Everything you wanted to know and did not dare to ask about Memecoins ;)
Dogs, Elon, Vitalik and other Cryptoverse insanities
The number of crypto projects out there is impressive, putting into play an immense variety of cryptocurrencies and tokens, with all kinds of innovative functions in pursuit of a bright future in the world of decentralized finance. However, beyond Bitcoin, Ethereum and, of course, NFTs, probably the most talked about cryptocurrencies at family gatherings this Christmas are Memecoins. From coins based on the popular Shiba Inu dog breed, such as Dogecoin, and of course the Shiba Inu itself, to a strange hybrid between the well-known eccentric Tesla CEO Elon Musk and this canine breed, Dogelon Mars, there are numerous crypto assets that seem to attract more attention than to offer something really useful and revolutionary.
Are they something beyond the meme they represent?
Delve into the exciting world of Memecoins with this article, in which you will discover what exactly they are, how to differentiate them from their useless borthers, Shitcoins, and what value can be found in the most relevant dog-coins.
Memecoins, meme-based coins
As their name suggests, Memecoins are cryptocurrencies whose existence is based on internet and social media memes. Because of this, they don't have to add some crazy new functionality or be especially innovative. Instead, their success in the crypto market relies heavily on the interest they spark in the community. For example, a single tweet from Elon Musk supporting one of these cryptocurrencies (it is usually highly related to these issues) can cause, as in the case of Dogecoin, its price to rise 22% in one day.
This high volatility is also detrimental in many cases, since there is no project behind the Memecoins, they run the risk of losing the interest of the community if a more interesting Memecoin comes out, and its price plummeting.
The most relevant common characteristics of Memecoins are:
Infinite or huge supply (in cases like Shiba Inu, the total supply is 1 quadrillion coins).
They are usually so cheap (hundredths of a cent), and are usually given away in numerous airdrops. Its holders can feel rich having their million DOGE, in contrast to their sad fraction of BTC or ETH.
Highly volatile, as explained above, dependent on being supported by the community.
They are usually a fork (copy) of a successful cryptocurrency.
The most popular ones are based on the Doge meme, a seductive image of the popular Japanese breed of Shiba Inu dog. If you don't know her, here you have her in all her glory.
Memecoin or Shitcoin?
When talking about Memecoins, some confusion usually arises, as a term known as Shitcoin appears, which represents, in essence, crypto assets similar to Memecoins. However, they do have one key difference: Shitcoins, unlike Memecoins, are useless cryptocurrencies. Not only do they not contribute anything new to the crypto ecosystem, but, in addition, they have minimal or no value, due to the little support and development they have on the part of their creators, or to the lack of liquidity in the different crypto-asset exchanges.
Unfortunately, the line that separates Memecoins and Shitcoins is fine, since the definition of the latter depends on each person: there are those who say that Shitcoins are, disparagingly, all Altcoins that are not in the top 100 of cryptocurrencies in the rankings, while others consider Memecoins and Shitcoins to be equivalent terms. But the essence remains the same, Shitcoins are "shit" coins, which are worthless.
You have to be careful about finding yourself in such a project, as they can look promising, and end in nothing, or even worse, turn into a scam, as was the case with SQUID, the cryptocurrency based on the popular and recent Netflix series, Squid Game. In this case, the crypto went from having a price of more than 2,000 dollars to basically 0, due to a rug pull by its developers (abandonment of the project and sale of all its cryptocurrencies).
Luckily, a Shitcoin can be easily identified by noting these characteristics:
Unreliable or anonymous developers.
Lack of Whitepaper or fixed course of the project.
Null evolution of the functionality of the cryptocurrency, which, in addition, does not add anything new.
Minimal or no liquidity in token exchanges.
Of course, if you find a Shitcoin in your wallet due to an airdrop, it could be interesting to keep it and remember it, because it could be a Memecoin waiting to be the new sensation, and suddenly increase its value ... Who knows ...
The most relevant Memecoins
Knowing how to distinguish them from Shitcoins, let's go on to analyze the 3 Memecoins that have marked the crypto market the most.
Dogecoin
This is the quintessential Memecoin, the one that started it all. It was created in 2014, with the purpose of becoming the “cryptocurrency of the Internet”. Its creators, Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, designed it with the theme of the Doge meme in the hope that this detail would be more attractive to the general internet community than the formal Bitcoin, and thus, incentivize its mainstream adoption.
This light-hearted design can be seen in the shape of Dogecoin's environment and its tokenomics. To begin with, Dogecoin is a fork of Litecoin, a cryptocurrency that inhabits a PoW (Proof of Work) blockchain similar to Bitcoin, but with lower computational requirements to mine it, which means that transactions are processed faster and that mining can be more accessible to platform users.
Dogecoin possesses an unlimited supply of DOGE, which incentivizes the currency to be spent and used, and prevents early users of the protocol from getting too rich. For each block created, with a Block Time of approximately 1 second, the miner is rewarded with 10,000 newly created DOGEs, making the supply grow and grow.
