Doge, Shiba... Who Let The Dogs Out? A Joke Or Major Players?

Dog-themed cryptocurrencies have taken the cryptocurrency industry by storm and are no longer something small that can be overlooked.

It all started with a joke when software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer invented Dogecoin in 2013 to mock the influx of cryptocurrencies being created. Marcus referred to himself as "Shibetoshi Nakamoto", a play on words for Bitcoin's mysterious founder Satoshi Nakamoto. They couldn’t even imagine that their cute smiling Shiba Inu meme would turn into one of the leading cryptocurrencies; one that has consistently grown and thrived despite adverse market conditions.

'Dogefather' Elon Musk Pumps Dogecoin 

Imagine how much popularity and value a cryptocurrency gains when the richest person on the planet promotes it. Being a fan of cryptocurrencies, Elon Musk regularly backs Dogecoin DOGE/USD, a coin that saw annual gains of more than 1,500% in 2021 and was accepted as a means of payment for Tesla merchandise.

Any asset's value depends on how much a buyer is willing to pay for it but the support of the world's richest man can make a big difference.

There are already several studies on Musk manipulating the prices of cryptocurrencies through his tweets - a topic that deserves a separate article altogether. As shown in the chart below, Musk's tweets about DOGE are clearly driving its price upward:

Source: TradingView 

Musk even suggested in a tweet that Dogecoin might be “the future currency of Earth.” To become the best crypto, he believes Dogecoin needs to speed up block time, increase block size and lower fees.

DOGE has spawned a multitude of offspring tokens with Shiba Inu (SHIB) rocketing to the top.

Why is SHIB Different?

Created by an anonymous group or individual called Ryoshi in August 2020, Shiba Inu has gained popularity as an alternative to Dogecoin. However, its proponents have dubbed it "the Dogecoin killer".  

The idea that a meme coin can generate a yearly gain of millions of percent seems surreal. While cryptocurrencies have produced some spectacular short-term gains before, we have never seen anything like Shiba Inu’s in 2021. SHIB/USD could be purchased for $0.000000000073 per token on January 1, 2021. Over the year, it gained six zeros and closed at $0.00003338 on December 31, 2021. Overall, this was a 45,725,900% gain, which is perhaps the highest return on investment for a single year ever witnessed.

Shiba was founded as a way to test the viability of decentralization in its purest form. It is a cryptocurrency project that is fully run by its community, without a centralized team and developed without any funding.

Ryoshi locked 50% of the 1 quadrillion supply in Uniswap for liquidity purposes and sent the other 50% to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. In May 2021, Buterin donated more than 50 trillion Shiba Inu coins, worth more than $1 billion at the time, to an India COVID-19 relief fund when the nation was struggling with the Delta variant of the Coronavirus. Buterin then blocked 40% of Shiba Inu's entire supply to a 'dead wallet', removing it permanently from circulation.

The Most Popular Dog-Themed Coins 

DOGE and SHIB have become far more than jokes now that they have a combined market cap of over $30 billion. Overall, there are more than a hundred other dog-themed coins and tokens in the crypto space.

Floki Inu FLOKI/USD

Floki Inu (FLOKI) is a dog-themed meme coin that calls itself more of a movement than a coin.  

It’s a cryptocurrency born out of the Shiba Inu (SHIB) community and is named after Elon Musk’s Shiba Inu pet. By combining memes with utility, Floki Inu hopes to stand out from other meme coins. In the long run, the team's vision is to develop a decentralized ecosystem that utilizes strategic partnerships, develops NFTs, games, and DeFi features.

At the time of writing, FLOKI traded at $0.00003604, down 4.8% for the past 24 hours. Its self-reported market cap stood at $340,505,759.

Bottom Line 

Despite their origins as a joke, dog-themed cryptocurrencies have become something Elon Musk endorses, and that’s a big deal. 

Let's be realistic, though. These gains were mostly fueled by social media speculation from cryptocurrency enthusiasts. 

However, as they become more popular, their use cases are expanding. In the same way that Tesla accepted Doge as payment for merchandise, it’s quite likely that other companies may soon enable dog-themed crypto payments.

Yet, many people wonder, “Are these digital assets safe to invest in?” The answer is no, they are extremely risky, much like other crypto investments. Invest only what you can afford to lose – the golden rule applies to all investments.

Although their value has skyrocketed over the past year, the correct questions are: Do these projects only succeed because celebs like Elon Musk and his followers back them? What if they are merely short lived hype? Can retail investors who entered at the top be left out of pocket if the bubble bursts?

Maybe. It’s not like you can get any guarantees here. Moreover, this article doesn’t constitute financial advice. Before you invest in dog-themed cryptocurrencies, be sure to do your own research. You can, however, capitalize on the hype if you are able to get the gist of these assets’ price action. After all, as long as many people believe that something has value, it does.