Loyalty doesn’t run far amongst crypto investors, and today Shiba Inu briefly stole Dogecoin’s much-loved crown as the premier memecoin in the crypto space.
With Shiba Inu coin (SHIB) up more than 100% in the past week, and a shocking 69 per cent rally up to a new all-time high (ATH) of $0.00008985 yesterday driving the token to a whopping market cap of $29.6bn.
Dogecoin (DOGE) was temporarily displaced as the 10th biggest cryptocurrency and highest ranked memecoin by market size, leading to euphoria amongst SHIB holders on twitter who dubbed it the great flippening.
DOGE itself sits at a well-held $0.24 – comfortably within the volatility profile of the past 6 months – but still down 60% from its ATH of $0.68 on July 5.
As markets suffered across the table, one exceptional trader has even pulled off what many are calling the greatest trade of all time – turning an $8,000 investment in SHIB back in August 2020 to an eye-watering $5.7bn in 400 days.
Needless to say, it’s a happy day in his or her household.
But with Dogecoin already re-asserting its dominance in the memecoin rivalry – Coin Rivet decided to take a look at what really makes DOGE a superior meme coin to SHIB.
Back in May, in what was widely deemed a publicity stunt by the Shiba Inu developer team, Vitalik Buterin (the creator of Ethereum) was given around half of the SHIB supply – valued today at more than $30bn.
Many SHIB holders actually responded with despair, there was palpable fear that the fate of the entire token (and countless individual’s investments) was recklessly thrust into the hands of a young billionaire that had nothing to do with the project.
However, the Ethereum creator essentially rejected the project – promptly donating 50tn SHIB to an Indian covid-19 relief fund established by Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal.
And the fate of the remaining 410tn tokens?
He simply burned them sent off to the abyss of a dead wallet.
Dogecoin was originally developed all the way back in 2017 – as a fork of modelled on Litecoin (itself a fork of BTC),this keeps DOGE a surprisingly credible infrastructure and additionally as it’s based on the Scrypt mechanism it can actually be scaled much better than Bitcoin.
The supply – while still questionable – is certainly more attractive than SHIB.
Dogecoin’s supply mechanism is rooted in its intended usage as a highly-accessible p2p method of exchange – and this incorporates an inflationary device (adding currently around 5 billion DOGE per year) intended in the white paper to prevent long-term holding diminishing circulation and minimising transaction fees.
The current available supply of DOGE is 131,875,387,608 DOGE.
The developers behind Shiba Inu have taken a different and much less sophisticated approach when it comes to the token’s supply mechanism. Instead opting for a ridiculous total cap of 1 quadrillion tokens.
Buterin’s project dismal certainly helped fix the outrageous tokenomics of SHIB halving the circulating supply to 500 trillion, but even with Dogecoin’s inflation mechanism it will take around 8 years for DOGE to outstrip SHIB supply.
Baseline as a store of value, DOGE is less vulnerable than SHIB.
One of the shining draws of Dogecoin as the original and premier memecoin is the fact that it is inspired by a super popular internet meme – the infamous Doge.
Doge first emerged in August 2013, quickly spreading like fire across the internet – emerging as such a cultural phenomenon that it was mentioned in the US Congress and won a number of annualised accolades for pop culture.
What’s more this charming little fluffball isn’t any old dog – this is a pedigree female Shiba Inu called Kabosu (born in 2005) owned by Japanese kindergarten teacher Atsuko Satō.
So when we’re looking at Shiba Inu coin – unlike Dogecoin – we’re not looking at an authentic meme, it’s not even in the same category it is simply a caninecoin masquerading as a memecoin – a hollow facade.
What are the dangers of this you may ask?
Well Shiba Inu confusion with the original Kabosu is driving a silent crisis for the dog breed as owners scramble to copycat Doge.