Dogecoin possesses an unlimited supply of DOGE, which incentivizes the currency to be spent and used, and prevents early users of the protocol from getting too rich. For each block created, with a Block Time of approximately 1 second, the miner is rewarded with 10,000 newly created DOGEs, making the supply grow and grow.
One thing to highlight about Dogecoin is its use in different campaigns created by the community through its own Doge-Reddit, among which solidarity causes such as Doge4Water stand out, in which more than 30,000 dollars were raised to dig water wells in Kenya, and raising another 30,000 dollars to fund a Jamaican bobsled team to participate in the Sochi Winter Olympics. They got him nominated, but sadly, he didn't end up participating… DOGE is also used to tip content creators on Reddit, which really makes it an internet cryptocurrency.
Currently, according to data from CoinMarketCap, there is a total supply of more than 132 billion DOGE, with a Market Cap of approximately 24 billion dollars, placing the primal Memecoin in the top 20 cryptocurrencies of the entire crypto market. You can buy and sell it on different token exchanges, such as Binance.
More information about Dogecoin on its website, here.
Shiba Inu
As the name itself suggests, it is another canine Memecoin based on the Japanese Shiba Inu breed. Created in 2020 by an anonymous developer known as Ryoshi, many call SHIB the real Dogecoin killer. As you can see on its website, it is a much more elaborate and multifunctional project than Dogecoin, offering several tokens with synergy between them, an intense focus on NFTs and its own decentralized exchange, ShibaSwap.
As you can read in his woofastic WoofPaper, Shiba Inu is a project built on Ethereum, which seeks to be a cryptoactive system completely run by its community through the Doggy DAO. Its main token is the SHIB (Shiba Inu), and the project started in a very particular way: Ryoshi directly mined the quadrillion of SHIB, and “threw the keys” of the project, keeping 50% of the total supply in Uniswap and the other 50 % to nothing more and nothing less than Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, to decide what to do with it.
Surprisingly, the young billionaire decided to donate $ 1 million from his SHIB to the charitable cause against Covid, India Covid Relief Fund. The rest of the SHIB he owned he completely burned - roughly 410.24 trillion SHIB, the largest token burn in history, ensuring enormous prosperity for the project. You can see the donation here, and the burning transaction here.
After that, it has been the community that has made the Shiba Inu ecosystem grow and develop. The key elements of the Shiba Inu ecosystem are:
ShibaSwap
The central pillar of the project is its DEX (Decentralized Exchange) ShibaSwap. In it you can interact with three main tokens: the SHIBA, the LEASH and the BONE, distributed in different pools with relevant tokens of the crypto ecosystem, such as ETH, wBTC, DAI, USDC, etc. They can also be found on other common DEXes and CEXes, such as Binance, Uniswap, or Sushiswap.
The main attraction of ShibaSwap is its WOOF rewards system, distributed among those who perform the BURY (staking) and DIG (Liquidity Providing) actions, with any of those three tokens. WOOF rewards are distributed in the form of freshly minted BONES each time a block of ShibaSwap transactions is created, tokens that will be discussed later. These BPBs (BONES Per Block) are created variably over time. In July 2021, there was an event, known as the Liquidity Event, to incentivize the provision of liquidity to the DEX in which the BPB associated with its liquidity pools, DIG pools, was 1,000 BPB. In addition, 50 BPB was distributed among the BURY staking pools, and 100 BPB to a fund to reward developers. After two weeks, BPB decreased according to the following algorithm:
In addition to the rewards in the form of newly minted BONES, different percentages of the ETH used in transaction fees are distributed between the stakers and liquidity providers, as well as a percentage of other fees from the pools of other ShibaSwap tokens converted into SHIB and LEASH. 33% of the rewards are distributed weekly, leaving the remaining 67% to claim after a period of 6 months.
Tokens have different rewards depending on whether BURY or DIG is performed with them:
SHIB, the Shiba Inu
It is the main token of Shiba Inu. Known for having increased its price throughout the year by 60,000,000%, it is, along with DOGE, among the 20 best cryptocurrencies on the market. It has a market cap of more than 20 million dollars. If you do BURY (staking) with SHIB, you get in exchange an equivalent amount of xSHIB, a token that can be exchanged and sold and that, to stop staking, you have to check both xSHIB and SHIB you want to recover.
The rewards for making BURY are, as explained above, as follows, as shown in the WoofPaper:
Similarly, when doing DIG, SSLP tokens are obtained from the pool to which liquidity has been provided, and they represent the percentage of the pool that is owned. The rewards shown in the following scheme are distributed proportionally among all liquidity providers according to their SSLP tokens:
LEASH, the Dogecoin Killer
It was originally thought to be a rebill token that tracks the price of Dogecoin. But it ended up becoming an ERC-20 like the other Ethereum tokens, yes, with a total supply of only 107,647 tokens. Currently, the market cap of LEASH is approximately $ 137,000, and its price is around $ 1,000.
If BURY is performed, an equivalent amount of xLEASH is obtained, analogously to SHIB staking, which accumulates rewards, according to the following scheme:
BONE, the governance token
This is the token that will form the basis of the Doggy DAO, and will help its holders to vote for the future of the Shiba Inu project, as well as which pairs of tokens to add to ShibaSwap. It has a total supply of 250 million tokens, and a market cap of about 9 million dollars.
