Overview
Shiba Inu (SHIB) is a meme token launched in August 2020 by an anonymous founder known as “Ryoshi”. It was created as a “Dogecoin killer”, using the same Shiba Inu dog mascot, but as a token on Ethereum rather than its own blockchain.
SHIB became one of the biggest stories of the 2021 bull market. Its price rose by tens of thousands of percent, turning small purchases into fortunes and making it one of the ten largest cryptocurrencies for a time. Ryoshi later stepped away, and the project is now led by a pseudonymous developer known as Shytoshi Kusama.
Vitalik’s burn
At launch, Ryoshi sent half of all SHIB to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, hoping to make the token look trustworthy. In May 2021, Vitalik burned about 410 trillion SHIB (worth billions of dollars on paper at the time) and donated much of the rest to charity, including a large gift to India’s COVID relief fund. This removed a huge share of the supply and became one of crypto’s most famous moments.
The SHIB ecosystem
Shiba Inu has tried to grow beyond a meme:
- ShibaSwap, a decentralized exchange;
- BONE and LEASH, two other tokens in the ecosystem; BONE pays gas fees on Shibarium;
- Shibarium, an Ethereum Layer 2 network launched in August 2023 to make transactions cheaper and to burn SHIB using part of its fees.
Shibarium’s launch was rocky, and usage has stayed low: on some days in 2026 it handled only about a thousand transactions.
The SHIB token
| SHIB at a glance | |
|---|---|
| Supply (Oct 2026) | about 589 trillion SHIB |
| Original supply | 1 quadrillion SHIB |
| Price (21 Oct 2026) | about $0.0000051 |
| All-time high | about $0.000086 (October 2021) |
| Market cap | about $3 billion (#37) |
SHIB has a fixed supply that only goes down through burns: tokens sent to “dead” wallets that nobody can access. The community celebrates large burns, and headlines often report huge percentage jumps in the burn rate.
But the math is sobering. A typical month in 2026 burned a few hundred million SHIB, roughly 0.0001% of the supply. At that pace, burns will never meaningfully move the price on their own.
Security and reliability
SHIB itself is a simple Ethereum token and inherits Ethereum’s security. The weaker points are in its ecosystem:
- Shibarium bridge exploit. In September 2025, an attacker used a flash loan to take control of most of Shibarium’s validator keys and drained about $4 million from its bridge. The team planned refunds, but the attack raised serious doubts about the network’s security.
- Low usage. With little activity on Shibarium, fees and burns stay small.
- Hype-driven price. Like all meme coins, SHIB moves mainly on sentiment and attention.
Shiba Inu vs. the competition
| Shiba Inu | Dogecoin | Pepe | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Launched | 2020 | 2013 | 2023 |
| Type | Ethereum token + own Layer 2 | Own blockchain | Ethereum token |
| Supply | ~589 trillion, burning | No cap, ~3.4% inflation | ~420 trillion, fixed |
| Ecosystem | ShibaSwap, Shibarium, BONE, LEASH | Payments | None (pure meme) |
Our verdict
Shiba Inu is one of the great meme-coin stories: a joke token that became a multibillion-dollar project with a loyal community and its own ecosystem.
But its utility remains limited, its supply is enormous, and burns are far too small to make a difference. SHIB trades about 94% below its 2021 peak and moves mainly on hype. It is a pure speculation: invest only money you can afford to lose entirely.
This review is for information only and is not financial advice.