As 2021 comes to a close, Shiba Inu Coin is in an unprecedented position. SHIB is the most-searched coin on CoinMarketCap, and posts the highest growth out of any coin this year (44300527.4%).
Throughout this period, the ShibArmy has grown to over 1.1m hodlers (although some analysts believe this to be over 2 million). As many joined during the explosive October/November run, the history of SHIB may be a bit of a mystery for some.
So, let’s reflect on what’s happened with SHIB in 2021.
What Happened To SHIB This Year?
SHIB first launched in August 2020, but the project went quiet for a while, mainly re-surfacing in February 2021, which will be our starting point.
February 2021
By February, the cryptocurrency market and memestocks were gaining attention. This is where SHIB really re-launched, both with the re-release of the Shibtoken Twitter account, and Ryoshi’s second blog post.
“In August we had a nice wave of hype and was forgotten,” the post said. “But recently, with the resurgence of DOGE, SHIB has caught fire and is threatening to turn over the entire market
According to Ryoshi’s post, SHIB was now in its ‘Phase 2’.
March 2021
In March, SHIB had its first push from Elon Musk. The Tesla CEO tweeted “I’m getting a Shiba Inu.”
Holders, including volunteer project lead Shytoshi Kusama took this opportunity to boost SHIB in the replies.
This clearly worked. SHIB jumped from $0.00000002 to $0.00000009 in 24 hours - the start of its ascent upwards.
April 2021
In mid-April, SHIB saw another huge price spike following the reveal of ShibaSwap, knocking off a zero and reaching $0.0000037.
After hitting 100,000 holders, the Shiba Inu Whitepaper, known as the WoofPaper, launched.
The WoofPaper laid out exactly what the Shiba Inu ecosystem was, how the tokenomics works and presented the future vision of Shiba for the ShibArmy to see.
May 2021
Okay, this is where it starts to get busy. May was really the breakout month for many cryptocurrencies, including SHIB.
In the first half of the month, exchanges started to catch wind of SHIB. Many began allowing its users to buy, sell and trade SHIB. Combined with the general sentiment around crypto at this time, SHIB reached a new all-time high of 0.000035 - a price it wouldn’t return to until October.
Then, the burn happened.
After Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin donated 50 trillion SHIB to India’s Covid Crypto Relief Fund on May 12, the official SHIB Twitter account put out a statement in support of the donation. “VB did not rug us. He’s not dumping our token,” it said.`
A few days later, Buterin sent 410 trillion SHIB to the dead wallet address, before donating the rest of his SHIB to charity. According to Buterin, he didn’t want the power associated with holding 50% of a cryptocurrency. He has since dumped other tokens that did the same.
In another statement, the SHIB Twitter said: “Despite the fact that VB allowed us to be part of the single most generous act in cryptocurrency history, we have seen even long-term Shib holders become paperhands and dump millions of dollars over the course of a few days. These disbelievers have spoken out against Shib and spread FUD in every way they could. But you, the ShibArmy, stood strong against this flood of negativity.”
Finally, Ryoshi shared his last Medium post. Entitled ‘I AM RYOSHI’, the SHIB creator laid out his vision for the Shiba ecosystem in what would be the final official communication. “I give you this end vision. now build towards it,” he said.
SHIB ended the month at a price of $0.00000928.
June 2021
In contrast to May, this was a fairly quiet month, although SHIB did hit 500,000 holders.
The official Shiba website got an overhaul, as did the WoofPaper with ‘WoofPaper v2.” Here, they removed the ‘Dogecoin Killer’ tagline from the Shiba branding.
June ended with a pretty hectic AMA with Certik, that saw the official Telegram channel flooded with thousands of questions and messages. A lot of these were just asking: “Wen Swap?”
July 2021
Another busy month, as ShibaSwap, Shiba’s decentralised exchange, finally launched. This allowed holders to Bury (Stake) and/or Dig (Farm) their tokens, earning both BONE and LEASH.
ShibaSwap hit its highest liquidity on July 14 with $1.7bn added, but this dropped to $363m by the end of the month.
Aside from this, Certik released its full audit of ShibaSwap, and Shopping.io became one of the first major payment platforms to support SHIB payments.
Shytoshi Kusama also gave us the first tease of what the Shiboshi NFTs would look like.
SHIB hit its lowest price since the May spike, dropping to $0.0000058 on July 20.
August 2021
The calm before the storm.
In another relatively quiet month, ShibaSwap continued to add new pairs to its pool. These additions also included some SHIB burns, as part of the new listing procedure.
September 2021
One of the major catalysts for SHIB’s future breakouts comes in the form of more exchange listings. On September 14, Binance US added SHIB support, while Coinbase listed SHIB on September 16, allowing US crypto investors to purchase SHIB easily.
The India Covid Relief Fund also sold off all its remaining SHIB, which some of the ShibArmy celebrated, viewing it as the end of a “hostage situation” for the token.
October 2021
This was perhaps the busiest month for SHIB.
It all started when Elon Musk tweeted an image of his new Shiba Inu puppy on October 4. In the space of three days, SHIB’s price nearly tripled from $0.00000855 to $0.00002793, with SHIB re-entering the Crypto Top 20.
On October 14, the Shiboshi NFTs released, selling out in 35 minutes.
The SHIB surges continued in late October. It hit a new all-time high for the first time on October 24, continuing to rise to its current ATH of $0.00008616 on October 28, reaching a market cap of $43bn. It even overtook Dogecoin on its rise.
This wasn’t before Elon Musk denied owning any SHIB, however.
The end of the month was also marred by some disagreements with CoinMarketCap over the changing of SHIB’s circulating supply on its website.
October also gave us our first look into community burning. Steven Cooper’s Bigger Entertainment launched the SHIB Burner playlist, allowing users to burn SHIB by listening to music.
November 2021
As we approached the end of the year, much of the SHIB news was focused on the future. Shytoshi announced that William Volk, a veteran Activision developer, would help create the Shiba Inu Game, while AMC said it would accept SHIB from early 2022 via BitPay.
SHIB also finally hit the 1,000,000 hodler milestone.
Meanwhile, the community burns continued as new companies announced their intention to burn. The community burned over 2 billion SHIB in November.
SHIB ended November at $0.00004745 after a gradual decrease - down 44% from its ATH.
December 2021
As a follow up to the William Volk news, PlaySide Studios announced it would develop the mobile Shiba Inu game.
Oh, and the burns continued.
Finally, the Shiba team hosted an AMA in which they revealed new details about Shibarium, ShibaSwap 2.0, the Shiba Inu Game(s), and the Doggy DAO.
At the time of writing, on December 31 at 11:26 AM GMT, SHIB is trading at $0.00003418, and has a market cap of $18,753,959,409.
The Future of SHIB
As the AMA showed, there’s plenty coming in 2022. After establishing itself in the upper echelons of crypto, the now 1.1 million strong ShibArmy can look forward to new projects, updates, and burns.
Who knows, maybe Robinhood could finally even list SHIB?
See you in 2022.
Read More: This Clothing Brand Invested Most Of Its Money In SHIB - Now Its Financially Secure
[Image: Mike Enerio/Unsplash]