SHIBADOGE: A Tale of Two Meme Coins

**A Meme Chain Capital Analysis**

EXCERPT

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

~Charles Dickens

HISTORY

In late 2013, friends Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer created the most well-known meme coin to date. Started with a humorous tweet, Dogecoin became an instant hit with people from all over the world and formed an interconnected community of DOGE loyalists. This group of online strangers from different corners of Earth came together and helped raise money for many good and charitable causes. The coin then went through some lean years, but eventually broke out when it started garnering support from famous names like Guy Fieri, Snoop Dogg, and Elon Musk. But DOGE is not the only coin with this kind of success — enter Shiba Inu.

Dubbed the “Dogecoin killer,” Shiba Inu (SHIB) was created in August 2020 by Ryoshi (an anonymous figure or group). In this short timeframe, SHIB managed to surpass many expectations and reached a market capitalization of $41 billion, before retracing back to its current valuation of $12 billion. While the charts are plotting and connecting their dots, its community, known as the SHIBArmy, continues to grow and stays competitive with the Dogecoin community. Its creator(s) wrote many beautiful messages to the SHIB community from many philosophical and idealistic points of view. Nevertheless, the eventual rivalry between Dogecoin and Shiba Inu communities left many feeling lost — Atten-tion, present ShibaDoge (a little military brouhaha).

The author G. Michael Hopf wrote in his book, Those Who Remain: A Postapocalyptic Novel, “Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times.” The infamous rivalry between the DOGE and SHIB communities generated massive amounts of online attacks from both sides. Throughout all of this, 5 friends began to look inward for solutions. These 5 early lovers of Dogecoin and Shiba Inu set their egos aside and pool their resources to unite the two communities — in the process, the world.

SHIBADOGE started with a fair launch on Christmas Eve 2021, reaching $50 million market capitalization in less than 3 days. Within 2 weeks, they had more than 2,600 holders of the token and 2,500 members on Telegram and Twitter. Their community generated more volume than most altcoins at the time. Coin Market Cap and DexTools have the coin on both of their trending lists, further solidifying what is to come.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Lightspeed

The world is moving at a faster rate than ever before. Technological advancements have drastically altered many aspects of our planet. From discovering fire to agriculture, making compasses to clocks, and migrating from the internet to blockchains, the rate at which our species evolve has increased. And the next step in this evolution is decentralization where power lies with the people.

888

Every long lasting creation that stands the test of time starts out with a dreamer and a vision. Of course, no one can see or know what the future holds, but you can prepare and provide the guardians after you with an edifice worthy of safeguard. And in this same breath, SHIBADOGE founders have no idea what reality is like in 2910, but they envision its foundation is decentralization. So, they put pencils to their temples, connected them to their brains and wrote an 888 years refrain, a testament to their pain (Hamilton).

Stratagem

The contract will be renounced at some point in the future so that no new changes can be made to the contract. As the coin becomes more widespread and adopted across the world, it will, theoretically speaking, eventually, reach critical mass. When this happens, continued marketing will only yield a diminishing return. Therefore, the founders believe it’s better to turn the marketing wallet into a burn wallet. Next, liquidity will be locked for 888 years. And finally, the Unity DAO will be formed in the future with open source protocols.

What Is Love?

Ask any SHIBADOGE army personnel and you’ll get something along the line of “UNITY.” Trust me, this Finance Bro knows, because we got a chance to host a Twitter Spaces AMA with their Community Leader (@jklindsay07) and Marketing Manager (@Colewherld). To learn more, listen to the AMA here: https://twitter.com/MEMEChainCap/status/1500951856742379520

NFTs

It is well supported in crypto that most token holders don’t cross into the NFT lane, but rather focus on one, or vice versa. SHIBADOGE is, in a way, an experiment to blend the two types of investors. Their vision is to have NFT serve as an extension to a broad ecosystem. The NFTs will provide additional rewards, access to virtual events, early access to future NFT drops, and much more to create value for investors. Worth no more than $35* billion, this nascent industry is projected to pass $80 billion by 2025 — according to Jefferies (a diversified financial services company).