Again, by doing BURY, you get an equivalent amount of tBONES, which accrue interest according to:
Finally, when doing DIG, SSLP tokens are obtained, with rewards according to:
SHIBOSHIS, the NFTs of Shiba Inu
Shiba Inu has also joined the sale of NFTs with its collection of 10,000 SHIBOSHIS, NFTs that were originally sold on ShibaSwap for 0.1, 0.2 or 0.3 ETH in the form of LEASH. These are pixelated Shiba Inus avatars dressed up with numerous accessories. These NFTs will be playable characters in a future Play to Earn strategy game, with different accessories being special bonuses to each one's stats. They look like this:
More information about SHIBOSHIS on their website. You can buy and trade them on Opensea.
Shiba Inu Incubator and Rescue
Shiba Inu Incubator is an environment in which digital artists of all kinds are helped to promote their art related to Shiba Inus, through different decentralized tools. You can see some of the art pieces on the Shiba Inu website.
Rescue is a partnership that Shiba Inu has with Amazon Smile, through which you can allocate part of the money spent on Amazon purchases to help care for and rescue abandoned Shiba Inus.
As can be seen, Shiba Inu is a much more complete and developed project than Dogecoin, which explains why SHIB is called a true Dogecoin killer.
Again, more info on his website, and on his WoofPaper.
Dogelon mars
“I am Dogelon. Dogelon Mars. Join me and together we will reach the stars ”
Here we already enter a murky terrain. We are facing the hybrid cryptocurrency between Elon Musk and a Shiba Inu. Of course, a cryptocurrency with a… bizarre… story behind it. On the Dogelon Mars website you can find a series of comics that explain the origins of this curious character, who seeks to re-colonize Mars through the help of his new Earth friends, us, after traveling to our planet in the past. Here is the first part, although I recommend that you follow the full story on its website:
Of course, the 4 parts of the introductory comic about the life of little Dogelon Mars are NFTs that can be bought and traded on Opensea.
In addition to the comic, the Dogelon Mars project is based on an ERC-20 token called, of course, ELON. Identically to Shiba Inu, the total supply is 1 quadrillion tokens, and initially 50% was blocked on Uniswap, with the other 50% given to Vitalik Buterin (curious that it wasn't to Elon Musk himself, always the good guy). Vitalik). It remains to be seen what the Ethereum co-founder will do with it ...
Otherwise, the current market cap for the currency is $902 million, which leaves ELON still a long way from catching up with its two rivals Dogecoin and Shiba Inu. However, depending on what Vitalik Buterin does, the price could take off to Mars.
Which leads to the last point of the project: your Roadmap. Being the bizarre project as it is, we do not have one as such, but some enigmatic words:
"In the year 2040, Mars will be re-colonized and its future plans will be discussed"
Future Memecoins to watch out for
There are countless Memecoins nowadays, based on Shiba Inus, Elon Mask, and other crazy things. However, here, from beToken, we recommend you keep an eye on these two. Who knows, they could be future Dogecoin killers.
Maricoin, the LGTBIQ + currency
Created in Spain (nowhere else could such an ingenious name have come out) by Juan Bermonte, regent of the Juan Por Dios hair salon chain, Maricoin has the ambitious goal of becoming the global cryptocurrency of the LGTBIG + collective.
Built on the Algorand blockchain, this cryptocurrency can be used at the beginning of 2022 in different LGTBIQ + friendly establishments, to buy different items at a discount. In addition, Maricoin intends to finance LGTBI parties worldwide and be used globally in related establishments.
Currently not much more is known about the project, but you can enter a waiting list to buy Maricoins in advance through this form.
Here you have the Forbes article where this special Memecoin is announced.
Shiba shogun
"The Fierce Shiba Inu To Conquer The Other Inus"
Indeed, it is another Memecoin of our favorite breed of dog. But this is a fierce, experienced, and ambitious Shiba Inu. He is a Shiba Shogun, and he wants to bring order to the land of Ethereum, conquering all other canine Memecoins.
Beyond that, we have little information about the cryptocurrency, as it has just been put up for sale through Uniswap. Will its 4 seasoned developer Shoguns and the innovative tokenomics they promise, plus their broad focus on marketing, be enough to make this the Memecoin to rule them all? Only time and the community's interest in the project will show it.
They promise to release their Whitepaper soon, but until then, you can view their Roadmap and buy the cryptocurrency through their website.
If something can be said about Memecoins, it is that they are not boring. Their enormous volatility and dependence on the community make them an exciting experience and investment (yes, do yourself a favor and don't invest money in them that you really need, and beware of frauds and scams!). In addition, they demonstrate the enormous power that Elon Musk and, above all, Doge and the Shiba Inus (I don't know how many times I have already mentioned those three words…) over our beloved Cryptoverse. Of course, maybe a bit of variety would be useful ... I, personally, would invest without thinking in a Memecoin of a Coton of Tulear… Just saying…
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