If you know anything about the crypto industry, chances are you’ve heard about Shiba Inu and Pepe, because of the meme coin frenzy.
However, do you know the difference between the two? Although they both belong to the meme coin category, that is their adoption is driven by some meme, they are fundamentally different in many ways.
In this guide, we try to bring to light some of these differences, some of which are important when it comes to choosing which meme coin to invest in.
What is Shiba Inu?
Shiba Inu is the second largest meme token by market capitalization after Dogecoin. It was launched in 2020, inspired by the Shiba Inu dog breed. The token SHIB is an Ethereum based token that is used to power the project.
At first, Shiba Inu was gaining popularity solely based on the popularity of the Shiba Inu dog, but things have changed. The project now has some real world use cases that are making the token more useful in real life.
It is now accepted as a form of payment by some major businesses world wide, including cinema, automobile companies, etc. Tesla owner Elon Musk has also played a major role towards making the token more popular.
With a circulating supply of close to 600 trillion SHIB, Shiba Inu is one of the crypto assets with the largest circulating supplies in the world. However, it still serves as an asset investors want to buy and hold. There is also a regular burn program meant to reduce circulation over time and make it more valuable.
What is Pepe?
Pepe is one of the most recently launched meme coins. It was launched in April 2023, and has since taken the crypto space by storm. It is a deflationary mem coin launched on the Ethereum network.
The token was inspired by the Pepe the Frog internet meme, created by Matt Furie, which was very popular in the early 2000s. It was created to ride on the popularity of meme coins which have been going viral recently.
What sets the token apart is its institution of no-tax policy and the team’s public admission that the token has no utility other than being a meme coin. Pepe has a total supply of over 420 trillion tokens but has a burn mechanism that aims at reducing the supply progressively.
Which Should You Buy?
Now that you have seen the differences between Shiba Inu and Pepe, the next logical question is, which one should you buy? There is no direct answer to this question, but we’ll try to give some guidance.
The first thing to consider is the market capitalization. The market capitalization can be a good indicator of which crypto asset to buy, because the lower the market cap, the more room there is for the asset to grow. Considering this factor, it is clear that Pepe is the better option.
Another factor to consider is the circulating supply. This is the number of tokens that have been released into circulation. The more the number of tokens, the less likely it is to be valuable. Also considering this, Shiba Inu has a much larger circulating supply, which makes Pepe a better choice.
On the other hand, Shiba Inu has something that Pepe doesn’t have yet – real world use cases. You see, ultimately, it is real world use cases that determine the worth of a crypto project. As it is currently, Pepe doesn’t have any real world use case as the team even admitted.
This makes Shiba Inu a more reliable investment because with such use cases, it’ll continue to be relevant and in demand. For Pepe however, the hype around it may die eventually if no real use cases are sought for the token.
If you wish to buy for just short term gain, Pepe may be fine but for a long term investment, Shiba Inu is more reliable.
