In cryptocurrency circles, most coins launch with pretty serious objectives and roadmaps. This template is what most developers think the market wants. Some, however, deliberately take an unserious, even hilarious, angle. SHIB and DOGE are the most prominent of these. Crypto gambling enthusiasts on platforms like BC.GAME may know a bit about these coins. Dogecoin had a few wild rallies in the past two years. Accordingly, they have struck the imagination of the cryptocurrency community. Online casino enthusiasts can wager using these coins and have a chance to multiply their holdings.
Understanding the DOGE Mania
Old-school financial analysts had enough trouble trying to understand Bitcoin. You can only imagine their dismay when Dogecoin came around. DOGE launched in 2013, and its founders intentionally went for hilarity from the get-go. At the time, Bitcoin had a significant rally and gradually became public consciousness. Its goal was to satirise Bitcoin as a serious cryptocurrency. Well, enough people took the joke seriously, explaining its present status.
The founders chose the image of Shiba Inu (SHIB), the most cat-like of canines, for the coin’s symbol. Notably, this coin does not have as robust a blockchain or development platform as leading cryptocurrencies. After all, the joke was never to go this far. This coin is a fascinating experiment in human psychology. It is the product of human speculation and uniqueness in marketing.
Billionaire entrepreneur and Tesla CEO Elon Musk may be the single most prominent promoter of the coin, with some of his tweets pushing DOGE to the moon. It has had spectacular rallies in recent times. However, its lack of serious use cases makes it a fascinating project because no one knows how long crypto traders will keep buying something only because they can.
DOGE vs SHIB: Understanding SHIB
SHIB is trying to beat DOGE at its own game. An anonymous person or group called Ryoshi founded this coin in 2020. The term Shiba Inu is the name of a dog breed in Japan, which is eerily similar to the concept of DogeCoin’s symbol. This coin burst into the public consciousness when Ethereum founder, Vitalik Buterin, donated 1 trillion SHIB to the India COVID Relief Fund. India faced an unprecedented Covid situation at the time, which gained international sympathy.
Nonetheless, it was a high-profile endorsement for SHIB, which never looked back. Shiba Inu Coin champions now dub it the “Dogecoin killer.” This claim is a pretty audacious statement from a pretender to the throne. Its value appreciated considerably in October 2021 after rumours of decentralised exchange listings surfaced. The value of SHIB is still low, approximately $ 0.000029 at press time. This figure is a far cry from DOGE’s $0.23 price. Therefore, the DOGE killer hype is mostly rhetoric at this point. Still, there are incredible similarities between the two projects.
Traders have helped fuel SHIB’s rise hoping for a windfall like Dogecoin. It has recently attained popularity in China, where traders accounted for a significant share of SHIB trading volumes. Its market capitalisation is over the $10 billion mark, indicating the cryptocurrency industry’s dynamism. SHIB takes the prize even among speculative coins as an especially volatile coin.
SHIB vs DOGE: Who Wins?
Both these coins have incredibly similar characteristics. Their use of the Shiba Inu mascot is the most patented. They are also both decentralised with active communities. Nonetheless, their similarity should not cloud the fact that they are direct competitors. Dogecoin is essentially a fork of Litecoin, which was among the first few cryptocurrencies. SHIB came much later and launched in the era of Ethereum tokens.
Therefore, DOGE has years of incumbency and is significantly more valuable. Despite its unserious setup, DOGE has ironically become an effective investment option for many. For SHIB, the jury is still out. It does not offer anything significantly different from DOGE and only intends to ride on the fascinating joke coin hype to greatness.
Looking Ahead
Despite a concerted effort to attain legitimacy, it is amazing that some of crypto’s biggest names are literal jokes. This phenomenon shows that anything can be valuable if enough people ascribe such meaning to it. DOGE has morphed into a bonafide speculative asset. Its rallies over the past couple of years outpaced even those of Bitcoin. However, these projects are coming from far back, and it may take a while to challenge the big guns. SHIB has the steeper climbing curve of the two. Still, tracking who will emerge as the “top dog” in the long run will be fascinating.
