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Dogecoin vs Shiba Inu: Which is the Memecoin King?
With the success seen by Dogecoin in 2021, it was only a matter of time before a competitor (if you can call it that) would challenge DOGE to be king of the memecoins.
Enter SHIBA INU, an ERC-20 token launched in summer 2020 that started to make waves in 2021, following the success of Dogecoin. SHIB became a popular choice for traders who felt they had missed the boat with Dogecoin, and it certainly rewarded those who had faith. If you had invested $1,000 in SHIB at launch, you would have had a billion dollars when it hit its all-time high in October 2021. Much like Dogecoin, Shiba Inu has fallen fairly from its highs, but both can recover.
If you are looking to decide which memecoin may be the better option, this guide will help you as we compare Dogecoin vs Shiba Inu.
Dogecoin Quick Overview
Dogecoin (DOGE) was started in 2013 by Jackson Palmer, an Adobe software engineer, and Billy Markus, an IBM software engineer.
It only took about 3 hours to change the original Bitcoin code to create Dogecoin according to Markus. The Dogecoin network launched in December 2013, reaching an all-time high of almost 73 cents USD in May of 2021. It is currently trading under 10 cents a piece.
The asset uses a proof of work consensus mechanism just like Bitcoin, with blocks being mined every minute and 10k DOGE entering circulation through each block reward. Markus and Palmer stepped away from Dogecoin in 2015, while influential figures such as Elon Musk have stepped in to champion the memecoin.
Shiba Inu Quick Overview
SHIBA INU (SHIB) was created in August 2020 by a pseudonymous person who goes by “Ryoshi” with the aim of being a direct competitor to the original meme coin that is Dogecoin. SHIB began with a total supply of 1 quadrillion SHIB.
A quadrillion has 15 zeros or is 1,000 trillion in other words. Half of the supply was put into Uniswap for liquidity pool provision purposes. The other half was sent to Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin with the hopes that he would burn it. Buterin burned over 400 trillion SHIB while selling the remainder and donating the proceeds to Covid relief in India.
SHIB has quickly risen in popularity over the past year, reaching an all-time high of $0.00008845 per in October 2021. It has fallen over 80% from that high, now trading at $0.00001 per SHIB.
Comparing Doge vs Shiba Tokenomics
DOGE and SHIB are two very different assets when it comes to their tokenomics. This is for a couple reasons. First, they run on completely different consensus mechanisms, and furthermore, Dogecoin is its own network whereas Shiba Inu is an ERC-20 token built on Ethereum.
Dogecoin uses a proof of work consensus mechanism, just like Bitcoin, and therefore it can be mined. Dogecoin block rewards happen about every minute, at which time 10,000 new DOGE enter circulation. In contrast, SHIB’s supply is already circulating, and no more SHIB will be added to the supply. However, DOGE has a current circulating supply that is one-fifth that of SHIB, which means it is a far scarcer memecoin.
Secondly, DOGE transactions are quite cheap compared to SHIB ones. This is because there is a low transaction cost on the Dogecoin network, whereas SHIB uses Ethereum as its network, meaning it is subject to the notoriously high gas fees that come with ETH. This also means you need to own ETH in order to transact with SHIB outside of an exchange, as it is the asset required to pay gas fees. This could change if ETH 2.0 launches successfully.
Comparing Shiba Inu vs Dogecoin Utility
When it comes to utility, at least at this current time, SHIB actually comes out ahead. This is because SHIB is a token on a smart contract enabled blockchain in Ethereum, and therefore it inherits all the benefits of smart contracts. Apart from being available on a variety of decentralized exchanges (DEX), the team behind SHIB has launched ShibaSwap, its own DEX. On ShibaSwap, users can stake their SHIB and earn rewards in addition to being able to swap it for any other ERC-20 token. In contrast, there are no smart contracts on Dogecoin, though rumors that they will come eventually started circulating last May with no development since.
In terms of use as a payment currency, Dogecoin currently holds the lead between the two dogs, as transactions are far cheaper with DOGE than SHIB solely due to the ETH gas fees required to send SHIB. More and more merchants are beginning to accept DOGE as a payment method, giving it some added utility, though there are plenty of other assets that could become the ideal crypto payment method for merchants to accept.
DOGE vs SHIB Conclusion: Memecoins Are Memecoins
The reality of the DOGE vs SHIB debate is that regardless of which one is considered a better memecoin, it is still a memecoin. In this sense, the idea that either asset is a good investment is pure speculation, as neither brings anything particularly innovative to the crypto sector.
Rather, they are fun speculative assets that you can buy a lot of for very little money, which leads to unit bias for many newcomers. While some people like the idea of buying millions of one coin for the same price as a fraction of a Bitcoin, you should likely have more behind your investment strategy than getting a lot of units of something.
While we can debate which is better at this time, it may be a debate over which was the worst investment in the long-term. Time will tell.
