Crypto Academy

Dogecoin vs. SHIBA INU – Battle of the Memecoins

Granit.M

The year 2021 has been a crazy year for the cryptocurrency market, with many coins skyrocketing to unbelievable heights. Besides Bitcoin and Ethereum, hundreds of altcoins experienced extreme growth during a short period. This altcoin growth was characterized by Bitcoin market dominance dropping to 39% during May 2021, the lowest it has been since 2018. The rapid growth of altcoins may have happened because of many reasons, however, this growth signalizes one specific thing; money is getting spread throughout the whole crypto market, rather than being concentrated only on Bitcoin. 

From January to July, we have witnessed many cryptocurrencies experiencing big ups and even bigger downs. Two cryptocurrencies that have taken the spotlight and skyrocketed like crazy this year are Shiba Inu and Dogecoin without a doubt. Even though both of these coins started as a joke, they made millionaires and changed lives.

However, what is the main difference between these two memecoins? Do they stand a chance against Bitcoin and Ethereum? Why are they getting all this attention? Is investing in these cryptocurrencies a good idea? Throughout this article, we will do our best to explain the difference between these two major cryptocurrencies and answer the questions posed above.

What is Dogecoin?

First off, let’s talk about the famous Dogecoin. This cryptocurrency was started as a joke by Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus in 2013. As you may be aware, Dogecoin was inspired by the Doge internet meme. This meme includes a Shiba Inu dog and internal monologue captions. The dog went by the name of Kabosu and unfortunately passed away in April 2017. The Doge meme became even more popular after being named the “Top Meme of 2013” by KnowYourMeme. 

Dogecoin vs. Shiba Inu - Battle of the Memecoins
Doge Monologue Meme. Source: KnowYourMeme

The attention the meme got directly affected the price of Dogecoin, which went up to $0.0018 from $0.00025 (+620%) in a matter of days. This cryptocurrency was thought of as dead by many, however, in January 2018 Dogecoin hit $0.017, setting a new all-time high which many saw as impossible for the coin. Dogecoin was back on $0.003 after some months and sat there for quite a while. Everything changed during the February of 2021 when Dogecoin did wonders. 

In only a month, Dogecoin had reached a price of $0.078 from $0.003 (+2500%), setting a new all-time high and being on the first page of every media outlet. This is the time when Dogecoin started to show the world that it is not just a memecoin – but rather a cryptocurrency built for the community. The hype around Doge continued for much longer, reaching its peak on the 8th of May when it held a trading value of $0.73 per coin and was listed as the third biggest cryptocurrency in the world – with Bitcoin being the first and Ethereum the second. That being said, Doge experienced a 24000% growth from December 2020 to May 2021. 

At the time of writing, Dogecoin is trading at $0.19 and has a market capitalization of $25 billion. This puts Dogecoin on the 8th spot on Coinmarketcap. We must mention that Dogecoin has an uncapped maximum supply and a circulating supply of 130 billion coins.

Read more: Dogecoin Price Prediction 2021 and Beyond – Is DOGE a Good Investment?

What is SHIBA INU?

Moving on, we will elaborate a little on what Shiba Inu is. This cryptocurrency was founded in August 2020 by an anonymous team that goes by the name of “Ryoshi”. Unlike Dogecoin, Shiba Inu is a project built on the Ethereum network, making it an ERC-20 token. As we mentioned before, Shiba Inu is the dog breed behind the famous doge meme; therefore, the team behind Shiba Inu decided to name it just that. Moreover, the initial purpose behind the creation of Shiba Inu was to surpass Dogecoin – this explains why Shiba Inu was also known as “The Doge Killer”. When it first joined the market, Shiba Inu gifted 50% of its maximum supply (500 trillion tokens) to Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum. This gift was worth nearly nothing at that time, while today it would be worth more than $3 billion. 

Even though SHIB has been around for quite a while, this token started getting attention only this year. Throughout the year 2020, Shiba Inu experienced very small price movements, primarily because it was unknown and nobody was interested in a coin that had a maximum supply of 1 quadrillion. However, after the boom of cryptocurrencies like Safemoon, the other ones with a huge supply followed. By the 20th of April, Shiba Inu had a 24-hour trading volume of $492 million and a price 30000% higher than it had at the beginning of the year. The following month was the best month this cryptocurrency might ever experience, reaching the price of $0.000038 on the 10th of May and setting its current all-time high. That being said, Shiba Inu experienced a +5000000% growth in less than a year. 

