A meme coin inspired by another meme coin just hit a record.
It is now the 11th largest cryptocurrency according to CoinGecko, only two behind Dogecoin which seemed to inspire it.
The Shiba Inu coin is up almost 40% in the last seven days and is up a whopping 45 million percent in the last year.
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The price plummeted from its all-time high when the Shiba Inu coin Twitter account asked Elon Musk how much of the coin Shib owns, and Musk replied "none".
The Tesla founder, who has more than 61 million followers, regularly impacts cryptocurrency prices with his Tweets.
What is the Shiba Inu coin?
Shiba Inu coin is a digital currency that is based on the open source decentralized blockchain, ethereum.
The coin is fairly new (it was only released in August 2020 by a mysterious person or group of people calling themselves Ryoshi), but it has already caught the attention of fans for its dog-themed design.
The digital currency was inspired by the Japanese Shiba Inu dog breed, which became a viral meme in 2013 and called itself the 'dogecoin killer'.
This breed of meme coins doesn't usually gain much traction. But the coin's Twitter account has more than 1.2 million followers, more than traditional cryptocurrencies like Cardano, Kraken, and Solana.
Its popularity has been reinforced by its connection to Dogecoin, which has consistently received public support from Elon Musk.
In a whitepaper looking at the Shiba Inu coin (called Woofpaper), Ryoshi refers to SHIB, and its derivative coins LEASH and BONE, as an "experiment in building a spontaneous decentralized community" that allows users to have thousands of millions or even billions of them. while the token may "stay well under a penny and still outperform Dogecoin."
How much is the Shiba Inu coin worth and why did it increase in price?
The Shiba Inu coin price is currently $ 0.00003820, while the daily trading price is $ 13.988.971.094. It was $ 0.00003982 at its peak.
The value of SHIB is still very volatile as it is such a new token. This was highlighted when it was reduced by 20% when Elon Musk tweeted to say that he does not own any.
Ironically, the price skyrocketed in early October, when Elon tweeted a photo of his Shiba Inu puppy.
There are a few more reasons why the Shiba Inu is enjoying a raise lately. First, it represents a more general shift towards alt, or meme currencies, as Bitcoin has started trading with investors with the launch of its ETF.
Second, the project developers are asking coin holders to burn their supply by sending it to an inaccessible wallet, which removes the coins from circulation and opens the token to an impressive price increase. Third, the developers are also releasing 10,000 NFTs in the form of Wen Shiboshis that can be purchased with the coins.
Eventually, SHIB is rumored to be listed on retail brokerage platform Robinhood.
Where can you buy the Shiba Inu coin?
Investing in cryptocurrencies is risky. Coins are part of an unregulated market that is prone to wild value swings.
If you decide to buy SHIB coins, you have to choose a broker to go with. While we wait to see if it starts trading on Robinhood, the safest and cheapest options are through eToro, Coinbase, or Binance.
If you already own Bitcoin, you can exchange these coins for SHIB coins using Binance. Set up an account, access a digital wallet, deposit the desired amount of Bitcoin and exchange it for Shiba Inu.
You can also buy SHIB on Uniswap (via Trust Wallet), which requires you to exchange Ethereum for SHIB.
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