SHIB holders can now use their SHIB to mint land in the Shiba Inu Metaverse, rather than just ETH.
After promising the feature for the Shiba land sale back in April, SHIB purchases for the metaverse have gone live.
Here's a look at what this means, and why it happened.
Shiba Metaverse Now Accepts SHIB
After initially stating only ETH would be supported to avoid any mass sell-offs of SHIB in the future, the developers of the Shiba metaverse then reversed this decision following pressure from the SHIB community.
As a result, Shiba Lands can now be purchased using SHIB or ETH.
The official Shiba Metaverse account made this announcement, stating in a video: "You guys asked, and we listened. The Shiba Inu team is pleased to announce you can now buy lands with SHIB."
The costs of the land will remain the same - ranging from 0.2 ETH to 1 ETH - in the SHIB equivalent. With most of the remaining land costing 0.2 ETH, this works out at around 27.1 million SHIB.
The SHIB.io website now includes a button that states “Mint with SHIB” underneath the ETH minting section.
The announcement created a quick price spike, with SHIB jumping from $0.00002054 to $0.00002091 in 30 minutes.
Just over 18,700 pieces of land have sold - which is slightly above 50% of all available land. Almost 13,000 of this land sold during the private sale, which raised $20 million. The Shiba metaverse public sale, which opened up the lands to a wider group, first went live on April 23.
After the 36,431 lands in the introductory phase sell out, the Shiba metaverse will then expand to 100,595 lands. Some 5100 users hold land in the Shiba metaverse at the time of writing.
SHIB holders and supporters have reacted positively to the news, with some SHIB holders previously expressing their disappointment regarding SHIB’s role in the metaverse at launch.
Community opinions continue to create change within the Shiba ecosystem, with the Shiba Inu burn portal launching in response to a demand from the ShibArmy for more SHIB burns.