*Debatable: Chainalysis estimated at least $44 billion (a blockchain data platform); Financial Times estimated ~$40 billion (a world leading global business publication).

ANALYSIS

Mission & Vision

This Finance Bro genuinely believes that trying to understand the founders of any project and where they’re coming from is a crucial part of any good analysis of a business, organization, and project (i.e., the people behind it). In addition, being able to grasp the whys and wherefores elucidates the particular ghat the project’s winding through. This is why every well polished brand has a mission statement and vision for the future.

From a humanity point of view, SHIBADOGE’s message of Unity truly stands out. Whether one believes if that’s achievable or not is up to the individual and a completely different conversation. Business school taught this Finance Bro early one that a loveable message can be a powerful intangible asset for any brand. SHIBADOGE’s marketing team is so good that, just from one word, they’re able to invoke certain positive values, inspirations, and desires from their supporters. The results are inimitable characteristics for their competitors.

Marketing

The SHIBADOGE project’s brand building journey up to this point is a fascinating one. Interact with any community members online and you’d probably hear this slogan being repeated, “If you missed #DOGE, that sucks. If you missed #SHIB, that sucks. If you miss #ShibaDoge, you suck.” Essentially, they’re advertising themselves as the next blueblood token, capable of standing side-by-side with Dogecoin and Shiba Inu — the next new and rising star.

Another interesting marketing strategy that they use is their social media platforms of choice. In today’s modern age, there are hundreds of different platforms to choose from. Of these, perhaps, only a dozen or two are considered widely respected or must-haves. For example, Dogecoin grew out of Reddit and became popular on other social media platforms, i.e., Twitter. Shiba Inu, on the other hand, dominated Twitter and slowly grew the other channels. As for SHIBADOGE, they simultaneously take on Instagram, Twitter, Discord, and Telegram. Here are some numbers for comparison:

But wait, that’s not all. The marketing team initiated multiple charitable events, AMAs, giveaways, partnerships, and many more to build Unity, content, and engagement for their community. These are then uploaded and shared with people from all over the world. Viral content, like the minting of the Elon Doge NFT and its Tesla Model S Plaid giveaway, garnered massive attention, helping them sell out their Doge NFT collection and bringing more eyes to the project.

Last, but definitely not least, the naming of the coin is quite genius from a marketing standpoint. Combining the most well-known brand names in the space into one cuts the efforts and capital expenditures needed to gain recognition from crypto investors. The other half is execution and storytelling, which they do very well. This is why SHIBADOGE’s community is so strong and loyal. This is why there are members within the community willing to travel across the United States to conferences and other events to shill its words of Unity. It might sound easy to replicate, but all of this requires a clear message, coordination, and lots of hands.

NFTs

The concept of non-fungible tokens (NFT) can be traced back to 2012. But the one considered, by most, to be the first-known NFT was minted back in 2014 — called “Quantum.” These days, most of the total value of all NFTs is in the hands of a small percentage of wealthy holders and institutions. As you can see in this Chainalysis chart below, NFT collectors (+$10 thousand) make up ~60% of the transaction volume, institutions (+$100 thousand) make up ~30%, and retail investors (<$10 thousand) at ~10% towards the end of 2021.

SHIBADOGE is planning 2 separate NFT collections. Dubbed Doge Army and Shiba Army, they will be able to breed the two collections to create the ShibaDoge Army NFT collection. At the time of this paper, the Doge Army NFTs were completely sold out, while the Shiba Army collection is coming up soon. On OpenSea, the current floor of these Doge Army NFTs is .2 ETH (~$500 current price). The whitelist mint price was set at .1 ETH (~$300 at time of sale) and the public mint price was set at .15 ETH (~$435 at time of sale). After doing some arithmetics, even if you only mint a basic Doge Army NFT, the NFT has appreciated ~15% in less than 2 months. Assuming this rate, the Doge Army collection will have a floor of approximately $900 by year end — yielding a whopping ~107% ROI for investors.

