Investing in cryptocurrencies is a great idea, especially if you seek to grow your capital, and if done appropriately, you will be better off for it. In 2021, during the last rally of Bitcoin to $69,020, several other cryptocurrencies followed its movements, soaring to all-time highs (ATH). Some “meme coins” initially created as a form of joke also followed suit and pumped just as hard as the Bitcoin, with tokens such as Shiba Inu reaching a $0.00008872 ATH. However, a lot of investors struggle to find an answer to the question, “Is investing in Shiba Inu a good idea?” Many view investments in cryptocurrencies of this kind as high risk due to their volatility and project utilities, thereby stepping back from potentially gaining from its growth.
In this article, you will discover everything there is to know about the Shiba Inu token. You will learn about its ecosystem, tokenomics, where and how to buy, and how to stake Shiba Inu for rewards. After reading this, you will have more than just an idea of how to tap into the opportunity of investing in Shiba Inu.
Let’s get into knowing Shiba Inu, where, and how to buy!
What is Shiba Inu?
Shiba Inu is an Ethereum-based token built as an alternative to the meme coin, Doge. It was birthed in 2020 by an anonymous founder, Ryoshi (could be an individual or a group of persons), who wanted to answer the question, “Which cryptocurrency project can run totally by its community?” That the token is run totally by community effort signifies it is decentralized, the ground upon which cryptocurrencies are meant to operate.
The token is named after the Shiba Inu (a Japanese hunting dog), and its mascot is a picture of the Shiba Inu dog. Shiba Inu
considered in cryptocurrency circles as an alternative to Dogecoin, both of which are meme tokens, famously earning the title of “Dogecoin Killer.”
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It is built on a decentralized blockchain, which tracks, manages, and verifies transactions on the network. The Ethereum blockchain network offers it the security and ability to function as an independent token, running its project based on the consensus of its community, who refer to themselves as the “Shibarmy.” Shiba Inu token like other tokens built on the Ethereum network runs smart contracts that allow it to interact with decentralized applications (Dapps). Its whitepaper, popularly named “Woofpaper” indicates that it is a community-developed project.
Shiba Inu Ecosystem and tokenomics
Although the Shiba Inu ecosystem is still at its early stages, it is a development in progress purposefully driven by its vibrant community. The Shiba Inu ecosystem has three tokens: Shib, Leash, and Bone.
Shiba Inu (SHIB)
Since its early days, the Shiba Inu token has done things differently from other meme coins projects. The ERC-20-based meme token has a total supply of one quadrillion tokens, with 50% locked on Uniswap for liquidity, and 50% was gifted to one of Ethereum’s co-founders, Vitalik Buterin, to keep safe. Giving Ethereum’s co-founder half of the token is perceived as a way to make it appeal to a lot of cryptocurrency investors. Buterin donated 50 trillion Shib (Shiba Inu’s native token) worth over $1 billion to a relief fund in India for COVID-19. Also, it is said Buterin burnt (removed from existence) 40% of the total supply of Shib by sending the tokens to a burning wallet. It is no surprise the market capitalization of the meme token soared to as high as $38 billion in October 2021, surpassing Dogecoin’s market capitalization of $32 billion. At the time of writing this, Shiba Inu has a market capitalization of $339,122,202, and the Dogecoin posting of $277,577,343, indicating the fall in the general cryptocurrency market.
Doge Killer (LEASH)
The leash is the second token that makes up the Shiba Inu ecosystem, with a meager 107,647 available meme tokens compared with Shib and Bone’s circulating supply. Although the initial idea behind the LEASH token was to make it a rebase of the SHIB token, the developers had a change of mind and put a limit of 107,646 as the token’s total supply. Due to the economic law of supply and demand, the low supply of the meme token made it scarce because of its surging demand. The scarcity and high demand account for the Shiba Inu token reaching an all-time high of $4,353.11 on Nov021.
Also, Leash token is employed to provide liquidity on ShibaSwap, where users receive xLEASH in return for holding some Leash token on the liquidity pool. Users who stake LEASH tokens get rewards from the trading fees generated.
Bone (BONE)
The bone token sits between Shib and Leash and has a total circulating supply of 250,000,000 tokens. Bone, designed by Shiba Inu developers to serve as a governance token, allows members of the Shibarmy to vote on proposed projects on the token network.
Other parts of the Shiba Inu ecosystem that help the token’s community-driven efforts function include:
ShibaSwap
ShibaSwap was created and supported by the Shiba Inu community to provide a decentralized exchange where users can feel safe buying and selling cryptocurrencies. Interested buyers and sellers can also use this Decentralized exchange (DEX) to buy and sell SHIB and Bone. The SHIB token work as the fuel that powers the Shibaswap decentralized exchange and every other application within the ecosystem.
