Shiba Inu SHIB

Shiba Inu launched in August 2020, created by an anonymous founder using the name Ryoshi, as a token on Ethereum built around the same dog meme as Dogecoin. One quadrillion units were created, and half were sent unsolicited to Vitalik Buterin — who burned ninety percent of them and donated the remainder, worth roughly a billion dollars at the time, to a COVID-19 relief fund in India.

Since then the project has attempted to build outward: a decentralised exchange, a layer-2 network, and various token and NFT offshoots. The founder departed without ever being identified, leaving the project to a pseudonymous team and its holders.

It is a meme token, which is not an insult but a description of where its value comes from — attention, community and momentum rather than revenue or usage. The enormous supply means the very low unit price is a presentational choice, not a sign that the asset is cheap; the meaningful comparison is total market value. The ecosystem products exist and function, but their usage is small relative to the token's valuation. Drawdowns exceeding eighty percent have occurred more than once and should be treated as an ordinary feature rather than an anomaly.