Shiba Inu but not the animal

A cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin, Shiba Inu is built on Ethereum and has the Japanese hunting dog breed Shiba Inu as its mascot. Shiba Inu is frequently mentioned as a Dogecoin substitute; its supporters even refer to it as "the Dogecoin killer."


Shiba Inu and Dogecoin are examples of meme coins, which are digital currencies tied to a particular theme—in the case of Shiba Inu and Dogecoin, the Shiba Inu dog—but which are frequently introduced as inside jokes or parodies rather than as useful digital products.


While Dogecoin was introduced in December 2013, Ryoshi, a pseudonymous person or organization, introduced Shiba Inu in August 2020.

Shiba Inu was created as a response to a straightforward query: "What would happen if a cryptocurrency project was entirely managed by its community?" Ryoshi, the organization's founder, explains that it began as a "experiment in decentralized spontaneous community creation." Ryoshi asserts that collective decentralization has the ability to forge stronger bonds than a centralized team could possibly manage.