Shiboshis
Over time, the Shiba Inu community basking on its initial well-documented feats worked on creating utilities. Shiboshis is one of the several utilities they have attempted, and it consists of 10,000 uniquely generated Shiba Inu Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). The NFTs created on the Ethereum blockchain comprise varying characteristics that make them unique and collectible.
Shiba Inu Incubator
The Shiba Inu incubator seeks to move the hype beyond famous and oversaturated forms of art like photography, painting, and digital rendering to other appreciable forms. This move is to ensure that other forms of creativity are honored.
Shibarium And The Metaverse
Shiba Inu developers team looking to expand on the project’s use case, introduced a metaverse, a virtual reality world powered by the usage of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). Interested users can mint some piece of digital land on the metaverse by swapping ETH or SHIB token equivalents. The other two Shiba Inu tokens, LEASH, and BONE, will play significant roles when the project is live.
The developer’s team’s goal is to create a fun and interactive environment where users explore, acquire in-game resources and earn passive income. Also, users can leverage the metaverse to launch and develop their projects. There are 100,595 total plots of land on the Shiba Inu metaverse. From these available plots of land, 36,431 plot of digital land was unlocked on April 13, 2022, which marked the introduction of the metaverse.
Finally, the Shiba Inu metaverse is yet to launch until the Shibarium (an impending layer-2 scaling network that will house the Shiba ecosystem) will be deployed on the Ethereum network. Shibarium will be built on Ethereum’s layer-1 blockchain network to address the growing demands of a computational and memory-reliant network for the ever-growing Shiba Inu ecosystem.
Where and how can Shiba Inu be purchased?
Given the popularity of Shiba Inu as a meme token, it has been listed for trade on several top exchanges: Centralized and Decentralized. The first exchange where the Shiba Inu was listed is Uniswap, trading at no value initially. Some other exchanges include Binance, eToro, Coinbase, Gemini, Crypto.com, KuCoin, and Huobi Global. In this section of this article, the exchanges where you can get the Shiba Inu token will be outlined.
Centralized Exchanges
Centralized exchanges serve as the intermediary (third party) between traders seeking to buy and sell their digital currencies. Buying SHIB from centralized exchanges is very straightforward to a large extent. You follow several accounts opening processes, from registering an account to funding the account and placing a trade. Generally, here are the steps you will likely see when attempting to buy SHIB from any centralized exchanges.
Sign up for an account on any centralized exchange or sign in to an account if you already have one.
Next, you will have to complete the Know-Your-Customer (KYC) form to gain access to purchasing cryptocurrencies on the selected exchange. It takes a few minutes to go over this process. All you need do is provide the necessary details about your identity.
Go over the homepage to place an order to buy any fiat or cryptocurrency that are swappable, such as USDT, USDC, BUSD, and ETH. You can make this purchase through a debit or credit card, bank transfer, cryptocurrency, wire transfer, or any other option available on the exchange.
Go over the ‘Markets” section, select the currency pair you bought, and swap to SHIB. For instance, if you buy USDT, find the SHIB/USDT pair, and swap to SHIB.
Crypto.com
The centralized exchange is viewed as one of the best cryptocurrency exchanges. It enables users to buy from over 200 cryptocurrencies using about 20 fiat tokens. Users have access to their funds and management of accounts. It maintains a high level of security and compliance measures.
Features
Offers lower fees when users purchase cryptocurrency using their credit or debit card and bank transfer
Supports platforms such as Android and iOS
Over 250 cryptocurrencies available on the exchange can be tracked, by setting up alerts for price movements.
Users can participate in a discount on a crypto purchase from sales events like “The Syndicate” and get up to a 50% discount
Trades can be open without incurring any fee and even earn rewards up to 0.01% for the taker fee the user paid
It supports several cryptocurrencies like Shiba Inu (SHIB), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), USDC, Bitcoin (BTC), and Ripple (XRP) among others.
Coinbase
In the cryptocurrency trading circle, Coinbase is viewed as one of the best exchange platforms used to buy, sell, transfer and store digital currencies. It is utilized to store a wide range of digital assets securely in offline storage and supports over 100 countries.
Features
- Users get free $5 for signing up for the first time
- It stores digital assets in an offline wallet or vault securely
- Provision is made to enable both Android and iOS users
- Users can purchase and sell any digital currency and still keep track of their movements in one secure place
- Trading schedules can be on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
Kraken
The Kraken exchange platform stands out as one of the best ripple (XRP) wallets offering its users financial stability through its maintenance of relationships, reserves, and compliance with the highest form of legal standards.
Features
- It automatically checks and confirms that addresses are error-free
- Users can reach out to the support team through live chat
- Security on the exchange is highly comprehensive
- You can purchase and sell assets on the platform with a single click
Binance
Talking about cryptocurrency exchange for day traders, Binance ranks as one of if not the best out there. Binance offers a trading platform that allows access to over 150 cryptocurrencies to users.
