DOGECOIN may be the leading the way with meme coins, but there’s another cryptocurrency nipping at its heels – Shiba Inu.

But is there enough room for more than one dog coin in the crypto pack?

What is Shiba Inu?

Described as “an experiment in decentralised spontaneous community building,” Shiba Inu was created by a pseudonymous developer under the alias of Ryoshi and launched in July 2020.

Shiba Inu is a meme token running on the Ethereum blockchain and has nicknamed itself the “Dogecoin Killer”.

Shiba Inu’s website says: “From its inception, Shiba Inu has done things differently.

“Starting with a supply of 1 quadrillion, our founder, Ryoshi, locked 50 per cent in Uniswap, then “burned” the other half to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin for safekeeping.

“To help reverse the devastating spread of Covid-19 in India, Vitalik Buterin has since utilised SHIB in the largest crypto donation in history, and then burned 40 per cent of its total supply to a dead wallet, ensuring our long-term success and stability.

“In the words of Ryoshi, ‘Thank you to the woofmeister for enabling true decentralization. Now we truly begin.'”

Shiba Inu’s whitepaper says its intention is to build an ecosystem consisting of three tokens with different supplies.

SHIB is the ecosystem’s foundational currency.

LEASH is the second token created and has a total supply of 107,646 tokens.

BONE is the third token with a supply of 250,000,000 tokens.

The team behind the three tokens has also created a decentralised exchange known as ShibaSwap.

The exchange allows users to “dig” (provide liquidity), “bury” (stake coins), “fetch” (retrieve tokens from Uniswap or SushiSwap) and swap coins.

The exchange is similar to SushiSwap and Uniswap which are also on the Ethereum blockchain.

A number of dog-themed cryptocurrencies have emerged in the last year.

But what’s the difference between Dogecoin and the new “Dogecoin killer” Shiba Inu?

Dogecoin was built as a joke during the 2017 bull run.

It was meant to mock all the fake scam coins being released at the time.

Dogecoin was built with code from Litecoin, meaning it also uses the proof-of-work consensus mechanism.

However, unlike Litecoin, Dogecoin wasn’t given a maximum supply.

Dogecoin blocks are found every minute and 10,000 new Doge are rewarded to miners per block meaning 14.4 million new Dogecoins are created daily.

Shiba Inu on the other hand is an ERC-20 token on Ethereum.

This means it’s been created and hosted on Ethereum’s blockchain instead of having its own like Dogecoin.

ERC-20 tokens are stored and sent using Ethereum addresses.

But what really sets the cryptocurrencies apart is Shiba Inu’s ShibaSwap decentralised exchange making it part of the decentralised financial ecosystem on Ethereum, allowing users to get certain functionalities, like staking and gaining yield which Dogecoin does not allow.

SHIB can be purchased via exchanges such as Coinbase and Binance.

SHIB’s price jumped 120 per cent in May after being listed by Binance following “immense user demand.”

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao tweeted on May 10 the exchange “ran out of ETH deposit addresses due to SHIB today” which had “never happened before for any other ERC20 coin.”

Shiba Inu rose 25 per cent in September 2021 after the coin was listed on Coinbase.

Forecasting site WalletInvestor predicts Shiba Inu will finish 2021 at $0.000029.

By the end of 2022, they predict SHIB will reach $0.0000401, $0.000051 by the end of 2023, $0.000062 by the end of 2024 and by December 31, 2025, WalletInvestor predicts Shiba Inu will reach $0.000073.

Meanwhile, DigitalCoin predict Shiba Inu will reach $0.0000418130 by the end of 2021, $0.0000533446 by the end of 2022, $0.0000577706 by the end of 2023, $0.0000702702 by the end of 2024 and $0.0000837659 by the end of 2025.