A website who hosts the play’s white paper (or rather Woof Paper) calls it “a decentralized spontaneous community-building experience.” Shiba Inu is built on top of the Ethereum blockchain, like many other coins. By design, each is worth a tiny amount – $ 0.0000078 on Thursday.

It’s like Dogecoin on reverse steroids (each Dogecoin is worth 30 cents, which seems extremely expensive in comparison). The more expensive the coin, the larger the potential community. The market cap of the Shiba coin is now around $ 3 billion, but it topped $ 10 billion last month. It is the 32nd most valuable cryptocurrency, according to coinmarket.com.

The Woof Paper includes philosophical claims about decentralization that are common in the crypto world, namely that money and transactions should not have custodians. And, like Dogecoin, he took on the Shiba Inu, a dog breed from Japan, as his mascot. One of the tenets of the play is that the community loves dogs. Also, it adopted the title of “Dogecoin Killer”.

The founders even offered 50 trillion coins, worth $ 1 billion at the time, to Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin, who quickly got rid of them by transferring them to a fund. Covid Relief Aid for India. 50% plunged.

While this all sounds like a trip to a strange new world, it also highlights an emerging trend in crypto and stock trading. Shiba’s website says the community is strong and growing at 520,000 people, expanding its reach as its memes and philosophy spread across social media. Meanwhile, the custodians of the crypto world are eager to attract new users and volumes, as Bitcoin trading has been relatively weak in recent weeks. Shiba Inu has been listed on major exchanges like Binance.

Tuesday,

Global Coinbase

(ticker: COIN) said it will list the coin on its Coinbase Pro platform, usually a precursor for it to be listed for all Coinbase retail users. In addition, Shiba fans started a petition to try to convince the Robinhood brokerage app to list the Shiba Inu coin. As of Thursday, it had 156,000 signatures.

A Robinhood spokesperson said the company had not commented on the petition. In a previous discussion on Reddit, Christine Brown, COO of Robinhood Crypto, wrote: “We’re still looking at what coins to add to Robinhood Crypto, but for security and compliance reasons we can’t talk of those we are considering adding. . “

There was once an issue with Coinbase’s adoption of the Shiba Inu coin. It was due to start trading on Thursday, but “technical issues” delayed the launch. Users can withdraw Shiba but cannot deposit it, according to a Coinbase spokesperson. “We will provide an updated schedule to restore deposits and enable trading as soon as possible,” she wrote. She did not respond to a follow-up question about the technical issues causing the problems.

In recent years, Coinbase has been viewed as an important guardian of the crypto universe, and coins have tended to rise in value when listed on the platform. On Tuesday, the Shiba Inu coin jumped more than 30% after the announcement.

Asked why Coinbase listed the Shiba Inu coin, the spokesperson wrote that “we want to be the Amazon of crypto where people can find and buy the assets they want and as part of that , our goal is to list all possible legally authorized assets. ”

In its latest earnings report, Coinbase said the company was concerned that customers would turn to other platforms if Coinbase did not offer certain coins. It quickly listed Dogecoin after the results were called and speeded up the registration process, giving coin makers and users new ways to request listings. However, the company says it always sticks to high standards for new parts.

“We are confident that, based on the information to which we have access, the assets available on our platform are appropriate for retail clients,” the spokesperson wrote.

As their strategies evolve and they list more coins, exchanges are likely to become less important custodians in the crypto world, according to Matt Hougan, chief investment officer of crypto fund provider Bitwise Asset Management.

“Gone are the days when Coinbase added an asset to its platform that was an implicit approval stamp,” he wrote in an email to Barron. It should now be viewed as a platform that “will trade anything that meets its listing standards”.

In general, this is a good thing. In the traditional investing world, brokers like

Charles Schwab

(SCHW) play a similar role by providing access, but not necessarily approval. “You can buy amazing stock on Schwab, and you can buy absolute dogs (no pun intended),” Hougan wrote. “We don’t assume that Schwab assesses the investment merit of every stock that trades on its platform.”

With the change, however, it’s even more important for investors to “do their own homework and know what you’re buying, or you should turn to professional crypto asset managers to assess exposures for you.”

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