A massive heavyweight sat in the Dogecoin corner is infamous crypto influencer and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk – the industry titan is a strong advocate and supporter of DOGE. Even going as far as tohimself the Dogefather.
In the past the Tesla CEO has seriously influenced and driven impressive Dogecoin price action through his popular twitter account – earning him the coveted title ‘CEO of Dogecoin’ after igniting major rallies.
And in a surprise move earlier this week, Musk said that he personally owned dogecoin – putting speculation that he held SHIB to bed and denting its price.
In a recent tweet Musk laid out exactly why he’s thrown his weight behind the memecoin – explaining that the everyday people around him at Tesla and SpaceX inspired him with the idea of a true people’s coin.
Dogecoin has even entered the stratosphere in honour of Musk – let me know when SHIB accomplishes such heights.
It is absolutely no secret that Shiba Inu token – only thrown together last year – has been created to mimic Dogecoin, with an identical use case demonstrating a clear intention to free ride on the back of DOGE’s hard-earned success.
What’s more? It’s not even got a serious valuation.
It is difficult for institutions and commercial enterprises to give it any significant credibility as a means of transaction when it isn’t even valued as $0.01 – this highlights an immense barrier to any meaningful adoption.
DOGE has the credibility of quarter dollar – the value of a short-stay parking space (highlighting the potential for use cases), whereas SHIB hasn’t got the credibility or value of a single cent – a single Shiba Inu token would buy you less than 1ml of petrol gasoline at market price.
The gimmicky price point writes it off as little more than a cheap Dogecoin knockoff with none of the functionality.
Entrepreneur and Shark Tank star Mark Cuban certainly agrees recently announcing his basketball team – the Dallas Mavericks would accept Dogecoin as payment for merchandise – with no plans to accept SHIB soon.
As explained earlier, Dogecoin has a brilliant feature called the Scrypt algorithm which is the major point of divergence from Bitcoin’s SHA256 and facilitates much faster block creation – making Dogecoin significantly faster than BTC (by a factor of 10!).
Shiba Inu by comparison is an ERC-20 token that still functions on Ethereum’s proof-of-work mechanism – which is theoretically similar to Dogecoin but in practice materalises at a a rate reflective of the block creation time and transaction rate of its parent network.
Things could change here with the launch of Ethereum 2.0 and the move to more environmentally friendly Proof of Stake validation for ERC-20 token transactions.
The gleaming crown of ‘top memecoin’ is really worn by its community, and Dogecoin defines community better than almost any project in the cryptosphere – with a legendary presence that is applauded widely as a fantastic onboarding tool and public relations exercise for this emergent industry at a retail level.
Nothing is more testament to this than the insatiable 12,000 per cent rally driven by pure community will during the AMC saga back in Spring – which was ignited by the /r/wallstreetbets community decision to pump GameStop stock in response to Citron research and institutional shorts against the beloved entertainment chain.
The incident inspired a huge influx of meme-powered retail investment energy – the subreddit exploded by 1.5m users overnight, and attention quickly turned to crypto amidst the spring phase of the 2021 bullrun.
Within 24 hours Dogecoin had undertaken a sensational rise to prominence, with the community single-handedly rallying DOGE more than 140 per cent free from any institutional support.
Furthermore – the Dogecoin community is kind-hearted and amongst the most openly charitable of any crypto community through the Dogecoin Foundation.
Inspired by the film Cool Runnings – in 2014 the Dogecoin foundation sponsored Jamaican athletes to travel and compete in the Sochi Winter Olympics games in the end Dogecoin community funding contributed towards the travel of the Jamaican bobsled team and the individual journey of luge champion Shiva Keshavan.
Then in 2020, Doge4Water was founded and successfully raised more than $30,000 in donations to build two wells in the Tana river basin in Kenya following years of severe drought.
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Personal Disclaimer: This is my opinion and intended as a jovial response to impressive Shiba Inu price action. I fully disclose that I have Dogecoin in my personal portfolio.
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