What’s the best investment between Dogecoin and Shiba Inu?

The trend of dog-inspired cryptocurrencies in the meme coin market has expanded since the appearance of Dogecoin. The community-driven asset was created by two software engineers, Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer. Their initial plan was to make Dogecoin an entertainment tool based on the popular meme with the Shiba Inu dog Kabosu.

However, as the Dogecoin price surged and more meme coins emerged, the ecosystem became more competitive. Therefore, meme coins had to upgrade their status from fun assets to providing value for investors. Now, Dogecoin is useful for online purchases, trading, and tipping.

Besides Dogecoin, another dog meme coin is growing on the market: Shiba Inu. The project has significantly developed since 2020, when Ryoshi, its creator, deployed it on the market. The cryptocurrency is part of a diverse ecosystem, which makes Shiba Inu a real competitor.

But which coin is best for long-term investments?

About Dogecoin

Dogecoin is the biggest coin by market capitalization among meme coins. Its long-term investment in real-world cases and media coverage from online figures has made it trustworthy and valuable. In terms of technology, Dogecoin is similar to Bitcoin, using a proof-of-work consensus mechanism and creating new coins through mining.

DOGE is an inflationary token since it has an unlimited supply. However, it has a fixed yearly issuance rate of five billion coins to decrease inflation in comparison to the total supply. The open-source peer-to-peer digital currency is a valuable transactional asset, but it has been the subject of numerous charitable events. Organizations like The Water Project or the American Cancer Society accept DOGE donations through the Giving Block system.

About Shiba Inu

Shiba Inu is second to Dogecoin in terms of market capitalization. Although it appeared on the market much later than Dogecoin, it gained popularity due to its vast tool ecosystem. Shiba Inu is based on the Ethereum blockchain, which is why its native coin, SHIB, is an ERC-20 token. In addition, the Shiba Inu universe works through the proof-of-stake consensus, which speeds up transactions.

Other tools from the Shiba universe include:

The BONE governance token is used in the Doggy DAO and Shibarium layer-2 blockchain;
The LEASH token rewards the ecosystem’s users with exclusive benefits;
The Shibaswap decentralized exchange, where users can stake rewards, tokens, and swap coins;
The Shiboshis collection of 10,000 NFTs with special traits;

What are the key differences between these two dog-based coins?

Although Dogecoin has gained more trust recently, several features make Shiba Inu more efficient. For example, in terms of blockchain, DOGE operates independently, while SHIB receives all of Ethereum’s benefits and technologies. That’s why SHIB can process up to 200 TPS (transactions per second), while Doge is a bit behind with 33 TPS.

In addition, Shiba Inu has an expanded range of use cases for governments (identity management), businesses (secure payments), and individuals (data control). The Shiba Inu operating system explored the opportunities to get into the Web3 world through decentralized rewards and scalable adoption, so it can be considered a tool for the future.

Improvements and prospects

Both meme coins have invested in innovation to appeal to the growing crypto industry and demanding investors. For example, DOGE’s latest improvement is Libdogecoin 0.1.4, a clean C library for developers who want to leverage protocols for building blocks. The developments include a lightweight node service, REST API extensions, and node updates.

On the other hand, Shiba Inu has achieved one billion transactions on its layer-2 blockchain, creating an unprecedented milestone. Building on Shibarium is now more efficient, as developers can deploy their smart contract projects using either Truffle, Remix, or Web3js.

Challenges and opportunities

Dogecoin and Shiba Inu struggle with several challenges, considering their newness on the market. DOGE, for example, lacks proper market infrastructure, and its overall development journey has been underwhelming when compared to other similar projects. What’s more troubling is that many consider its popularity and value linked only to social media hype. Considering that Elon Musk’s tweets about the coin rose its prices overnight a few times, some could say Dogecoin benefits from speculative hype.

On the other hand, Shiba Inu seems to not meet its users’ network needs, which is why transactions come with high fees and slower speeds than usual. At the same time, Shiba Inu is more affected by selling pressure, resistance levels, and market sentiment than other meme coins, which will affect prices and future outlook.

Which one should you choose?

Whether you’re an investor or a trader, choosing between Dogecoin and Shiba Inu can be difficult. Both have numerous opportunities for the future, even if they’re affected by several factors. While DOGE might be a good idea for price stability, SHIB has more technological advancements at hand, meaning increased value over time.

So, instead of choosing between the two, you could diversify your portfolio and add the leading meme coins to your asset line. In time, you can rebalance your portfolio based on how well these coins advance on the market. Diversification is one of the best strategies when investing in meme tokens because their small market cap makes them susceptible to massive price changes when compared with mid-cap and large-cap cryptocurrencies. Therefore, allocating more resources to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and mid-cap tokens is ideal to balance the unpredictability of meme coins.

Considering how many types of coins are on the market, it’s best to invest across sectors, use cases, and risk levels to receive rewards for the long term while protecting your finances from volatility. That’s why rebalancing is essential: it allows you to change the portfolio’s performance during moments of weakness in the market.

Final considerations

Dogecoin and Shiba Inu are leading the dog-meme market by leveraging entertainment and real-world functionalities. While Dogecoin is a growingly popular option for digital payments, Shiba Inu is expanding its blockchain features. Meme coins are great for investments, as they provide both price stability and prospects from technological developments. However, due to network and speculation challenges, practicing due diligence is best when diversifying your portfolios.