Shiba Inu has been considered a joke of a cryptocurrency from its first days since their initial goal was a joke – killing Dogecoin. However, their intentions shifted during their journey. Claiming to be a fully decentralized cryptocurrency, Shiba Inu has been working on many projects to enrich the Shiba Inu ecosystem. One of the latest projects that have been officially launched is called ShibaSwap – a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange built mainly around Shiba Inu.

At the time of writing, Shiba Inu has a trading value of $0.0000061, 5% lower than yesterday. It has a market capitalization of $2.4 billion, giving its the 34th rank in Coinmarketcap.

Also read: SHIBA INU Price Prediction 2021 and Beyond – Is SHIB a Good Investment?

Dogecoin vs. SHIBA INU

To start, let us identify some obvious differences between Shiba Inu and Dogecoin. As stated above, Shiba Inu is built on the Ethereum Network while Dogecoin’s network is based off on the Bitcoin Network. This makes Shiba Inu slightly slower than Dogecoin, with the latter being able to process between 40-70 transactions per second. 

Moving on, supply plays a crucial role in the market performance of every cryptocurrency. For Shiba Inu, its high supply poses a big problem. At the time of writing, out of the 1 quadrillion maximum supply, there are around 394 trillion SHIB in circulation, 410 trillions SHIB burned, and more than 50 trillion SHIB donated to various charities. On the other hand, we have Dogecoin with a circulating supply of 130 billion. However, Dogecoin has an uncapped supply, meaning that its supply is ever-growing, making Dogecoin an inflationary currency.

Shiba Inu vs. Dogecoin Statistics.

Last but not least, there are plans from the teams behind these two cryptocurrencies. As for Shiba Inu, they have been working tirelessly lately, and that can be seen with the release of ShibaSwap. When it comes to Dogecoin, we see many tweets from Elon Musk explaining how he is working with the creators of Doge to improve this cryptocurrency and make it “the people’s currency”.

The Influencer Factor

One of the most important factors when it comes to coins like Shiba and Doge is the attention they get. As per Shiba and Doge, they both have been mentioned numerous times by different celebrities, the main one Elon Musk who has tweeted about these two coins continuously.

Many speculate that the main reason that Dogecoin saw that big of a price increase was Elon Musk constantly tweeting about it – and they were not completely wrong. There seemed to be some type of connection between his tweets and the price movements of Dogecoin, with the price moving up every time he tweeted about Doge. Additionally, this also happened with Shiba Inu. Whenever Elon Musk posted a tweet with the words Shiba Inu in it, that cryptocurrency’s price would blow up.

However, when it comes to Shiba Inu, there is one more individual that played a huge role in its growth – and that is the above-mentioned Vitalik Buterin. As mentioned before, when Shiba Inu first launched, 50% of its maximum supply was gifted to Vitalik Buterin. Until earlier this year, that 50% was considered as burned since nobody believed that Vitalik Buterin would ever open the wallet where that SHIB was allocated. 

However, he decided to open the wallet and donate $1 billion worth of SHIB to the Indian Covid Relief Fund and some trillions of SHIB tokens to some other charities. This occurrence got the attention of the whole world, being one of the biggest donations in human history. Since Vitalik Buterin opened the wallet, people got scared and started panic selling, causing the price of SHIB to go down. Afterward, Vitalik decided to burn the rest of his Shiba Inu tokens (around 410 trillion), an act that had a positive impact on the Shiba Inu ecosystem and community.

Also read: How to Mine Dogecoin (DOGE)? – The Definitive Guide 2021

FAQ

Is SHINA INU (SHIB) better than Dogecoin (DOGE)?

That remains to be seen. Dogecoin has been around since 2013 but is set to undergo major changes throughout the upcoming months. On the other hand, Shiba Inu is only a year old and has been working on major projects like ShibaSwap.

Is Dogecoin (DOGE) a safer investment than Shiba Inu (SHIB)?

Every investment in the cryptocurrency market is risky because the market is volatile. Before investing in any particular cryptocurrency, make sure to do proper research and analysis.

Will SHIBA INU’s (SHIB) market cap surpass that of Dogecoin (DOGE)?

At the time of writing, Dogecoin has a 10x larger market capitalization than Shiba Inu. This means that Shiba Inu’s market cap surpassing that of Dogecoin is hard, but never impossible since we have witnessed numerous cryptocurrencies 10x or even 100x in a matter of months.

Takeaways

 

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