Recently, meme cryptos have been doing very well in the crypto community – thanks to Elon Musk and some other celebrities. The Tesla CEO is particularly the chief driving force behind the sudden surge in the price of Dogecoin. And other coins have tremendously benefited from that lift. One of such is Shiba Inu.
Shiba Inu is another meme crypto that has been making waves in the past few months. In fact, many people have dubbed it the new “Doge killer.” But what could be the significance of these two cryptos, and which one should you include in your investment portfolio this year and in the coming one?
In this post, we have highlighted some key differences between Dogecoin and Shiba Inu coins so you can easily determine which one better fits your portfolio and start investing. So read on to see all we’ve got for you on Dogecoin vs. Shiba Inu debate.
Dogecoin vs. Shiba Inu Coin: What’s the Major Difference?
Before you can decide which of these coins to go for, it will be best to understand what sets them apart and how you can take advantage of that. Below are some major differences between the two meme tokens.
Background
Dogecoin was launched in 2013 as a joke, and it is hence the first meme coin ever in the crypto market. After its launch, it quickly adopted the Shiba Inu dog as its mascot. Dogecoin was created out of a hard fork on Litecoin, and looking at its infrastructure, which is based on the Scrypt proof of work mechanism, we can easily say that the project is more scalable even than Bitcoin.
This amazing infrastructure of Dogecoin is indeed instrumental to its sudden growth of more than 300% in the last few months. Right now, many people see DOGE as a genuine alternative to Bitcoin as it fulfills the role of being more consumer-focused.
On the other hand, Shiba Inu seems to be created straight out to mimic Dogecoin. The coin was built on the unlikely success of Dogecoin. Like Dogecoin, Shiba Inu is also designed to serve as a peer-to-peer payment network. It is decentralized and so isn’t controlled by any central authority or government. The idea of Shiba Inu is entirely community-led from the onset.
The technology backing them
Dogecoin is essentially the same technology as Bitcoin. It got its code copied and pasted from Bitcoin’s code. But Dogecoin is not exactly the same as Bitcoin. It has more coins in supply compared to Bitcoin. With more than 129 billion DOGE in circulation, it is obvious that Dogecoin supply is far more abundant than that of Bitcoin, which is only 21 million maximum supply.
Like Bitcoin, Dogecoin also uses a proof-of-work mechanism, and so it requires a lot of power supply to secure its blockchain. DOGE can be mined together with Litecoin, allowing its network power to be more stable than when it was mined alone.
Shiba Inu, on the other hand, is a token on the Ethereum network. It is an ERC-20 token, and because it is powered by Ethereum, Shiba Inu can leverage smart contracts to male decentralized financial (DeFi) products. Shiba Inu is presently planning to make a full dive into the DeFi space, and when that happens, users will be able to stake their Shiba Inu tokens as the only way to mine the token.
Transaction and speed
On this ground, Dogecoin seems to be performing better. It uses the Scrypt algorithm, which seems to be much faster and allows for a much faster block creation rate than most other forms of cryptocurrencies. And that’s one of Dogecoin’s perks over Bitcoin. It makes the crypto more scalable than Bitcoin. While Bitcoin has about 10 minutes of block creation time, Dogecoin’s estimated time is about 1 minute.
On the other hand, since Shiba Inu is built on the Ethereum blockchain, its block creation time and transaction rate are as slow as what’s experienced with Ethereum itself. But with the coming Ethereum upgrade in the pipeline, SHIB could soon have a strong competitive advantage over DOGE.
Supply and demand
Presently, Dogecoin has no supply limit, and this, in turn, has removed any panic for scarcity, making the coin continue to fulfill its primary goal – a genuine peer-to-peer payment system. Recently, Dogecoin supply rate was increased to about 5 billion DOGE per year.
But with Shiba Inu, the case is different. SHIB has a circulating supply of 500 trillion and a total cap set at 1 quadrillion. However, a large portion of this coin was burned by the Ethereum founder, Buterin, to show that he is not in any way supporting Shiba Inu, and the ones that are not burned are locked up in the Uniswap exchange. That way, anyone looking to trade SHIB will have to do that on the open market.
Dogecoin vs. Shiba Inu: What about Their Price History?
Anyone considering investing in either Dogecoin or Shiba Inu should take their time to look at how the two coins have performed in the past. Although that alone may not be enough to conclude on which side to support, it will give you a good insight into how they will likely perform in the coming years. So let’s see what their price history looks like.
Dogecoin price history
Even though it started out as a joke, Dogecoin made a tremendous surge in price in just two weeks after its launch. The price increased by about 300%. In 2017, its price increased from $0.0002 to around $0.009 before the end of the year. But this didn’t last for so long before the price started to fall again.
By 2019, GOGE was already trading at around $0.0025, and that continues into 2020 with a small rise and fall here and there. But in 2021, Dogecoin experienced a tremendous turnaround in price, reaching an all-time high of $0.082 in February. And in April, the coin recorded yet another amazing lift in price, hitting $0.731 – that’s about a 9000% increase in the price with which it opened the year. Presently, Dogecoin is traded at $0.273.
Price history of Shiba Inu
There is not much data about Shiba Inu since the coin was created in 2020. It was launched at less than $0.00000001 in order to encourage significant growth and fulfill its goal as a viable and affordable peer-to-peer currency. Its price remained that low all through 2020, but in April 2021, it began to see some increase as more people began to know about the coin.
In April, its price had increased from $0.0000001 to $0.0000036 – that is more than a 3500% increase in just a few months. In May, Shiba Inu experienced a new all-time high of $0.0000388. And at the time of writing this post, SHIB is traded at around $0.00004249 per token.
Dogecoin vs. Shiba Inu: Which Is the Better Investment?
Well, weighing the two coins can be a bit tricky since they are both community-driven, which means they are very much subject to wild fluctuation in price. So when it comes to making an investment, you need to weigh the parameters mentioned above to decide carefully. Check how they have performed in the past and look at their use case and acceptability too. Check how scalable the coin is, as well as some other factors. All these will come together to help you make the best decision as to whether you should go for Dogecoin or Shiba Inu.
Laila Azzahra is a professional writer and blogger that loves to write about technology, business, entertainment, science, and health.