About Shiba Inu

Let’s kick this off by stating the obvious – Shiba Inu (SHIB) is one of the numerous crypto currencies out there. It’s by far not the biggest player in the pack, neither by its price per token nor by its market capitalization (the worth of all the tokens.) His highnessness Bitcoin has held that pedestal for years now.

All answers in due time; but let’s peep at Shib’s profile first.

Shiba Inu’s sole parent, one named Ryoshi (for all we know it could be an entire gang), built SHIB on top of the Ethereum network (Ether being the native currency thereof.)

For the time being, SHIB is in the middle of another kind of storm - being a scapegoat for mockery and distrust, and with good reason. You see, Shib is based on Ethereum, but it’s not exactly the spitting image of the latter.

The differences are many. For one, Etherium can be mined (till it’s switched to Proof of Stake, that is), while Shiba Inu had never been envisioned to be minable at all. One Ether is worth at least hundreds of dollars, whereas a single SHIB is many digits behind. The Ethereum network is a booming oasis for all sorts of technical bells and whistles (NFTs, DApps, smart contracts etc), while Shiba Inu introduced little, if any, utility at all (except its own decentralized exchange and an interesting staking system). The bummer on a silver plate is that the few things inherited from Etherium - its relatively high commission fees and long transaction time (anywhere from seconds to hours), these are nothing to take pride in. Top it off with all the sideways looks Shib gets for ‘allegedly being a pump-and-dump scheme’ and you’ve got quite a bit of infamy dogging Shiba Inu. However, the biggest drawback is the token's immense supply…

Tokens are the blood of any blockchain, being the rewards granted for maintaining the network and a sticky lure for investors. As of now, there are 500 some-odd trillion ‘shibs’ left of the original quadrillion minted (a bit over 40% of the total supply had been ‘burned’ in early 2021.)

Yeah, except that one universal rule that holds “what comes in plenty ain’t worth a penny”. And boy does 500 trillion define “plenty” like no other! To recap, just 1 trillion equals some whopping 1 million millions! And Shib’s got 500 times that number! There’s the number that guarantees ‘$1 per SHIB’ is a pipedream, since it would bump up Shib’s capitalization to hundreds of times greater than the value of the entire crypto sphere at the time!

That’s where we hark back to Shib’s uniqueness, if a bit of an odd one. Despite every rock cast in its direction, Shib is managing not only to stay afloat, but also grow! It’s almost like the token is thriving off the flack in the media. Just in the first year alone, the so-called Shib Army has swollen up to over 1 million strong! They are the same people who, between building the intergalactic Shib Empire and competing with the other ‘dog-coin’ called Dogecoin, also fight tooth and nail to keep Shib alive.

A whole slew of challenges. Shib Inu is a pipsqueak among giants and has barely scratched the surface of what’s to come. However, most of its current problems can be solved, if not without effort. Network upgrades can reduce fees and speed up transactions. The huge supply can be whittled down by burning, in turn giving the token’s value a nudge in the upwards direction. But above all, SHIB must offer some utility; otherwise, one can’t really expect something with nothing to offer to thrive.