In addition to price appreciation, investors have the option to stake the NFTs as well. To provide incentives, the core team is prepared to give ~4.3% of the total supply of tokens per year to NFT stakers (18.25 Sextillion tokens). With 53.7% of tokens already burned, that means ~8.1% of remaining tokens are being rewarded to NFT stakers, assuming no more tokens are to be burned (realistically, more will be burned).

*photo’s courtesy of a ShibaDoge community member

Partnerships

Diane Helbig once said, “Networking is an investment in your business. It takes time and when done correctly can yield great results for years to come.” It’s as if the SHIBADOGE team took these words of wisdom and dove headfirst for the end zone (American football analogy). One great way to witness this is to search for their name on platforms like YouTube and TikTok. What you’d get is an endless amount of videos of influencers showcasing the token.

Notably, the team is throwing events that require lots of connections with the right people. One cannot simply send “Elon Musk” to space. This requires a spaceship, launchpad, government clearance, and much more that this Finance Bro hasn’t even thought of. It takes a collaborative effort of 5 massive communities, working towards one goal — to have “Elon Musk” floating in zero G.

While we’re here, the SHIBADOGE community is also going to donate toys and clothes to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Instead of writing a check, the team will reach out to a toy company and a clothing company and get the valuables at cost. This fantastic setup can only be possible due to the core team’s extensive network of high profile individuals.

STRATEGIC RECOMMENDATIONS

Show Me The Money!!

No matter the investing school of thought you hail from, at the end of the day, “money” is the agreed upon measuring stick of success. A lesson well received by Jerry Maguire. Throughout this analysis process of SHIBADOGE, this Finance Bro can’t help but be impressed with the fundamentals. Starting with their decision to create 420 sextillion tokens. This is a wily decision, in that, the decimals are so small there’s less chance of a psychological barrier for potential meme investors. Who really knows why believing $0.00001 reaching $0.01 is much more palatable than $1 to $1000.

Other commendable decisions from the team include a 50% burn rate on launch day, max 1% wallet size, and a 15% tax on transactions. The 50% burn on launch day creates a scarcity situation immediately, which helps the overall price of the token in the long run. The max 1% wallet size is great because it’s aligned well with their message and protects against large scale dumps from whales. Finally, the 15% tax on transactions is broken up into a 5/5/5 deal where each 5% goes to redistribution of tokens to holders, liquidity, and marketing. The tax is great because it generates revenue for both the token holders and the project itself.

More on the tax on transactions, this Finance Bro wants to explain some of its implications. The first is volume; this will dictate how much money the token holders and project will have flowing in. By adding up the total volume of SHIBADOGE on Coin Market Cap*, you’ll get ~$122 million. With a 15% tax, that equates to ~$18 million. Break this up into 3 equal parts and you’ll get ~$6 million. That means $6 million went back to the token holders as redistributions, and liquidity and marketing get $6 million each as well.

The implications are truly incredible for this next reason. It’s been established that SHIBADOGE has a great marketing team. Now, thanks to the tax, the team has an additional $6 million to perfect their craft. Where it really blends together is the $6 million in liquidity. By using this liquidity to get listed on other exchanges, the team is able to reach even more potential investors. And what better way to entice new investors than giving them free tokens? At the end of the day, there seemed to be a lot of thoughts that went into this harmonious union.

*Coin Market Cap only shows volume from 12/27/21 to present (skipping 12/31/21 to 1/2/22).

Actions

At Meme Chain Capital, we invest in credible projects with potential for long term success. After spending a large amount of time with the SHIBADOGE community and team members — learning about their project, vision, and goals — we’ve decided to Dollar Cost Average into a position. We completely understand the risks and drawbacks of investing in this project, even though we’ve mainly discussed the positive aspects of the token in this paper. The best thing to do for anyone looking to invest in this project is to DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH* and apply a bit of sagacity to the process.

We hope this analysis was as enjoyable to read for you as it was to write for us. But before you go, #WAGMI.

*THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE!!

LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/MEMEChainCapital