The Pros and Cons of Supporting Shiba Inu

Shiba Inu (SHIB) is a cryptocurrency whose logo was inspired by the Japanese hunting dog, the Shiba Inu. Since its inception, it has established itself as Dogecoin’s main rival. Shiba Inu is currently ranked 11th with a market value of more than $30 billion, trailing Dogecoin, whose market value is around $6 billion more. Although the Shiba Inu’s development momentum appears positive, some investors are concerned that the Shiba community will lose confidence over its future development and issues with its technology. The current market value battle between Dogecoin and Shiba Inu is becoming increasingly fierce, leading to an increase in popularity of the Shiba coin. Shiba certainly has some distinct advantages, as well as three potential issues that Shiba Inu Coin holders may face.

The supply is highly concentrated

According to data ten wallet addresses hold more than 60% of the total available supply of Shiba Inu. In other words, at least ten people have these wallet addresses, or all of them are held by a few people. Even the Shiba Inu audit report, available on its website, shows that more than half of its total available supply is stored in four wallet addresses. Therefore, if any of these wallet addresses decides to sell Shiba Inu coins, the market will be seriously affected.

It has limited applications

Shiba Inu’s primary application will be as a payment method, but it will soon face stiff market competition. According to data, approximately 112 merchants worldwide accept SHIB as a payment method. Still, over 7,000 merchants accept Bitcoin as a payment method, and over 3,000 merchants accept Ethereum and Litecoin for payment purposes. SHIB’s developers recognized its limited applications and created two additional tokens to help it advance its application utility. Its LEASH token serves as a value store, while its BONE token serves as a loyalty reward and a governance token for the community. Unfortunately, the number of these two tokens’ users and its market value fell short of the developers’ expectations.

It lacks a clear development plan

In July of this year, the SHIB launched its decentralized exchange, allowing users to earn interest by depositing cryptocurrencies to maintain market liquidity and higher yields, ShibaSwap. As explained on the Shibu Inu website: “ShibaSwap gives users the ability to DIG (provide liquidity), BURY (stake), and SWAP tokens to gain WOOF Returns through our sophisticated and innovative passive income reward system.” That said, ShibaSwap, cannot compete with more mature decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap or 1inch because most of the website’s activities revolve solely around SHIB, which limits its utility for traders and investors. Simultaneously, the team intends to use its decentralized exchange as a secondary market for users to trade SHIB-specific NFTs.

According to their whitepaper, SHIB’s future development plan is divided into seven stages, half of which will focus on marketing, with only a small portion of the development plan after 2021 is mentioned. As a result, BigONE advises investors interested in the project to pay close attention — such understanding is an important part of due diligence and the long-term development of any cryptocurrency project. Nonetheless, SHIB will struggle to stay ahead of the curve if they do not make real changes.

Power in the SHIB community
At the same time, SHIB has a distinct advantage in the form of its devoted community, the so-called “Shib Army” referenced in the whitepaper and in social media as #ShibArmy. According to reports, there are currently over 900,000 SHIB coins in the hands of people all over the world. In addition, SHIB recently surpassed the number of Ethereum’s followers on its official Twitter account with 2m followers. Finally, the community has been boosted by news that largest movie theater chain in the US, AMC Theatres, will accept SHIB as payment through BitPay wallets in 60–120 days, AMC CEO Adam Aron confirmed on November 16. Aron tweeted: “Attention #SHIBArmy: Our friends @Bitpay decided to support Shiba Inu specifically because I asked, so AMC can take Shiba Inu for online payments of movie tickets and concessions. @AMCTheatres to be the first @bitpay client to accept Shiba Inu. Timing 60–120 days. This is a WOW!”