How to Buy SHIB Tokens in Canada

“Shiba Inu (SHIB) is considered to be a meme coin. The creators and supporters of Shiba Inu often refer to it as “the Dogecoin killer.”

Shiba Inu (SHIB) was launched in August of 2020 by a mysterious founder known only as “Ryoshi”. Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, was long believed to be the originator of Shiba Inu, but he denied such rumours. To date, there is still no clear trace as to who the anonymous founder is. 

Since the explosion of meme coins, a number of rival dog-themed cryptocurrencies have emerged. However, Shiba Inu was quickly nicknamed “Dogecoin Killer” after proving its potential and utility since launching. SHIB is Shiba Inu’s native token and if you’re looking to buy SHIB in Canada, look no further than Netcoins. With 0% funding fees, free cash withdrawals, and live customer support service seven days a week, we make it simple for Canadians to buy SHIB.

Video Tutorial: How to Buy SHIB with Netcoins

What makes SHIB unique?

Shiba Inu is an ERC-20 token and exists on top of the Ethereum network. As such, it also supports smart contracts, or contracts that self-execute once certain criteria are met because they’ve been written in code. Smart contracts are important for the evolution of a financial world that is decentralized.

Shiba Inu also allows users to lend their tokens and stake them (or put them up as collateral for the opportunity to verify transactions and earn rewards), allowing participants to earn passive income from it. As you can see, there are a number of ways that investors could grow their holdings by buying SHIB.

Here are a few other reasons why buying SHIB is regarded positively by some investors:

Future Development: The Shiba Inu Token ecosystem supports projects such as an NFT art incubator and the development of Shibaswap (a decentralized exchange, DEX) whose goal is to provide a safe place to trade valuable tokens while remaining decentralized.

Proximity to Ethereum: Shiba Inu runs on top of Ethereum network, a robust and well-known blockchain network that seeks to improve how the internet works. As Ethereum continues to grow, Shiba Inu’s ecosystem will likely grow as well.

Security: The blockchain database tracks, manages, verifies transactions, and records every transaction that occurs with it. Shiba Inu runs on the Ethereum blockchain, offering the safety and functionality of the Ethereum network.

Cheap Price: Because of its large supply, full SHIB tokens can be had for mere pennies. This means investors can enjoy the feeling of owning an entire token (or many of them) rather than just a fraction of one.

How Much SHIB Can I Buy?

The beauty of Shiba Inu is that you can buy small fractions of it. It also comes with a small price tag because SHIB’s maximum supply cap is set to 1 quadrillion tokens. This large supply cap tends to keep SHIB’s price on the low-end. For this reason, it’s easier to accumulate SHIB tokens than it is to accumulate bitcoin which has a large price (thanks to its lower supply cap of 21 million coins). Buying SHIB in regular intervals (like days, weeks or months) is known as dollar-cost averaging and can be a great way to average out the price at which you buy.

Related article: 3 Ways to Make Your Crypto Assets Work for You

The Shiba Inu Price History

Investing in cryptocurrencies is risky due to the volatile nature of the market. SHIB’s meteoric rise in price has made a few millionaires overnight. During the October 2021 price surge, SHIB famously minted a billionaire. One wallet was uncovered that had bought $8,000 worth of SHIB in the summer of 2020 – worth over $5.7 billion at SHIB’s all-time high valuation in 2021.

It’s also important to learn how to protect your SHIB once you’ve bought some. That’s why it’s recommended that investors pull their crypto assets from crypto trading platforms and into hardware crypto wallets in order to protect them against hack, fraud or theft.

When choosing where to buy SHIB in Canada, it is vital to choose a reputable and regulated platform like Netcoins, Canada’s first publicly-owned, fully regulated crypto trading platform. It remains important to understand that with every investment comes risk. Investing in any cryptocurrencies, including Shiba Inu, should always be done after doing your own due diligence.

Related article: The Pros and Cons of Day Trading vs. Long-Term Crypto Investing

How to Store Your SHIB?

