Shiba Inu coin (SHIBUSD): Live Price Chart

Sometimes, parodies become serious. This is certainly the case with the Shiba Inu Coin, which was initially launched in 2020 to make fun of popular memecoins such as Doge. Since then, crypto investors have begun to take it seriously. Following the surge in popularity of Doge in 2021, this jokey competitor began to feel the benefits, rising in value significantly.

As a memecoin, Shiba Inu does not have a lot of real-world utility and is largely viewed as an entirely speculative asset. Shiba Inu has a huge total supply, and its value is driven entirely by the sentiment of its most dedicated fans. Here's what you need to know about the memecoin to end all memecoins, also known to some as the "Doge killer".

The story of Shiba Inu Coin offers a fascinating parable of the history of cryptocurrencies. Originally launched as a joke to make fun of "pump and dump" memecoins, a total of 1 quadrillion (that's a 1 with 15 zeros) Shiba coins were minted at the launch in August 2020.

Half of the total supply was locked into the Uniswap SHIB/ETH liquidity pool, a decentralized exchange that serves an automated market maker system. The other half was donated to Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum. He almost immediately "burned" nearly all of these coins by sending them to a dead crypto wallet, while the remainder of his share (worth $1.2 billion at the time) was donated to India's COVID-19 relief fund.

It wasn't until Elon Musk (the founder, CEO and CTO of Tesla Motors) started gassing up memecoins on Twitter that Shuba Inu really took off, rising from $0.000000000056 to a high of $0.00008616 in October 2021, a 150 million per cent increase. Since then, the price of Shiba Inu has consistently fallen, reflecting a wider loss of interest in memecoins.

Shiba Inu Coin is one of the most volatile memecoins around. Its price is driven entirely by the sentiment of users and the coin is highly vulnerable to market manipulation. As such, buying and investing in Shiba Inu coins with the long game in mind is a risky game to play. Of course, the coin is very, very cheap, meaning that you could always spend a few cents on some coins and hope that they jump up in value in a few years.

However, the more popular option for some is to trade the coin and attempt to profit from day-to-day price fluctuations. Transaction times are fast and fees are low, meaning it is easy for day traders to hold positions in Shiba Inu. But make no mistake, trading Shiba Inu successfully depends on your ability to stay one step ahead of extreme volatility.