Features
- Binance helps traders who seek to trade daily or for a short period
- It offers a wide range of sophisticated software, trading tools like indicators, and price action, for users to make trade decisions
- The trading platform is compatible with iOS, Web, Android, and PC users
- Basic and advanced system interfaces are on offer for trading purposes
- An average of 1.2 billion trading volume happens on the platform, with as high as 1,400,000 million transactions per second
- Users can access customer support 24 hours a day, and 7 days a week
Gemini
Gemini is a regulated exchange that makes the trading of cryptocurrencies legitimate worldwide. It offers its users several digital currencies from which to trade, with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Litecoin (LTC), Shiba Inu (SHIB), and Bitcoin (BTC) readily available.
Features
- It offers excellent security criteria
- Users who trade in high volume get discounts on trade fees
Decentralized Exchanges
Decentralized Exchanges (DEX) facilitate cryptocurrency transactions in a reliable, peer-to-peer, and trustworthy manner without the need for intervention from a third party. DEXs are known to prevent any form of manipulation of prices and fake trades, thus allowing the freedom of buying and selling digital assets.
There is some decentralized exchange where you can buy and sell Shiba Inu (SHIB). The first decentralized exchange worthy of mention is Shiba Inu’s ShibaSwap, which allows users to swap Ethereum or any other available digital currency for SHIB.
How to purchase SHIB on ShibaSwap
Buying and selling SHIB on ShibaSwap requires that you connect to the DEX with an Ethereum-based wallet.
Click on “Connect wallet” on the top right corner of the ShibaSwap home page
Pick any of these three wallet options available: Metamask, Coinbase Wallet, and Wallet Connect.
Metamask is highly recommended for users to connect to ShibaSwap. And to show you how to buy and sell using ShibaSwap, Metamask will be used further as an example.
- Download the Metamask wallet or continue if you already have one
- Sign up and create a new account or sign in if you have an account
- Fund your wallet with Ethereum (ETH). Use your credit or debit card to complete this process
- Go over to the ShibaSwap website. Click to connect your Metamask wallet to ShibaSwap
- Click on the “Swap” button, select ETH, then search for SHIB in the available options and convert your ETH for some SHIB tokens
- Wait for a while, and your Metamask wallet will be credited with the equivalent SHIB
Uniswap Exchange
Uniswap is another decentralized exchange that supports the buying and selling of SHIB. The exchange supports more than the three wallets mentioned for ShibaSwap as you can also connect to Portis Wallet and Fortmatic Wallet.
Buying SHIB on Uniswap is similar to ShibaSwap — you have to search for the website, then connect your preferred wallet. Make sure your wallet is funded already with some ETH. Next, search for SHIB on the list of available tokens. If SHIB does not appear among the options, import the token using its contract address provided by Coinmarketcap: 0x95ad61b0a150d79219dcf64e1e6cc01f0b64c4ce.
Now that you have imported the Shiba Inu token, swap your ETH to SHIB. Soon enough, your wallet will notify you of your new SHIB tokens.
Purchase Crypto Wallets
To ensure that your SHIB investment is secure, it is advisable to get a cryptocurrency wallet. A cryptocurrency wallet will help you store your asset away from exchanges, especially if you are not trading, and also avoid being a victim of hackers swiping assets from an exchange. There are free crypto wallets available for download. Some others require you to make payments before you can access the wallet.
Here are some crypto wallets that come highly recommended by our team:
Ellipal Titan
The Ellipal Titan is a hardware wallet that you can obtain physically to store your digital assets. It can store over 7,000 cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, and Shiba Inu. NFTs and other digital assets can equally be stashed safely in the wallet. It possesses a touchscreen interface that allows users to see the assets within the crypto wallet.
ZenGo
Speaking of the ease of getting a cryptocurrency wallet, ZenGo is a software wallet that you can download to store your digital assets. Your Shiba Inu assets will be safe here as well as other assets like NFTs, lands in the Metaverse, etc. You can easily trade cryptocurrencies using the wallet too.
How to stake Shiba Inu for rewards
Earning rewards from staking Shiba Inu tokens depends on the exchange you use to make transactions, the lock-up period you choose, and the worth of the token you stake. To start with staking your Shiba Inu token for rewards, search on the exchange you use whether SHIB is listed for staking. After this, input the amount you want to stake and the period you want the staking to last.
Binance exchange offers one of the highest staking rewards for the Shiba Inu token, with an 11.9% annualized yield for 120 staking days and a minimum of 200.0000000 Shiba Inu tokens. You can also stake for as low as 10 days, 30 days, and 60 days while earning 7.2%, 0.52%, and 1.12% annualized yield respectively.
Staking Shiba Inu tokens on ShibaSwap is a little bit more complicated. On the exchange, you only get ⅓ of the rewards on your staked tokens weekly, while you will be able to unlock the rest after three months.
Finally, Crypto.com offers one of the least rewards for staking the Shiba Inu token. Users get rewards of up to 3% when they stake their SHIB on the exchange for three months.
