How to invest in Shiba Inu with a Shiba Inu IRA

What is Shiba Inu (SHIB)?

With all of the hype around meme coins, you might be wondering exactly what is Shiba Inu coin, anyway? Shiba Inu (SHIB) is a decentralized cryptocurrency inspired by the Japanese breed of dog. It was created in the wake of Dogecoin, which as the first meme coin was created as a joke but has since evolved into a leading cryptocurrency, as is Shiba Inu.

Meme coins are similar to meme stocks (think GameStop and AMC Entertainment) in that their popularity is tied closely to social media sentiment. Meanwhile, Shiba Inu has built a massive community and ecosystem that suggests it could be around for the long haul, meme or not. Shiba Inu prides itself on being run entirely by the community rather than some centralized entity or figure.

Founded in 2020 by a developer who goes by Ryoshi, who like bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto prefers to keep his identity anonymous, Shiba Inu was created to be governed by the community. At last check, this community is 1.13M-plus strong across holders, moderators, shillers, influencers, and more. This group has come to be known as the ShibArmy, a nickname that has evolved into an identity for the project.

While Shiba Inu was created as a Dogecoin rival, it has since built an entire ecosystem — comprising a decentralized exchange, a dog rescue initiative, other cryptocurrencies and more — through which it has taken on an identity of its own. Shiba Inu coin has become wildly popular among investors, swaying companies to add payment support and even becoming a top-10 coin based on market capitalization at the peak of its popularity in 2021.

Shiba Inu’s mantra is to create something from nothing, and it certainly has been able to achieve this for investors in 2021. The Shiba Inu coin price wowed even the most veteran cryptocurrency investors in October 2021 when it skyrocketed more than tenfold. And while past performance is not an indication of future returns, besides the fact that meme coins can be volatile, it does demonstrate the potential of the SHIB coin and the community around it, all of which could possibly pave the way for returns in a Bitcoin IRA. If you’ve got some room for risk and a penchant for adventure, keep reading. We’ll look into the past performance of the Shiba Inu coin price and also explore how to buy Shiba Inu coin. 

The Basics of Shiba Inu

Shiba Inu coin was created on the Ethereum blockchain. The project was thrust into the spotlight through the philanthropic efforts when founder Ryoshi gifted billionaire Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, with more than 50% of the SHIB supply (whitepaper). Buterin turned around and donated $1 billion in SHIB to the India Covid Relief Fund. This was a defining moment in the Shiba Inu project.

Buterin also burned 40% of his SHIB holdings, worth over $6.6 billion, which took the coins out of circulation. Burning is a phenomenon in the cryptocurrency industry that is looked to as a deflationary mechanism designed to benefit the price. Shiba Inu has a habit of burning supply, which could prove to be positive for investors including those who have a long-term savings goal, like retirement.

Shiba Inu has a total supply of 1 quadrillion SHIB but 549 trillion coins in circulation, as of December 2021 and before an anticipated coin burn. Approximately 50% of the SHIB supply is locked on decentralized exchange Uniswap after which, as the team says, they “threw away the keys.” This is to ensure that developers don’t have the upper hand and instead, everyone has a fair shake at getting their hands on tokens.

Considering that Shiba Inu was built on the Ethereum blockchain, it is relevant that Ethereum is in the process of transitioning from a proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm. Nevertheless, unlike Ethereum, SHIB coins are not mined because they were pre-minted when the project was introduced.

SHIB trades for fractions of a penny, which means you can really stock up with coins in your Bitcoin IRA.

Key Concepts of Shiba Inu

The Shiba Inu project revolves around Shiba Inu coin, the project’s maiden token. Investors can hold billions or trillions of them thanks to the low Shiba Inu coin price of a fraction of a cent. SHIB is an ERC-20 token, which is the Ethereum standard, and it has seen its value balloon by thousands of percent over its lifetime. In 2021 through mid-December, the SHIB price soared over 64,000,000%. There is also a much broader ecosystem.

• ShibaSwap: SHIB was the first token to trade on ShibaSwap, which is the project’s decentralized cryptocurrency exchange. The SHIB coin also trades on major centralized exchanges including Binance, Coinbase, and FTX, to name a few, as well as other decentralized exchanges like Uniswap.
• LEASH is another token in the Shiba Inu ecosystem. It has a supply of 107,646 tokens, which is on the opposite end of the spectrum from SHIB’s massive supply. LEASH is listed on ShibaSwap where it incentivizes token holders with rewards for providing its liquidity.
• BONE is yet another token in the Shiba Inu ecosystem. It has a supply of 250 million, which places it in the sweet spot of the project’s other two tokens. BONE is a governance token, giving token holders the opportunity to vote on the direction of the project via what’s known as a Doggy DAO. DAOs are popular governance structures in the cryptocurrency industry rather than corporations or LLCs, for example.

Shiba Inu is also a project that wants to give back to the dog community after which it is named. The team uses the Amazon Smile program to direct a percentage of Amazon purchases toward the Shiba Inu Rescue Association, a 501(c)3, preferred non-profit organization.

Shiba Inu is also behind an artist incubator program designed to serve as a community for creators and help establish the project’s role in the NFT market.

By now, you should have a pretty good handle on ‘what is Shiba Inu coin.’ If you are a fan of dogs and art, your interests could be aligned with the mission of this project.

Shiba Inu vs. Dogecoin

Shiba Inu and Dogecoin are both meme coins. As we mentioned, Shiba Inu was created on the heels of Dogecoin and has gained a reputation as a Dogecoin Killer, though whether this actually plays out remains to be seen. In addition to both being meme coins, Shiba Inu and Dogecoin both have very low prices, including less than a dollar for DOGE and less than a penny for SHIB.

Both coins have captured the attention of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who on one hand prefers Dogecoin over bitcoin for transactions and on the other owns a Shiba Inu dog named Floki. Not to be outdone, there is also a meme coin called Floki Inu. Musk has made it clear, however, that the only cryptocurrencies he owns in his portfolio are bitcoin, Ethereum and Dogecoin.

• There are also key differences in the structures of these two cryptocurrencies. Dogecoin was created as a fork of a project that was known as Lucky Coin, which in turn was a fork of Litecoin, which was famously forked from Bitcoin. A fork in a blockchain represents a split that occurs as a result of a change in the rules for that particular blockchain. As a result of a fork, an entirely new blockchain is created, one that shares the same history of blocks but whose future has yet to be written.Dogecoin uses what’s known as a proof-of-work (PoW) mining system, similar to Bitcoin, but on its own blockchain. This is the algorithm by which transactions are verified and recorded on the blockchain. As previously alluded to, Shiba Inu coins were already mined early on. Dogecoin does not have a ceiling on the number of coins that can be mined, and 5 billion coins are injected into the circulating supply every year, which is a negative feature for some due to the inflationary effect.Dogecoin and Shiba Inu are neck and neck when it comes to market capitalization, both of which hover in the tens of billions of dollars. These two meme coins have been known to jockey for position on the leader board. While the price per coin might not be aligned, both meme coins having made their way into the top 10 coins based on market cap, though those rankings shift around quite a bit.As the original meme coin, Dogecoin is generally the first one in the group to be accepted by merchants. NBA team the Dallas Mavericks support Dogecoin for ticket and merchandise sales, while Tesla similarly accepts Dogecoin for merchandise payments. Shiba Inu, however, has been known to muscle its way onto the radars of companies as well, with movie chain AMC Entertainment announcing support for both Dogecoin and Shiba Inu in response to customer demand. 

[Image Source: Twitter]