret is out about SHIB, I would scale in slowly, but don’t bet the ranch on this speculative bet, and prepare for high volatility.