Are Cryptocurrencies Going to the Dogs?
With literally hundreds of cryptocurrencies trading on exchanges today, confusion will reign until the markets prune away those without the potential to bear fruit. The best we can do is look at trends and hope they continue.
Shiba Inu [SHIB] is named after a small-to-medium breed of hunting dogs from Japan. It’s one of many dog-themed cryptocurrencies currently being sold/mined. These include Dogecoin, originally created as sort of a joke payment system; Kishu Inu Coin, technically an ERC20 token on the Ethereum blockchain; Floki Inu, considered a “fringe” cryptocurrency; and many others.
Most of these are categorized as “meme coins.” Meme coins are cryptocurrencies that have gained popularity in a short amount of time, usually after influencers and retail investors promoted them online. Dogecoin, the “joke” currency, is the original meme coin. It became popular after Elon Musk began tweeting about it, after which retail investors started buying in droves.
Shiba Inu are what are called tokens. Like most meme coins, there is a maximum allowed supply, usually a number so high we have a hard time dealing with it. In the case of Shiba Inu, the maximum supply of the tokens is one quadrillion, with a circulating supply of 497 trillion. That’s a hell of a lot of tokens!
How do you get Shiba tokens, other than buying them on an exchange? As an ERC20 standard token, it does not have a native blockchain. (If you don’t know what that is, don’t worry. It’s not relevant to this article.) What it means is, you can’t “mine” the tokens by using a traditional proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm that adds newly created transaction blocks into the blockchain and rewards miners with cryptocurrency as you can with Bitcoin or Ethereum.
ERC-20 tokens can only be minted. That’s a process that typically involves smart contracts, programming, and a bunch of development stuff. Using the minting method, you can create a brand-new token.
Is Shiba Inu crytpo a good investment?
As with any investment, the number one rule is, “Do your own due diligence!” Our writeups are informational only and should be used as a starting point for your research. That being said, let’s look at the facts and figures.
SHIB has been trending upward lately after dropping from it’s all-time high. In this case, there may be valid reasons to be optimistic about SHIB retaining its price momentum.
First, let’s look at its price. Shiba Inu is not part of the pack of high-flyers that get all the press. Bitcoin trades at ~$43,000 per coin, while Ether is pegged at ~$3,000 each. Shiba? It recently traded at $0.00003277 per coin after falling from its all-time high last October of $0.00008616. Even at that miniscule price it is now the 13th most valuable cryptocurrency in the world with a market valuation of $17.9 billion.
Next, we see who’s invested in SHIB’s future. In early February, Unification, a Singapore-based blockchain solutions provider, announced that it has been working with the Shiba Inu community to develop Shibarium, a layer 2 blockchain, which means it is built on top of Ethereum's blockchain but will exclusively support trading and other transactions in the Shiba Inu ecosystem. Shibarium will enable "rapid low cost transactions optimized for gaming," Unification wrote. Unification says it plans to begin public tests for the network "very soon," which may have prompted investors to buy in.
Another “investor” is Welly’s. Never heard of it? That’s understandable. It’s a burger restaurant with just one location in Naples, Italy, but it positions itself as “the first and only SHIB themed restaurant powered by the community.” SHIB’s weekend surge came days after developers unveiled this tie-up with Welly’s. The partnership involves rebranding Welly’s store and future locations to include Shiba Inu-themed products and imagery, and the issuance of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for customers. Community members can buy products using SHIB and participate in Welly’s expansion via Shiba Inu’s decentralized governance forum "Doggy DAO." Welly's says SHIB will handle payments for the company, integrate NFTs and Shiba Inu’s blockchain into Welly’s business, and guide Welly’s business strategy. Success here could lead to a rapid expansion of SHIB’s partnerships and thus to rises in the token’s price.
Third, there’s the Metaverse. It’s what everyone’s talking about but which few people understand. Just a few months ago Facebook announced a name change to Meta and said that it “…brings together our apps and technologies under one new company brand. Meta’s focus will be to bring the metaverse to life and help people connect, find communities and grow businesses.”
So, what is the Metaverse?
To quote Wired, “The technologies that make up the metaverse can include virtual reality as well as augmented reality that combines aspects of the digital and physical worlds. However, it doesn't require that those spaces be exclusively accessed via VR or AR. A virtual world, like aspects of Fortnite that can be accessed through PCs, game consoles, and even phones, could be metaversal.”
There’s also a digital economy, where users can create, sell, and buy goods, such as virtual items like clothes or cars. Most platforms have virtual identities, avatars, and inventories that are tied to just one platform, but the metaverse might allow you to create a persona that you can take everywhere as easily as you can copy your profile picture from one social network to another.
SHIB believes the Metaverse is set to be one of the biggest areas within crypto for many to enjoy, while others will produce content and developers will set up shops within using it as another great resource to offer crypto communities incentivization, content, and regular royalties. In 2020, the Metaverse was worth approximately $478.7 billion. That's roughly the same size as the entire home services industry in the United States alone.
Their newest venture into the Metaverse is Shiba Lands. These “lands” will be found in the Shiba Metaverse and will be available for purchase/auction “really soon,” as SHIB puts it. In the Shiba Land Metaverse, you’ll be able to create your own avatar, buy and sell land, build, sell NFTs, and much more. Of course, this is all virtual, but it is becoming more popular, such as the plots you can purchase on Decentraland.
Why buy virtual real estate? Believe it or not, there’s money to be made from these intangible lands, just as there is in the real world. Crypto-savvy investors can profit big-time, as the sale of a piece of land sold for more than $900,000 in Decentraland.
There are also ways to put your virtual land into use to earn income. Owning virtual land allows you to host exclusive events or parties and charge people to attend. One example is rapper Snoop Dogg, who hosted an exclusive party on The Sandbox’s non-fungible token (NFT) platform to reconstruct his real-life mansion. Attendees needed to have an NFT, which acted as a pass and gave them access to the event.
And investors can generate regular income from their virtual lands. For example, you could build a virtual house using NFTs on your virtual land and rent it out for a monthly income. Or perhaps set up an NFT art gallery and rent the space to up-and-coming crypto artists to showcase their work in the Metaverse.
What does this all mean?
There’s a lot to digest about Shiba Inu, and even more if you’re interested in researching every one of the hundreds of crypto currencies in circulation today – and there are more coming. This article isn’t meant to be definitive; we chose SHIB because it’s in the top 20 most valuable cryptocurrencies in the world at #13. Also it had a nice increase in price and as you can see above stakeholders are taking steps to position SHIB to take advantage of the Metaverse and increase the token’s price with such things as burn parties (we’ll be posting on Shiba Inu’s upcoming burn party soon).
We also decided to provide some insights because SHIB is a much more affordable token to buy than Bitcoin or Ethereum. And perhaps safer: Wild swings in those two coins can mean large losses when you’re talking $43,000 per. With SHIB, selling at less than a penny, there’s more upside than risk for the small investor.
It’s difficult to predict what new uses will be found for digital currencies and tokens. We’ve already mentioned purchases, business partnerships such as Welly’s, and digital real estate. When the Internet first began to spread to general usage, no one predicted Amazon, Google, or Facebook. What we can predict is that there are a lot of smart people out there looking to capitalize on new ideas, and crypto currencies, like Shiba Inu, could profit from them.
Disclaimer: This content is intended to be used and must be used for informational purposes only. I strongly recommend that you perform your own independent research and/or speak with a qualified investment professional before making any financial decisions.