Shiba Inu price, chart and history
About Shiba Inu
Shiba Inu (SHIB) is a memecoin: a token that began as an internet joke, branded with the same Japanese dog breed that Dogecoin made famous. It is an ERC-20 token on Ethereum, so it sits in ordinary Ethereum wallets. Most people buy it to hold or trade on speculation, although the project has since added its own exchange, ShibaSwap, a companion network called Shibarium, and sister tokens named BONE and LEASH.
SHIB appeared in August 2020, released by an anonymous developer calling themselves Ryoshi, who pitched it as a playful Ethereum rival to Dogecoin and an experiment in running a project purely through its community. Half of all tokens were sent to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. In May 2021 he gave a large share to a Covid relief fund for India and destroyed most of the rest. Ryoshi later withdrew from public view.
SHIB has no mining or staking of its own; it relies entirely on Ethereum for security. It started with one quadrillion tokens, and the huge Buterin burn plus later community burns cut that to roughly 589 trillion. Critics argue its value rests mostly on hype and social media attention, and point to large holdings concentrated in a few wallets. In 2025 an attacker also drained millions from the Shibarium bridge.
- Created by
- An anonymous developer known as Ryoshi
- Launched
- August 2020
- How it's secured
- By Ethereum (SHIB is an ERC-20 token)
- Supply
- Started at 1 quadrillion; about 589 trillion remain after burns