The History Of Shiba Inu, The Hottest Meme Coin Right Now

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Meme coins are meme-inspired cryptocurrencies that are normally created as a joke. While they are not taken seriously despite falling in the same category as other mainstream cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, their prices have spiked this year.

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Shiba Inu or SHIB is one such decentralised cryptocurrency that was created in August 2020 by an anonymous person/group known only as ‘Ryoshi’. It was created to poke fun at dogecoin, the first meme coin launched in 2013, which went on to gain immense popularity.

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Dogecoin was created by two engineers based on a popular meme about Shiba Inu, a Japanese breed of hunting dogs. The popularity of dogecoin led to the creation of a number of other meme coins.

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Seemingly, the Shiba Inu meme coin creator intended to dethrone dogecoin in the crypto space. The price of Shiba Inu coin has rocketed in 2021. The current market cap of Shiba Inu is $26 billion while that of dogecoin is over $30 billion.

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Although it is hard to speculate why there has been such an enormous surge in the price of Shiba Inu, one major factor could have been the launch of the decentralised exchange ShibaSwap. The exchange is basically an encouraging factor for investors as they could reap higher profits by holding on to their investments for an extended period. (Image: Reuters)

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Tweets by Tesla and SpaceX owner Elon Musk are also known to cause sharp movements in prices of meme coins such as Doge and Shiba Inu. His tweets over the last few months introducing his Shiba Inu dog, ‘Floki’ sleeping on a carpet or sitting on a Tesla have sparked gains in Floki-themed cryptocurrency prices with some of them witnessing a sharp rally. (Image: Reuters)

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Shiba Inu supporters, who dub themselves as the Shiba Army, have been one of the reasons for the spike in the meme coin. With a thriving Twitter account, they have relentlessly promoted the meme coin on social media. (Image: Reuters)

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It is even harder to say where the price will go from here, but volatility should be expected with any cryptocurrency, as that has been the trend for cryptocurrencies since the beginning.