You can buy SHIB tokens from crypto trading platforms, like Netcoins, and leave your SHIB tokens inside the platform. However, there are much safer options to storing your SHIB as leaving them in exchanges can expose them to certain risks like hacking and theft.

The safest option to keeping your SHIB secure is to transfer them into a SHIB wallet. A SHIB wallet is a type of digital wallet that is used to send and receive SHIB, similar to a Google wallet or a physical wallet. It stores your cryptocurrency balance securely and safely, but also ensures you have easy access to it whenever you need it.

There are four different types of SHIB wallets: hardware wallets, desktop wallets, mobile wallets and web wallets.

Hardware wallets look like a USB device. They are considered to be offline wallets because they’re not connected to the internet. The fact they’re offline makes them more difficult to find and to hack. As such, they’re typically considered the safest option to store your SHIB.

Desktop wallets on the other hand are programs that store your SHIB on your computer’s hard drive. Mobile wallets perform the same function as a desktop wallet but on a mobile device instead.

Finally, a web wallet is an online service that sends and stores your SHIB on your behalf anywhere, anytime. Similar to checking your email.

Desktop, mobile and web wallets are all connected to the internet (and referred to as “hot wallets”). Like mentioned earlier, they are more susceptible to potential risks. On the other hand, hardware wallets (or “cold wallets”) are considered safer options as they are not connected to the internet.

This is why it’s often advised that Canadians pull out their SHIB tokens from crypto trading platforms and send them directly to a hardware wallet. Only in this way, are they in full possession of their SHIB and can keep them secure.

What’s the Difference Between SHIB and DOGE?

Shiba Inu and Dogecoin share some similarities. For example, they’re both meme coins within the ever-growing cryptoverse. They have large supply caps, which means they have lower price tags when compared to larger priced cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.

But there are also a number of differences between them, mainly in the way they are created. Shiba Inu uses a method called “Proof-of-Stake” (PoS) and Dogecoin uses “Proof-of-Work” (PoW).

With Shiba Inu’s PoS, users offer up their crypto to help verify transactions (essentially putting crypto up as collateral to help validate transactions). If a participant is selected, they get to validate said transactions and earn rewards for doing so. The idea that participants are putting up their own crypto means that users are incentivized to protect and maintain the network.

Dogecoin on the other hand uses the PoW concept, which is the process of solving difficult computational problems by brute force (hence why they need a lot of computing power). Once a problem is solved, the winner is rewarded more DOGE coins. The idea here is that they had to spend a lot of energy to produce more DOGE therefore they are incentivized to maintain the network.

While SHIB is an ERC-20 token that lives on top of the Ethereum network, Dogecoin is its own coin. In fact, Dogecoin is considered “4th-generation bitcoin” because it was forked from Lucky Coin (which was forked from Litecoin, forked from bitcoin).

Shiba Inu is branching out and creating a full ecosystem around itself – with the addition of two more tokens and a decentralized exchange (DEX), ShibaSwap, where users can trade with each other bypassing a middle person.

What are Shiba Inu’s next steps?

2021 was a big year for SHIB (and other cryptocurrencies). With its social media popularity, marketing donations, and the launch of ShibaSwap, the value of SHIB grew to over $1 billion in total assets locked. Moreover in November of 2021, SHIB overtook Dogecoin as the market’s top meme coin. Thanks to the overall growth of the crypto markets, SHIB will likely benefit from this upward trend as well.

Looking into 2022, SHIB’s price performance will be heavily dependent on the continued growth of the SHIB community, its listings onto additional crypto trading platforms, the general upward direction of the crypto market, and the continued growth of its ecosystem and passionate community.

Related article: Crypto Predictions for 2022; What Investors Could Look Forward to This Year

The crypto industry on the other hand allows the financial process to be done transparently, with minimal fees, and a decentralized system that gives power back to the people. If this is something of interest to you, SHIB can be a great way to start. And if you are a Canadian interested in buying Shiba Inu, Netcoins provides a simple and easy way to get started.

Like any investment, it’s always important to heed caution and only invest within your realm of comfort.

This post is for informational purposes only. For proper financial advice, we recommend you speak to a financial advisor.