How to Buy Shiba Inu – Beginners Guide 2023

Wondering how to buy Shiba Inu crypto? The process is simple, but you have to choose the right platform to have the smoothest experience and save money on fees.

Given that Shiba Inu was the third most googled crypto in 2021 during the bull run, it could be even more popular in the years to come with the new projects built by the community, including the Shibarium blockchain and all the decentralized apps built on top of it.

In this guide, we cover the best ways to buy Shiba Inu and how to safely store your coins after you buy them.

Where to Buy Shiba Inu — Best SHIB Exchanges Reviewed

If you’re wondering where to buy Shiba Inu coin, know that you can do so on the best crypto exchanges, like eToro, Coinbase and Binance among many.

We compared some of the best crypto exchanges in terms of fees, number of cryptocurrencies offered and unique features to bring you the best options to buy Shiba Inu.

1. eToro — Best Crypto Trading Platform to Buy Shiba Inu, You Can Copy Successful Traders, Use On-Chain Crypto Wallet and It’s Fully Regulated

eToro is one of the most popular trading platforms where you can buy Shiba Inu along with other cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Unlike the latter, you’ll find Shiba Inu as Shiba (in millions) with the symbol SHIBxM.

This means you’re buying one lot that contains one million SHIB tokens. This makes pricing and trading Shiba Inu more straightforward due to the large number of decimal points in its price.

Whether you buy or sell SHIB, you’ll pay a 1% fee. That means it costs you $1 for every $100 of Shiba Inu you buy. Once you have your coins, you can move them to eToro’s crypto wallet app, called eToro Money.

This is a fully on-chain crypto wallet where you can store your crypto or move it to other wallets. What makes it different from self-custodial wallets is that you can never lose your private keys. If that happens, eToro can help you restore it and get your access back.

On top of investing in crypto, you can freely diversify to stocks and ETFs with $0 commission, a feature that most other crypto platforms lack.

Another unique feature offered by eToro is copy trading. As the name suggests, you can copy popular traders, which you can browse and compare on your dashboard. Beginners can use this feature to learn from the best, but it can be a useful tool for investors who don’t want to track every price movement.

eToro boasts excellent customer service that is available via online chat or directly on WhatsApp. To get access to WhatsApp, though, you’ll need to have a minimum balance of $5,000 in your account. This also comes with additional benefits, including a dedicated account manager, eToro Money Visa Debit Card, interest on the uninvested balance, advanced research and more.

The crypto markets are still unregulated. However, eToro’s other assets like stocks and EFTs are regulated by the CySEC, FCA and ASIC.

Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest.

2. Coinbase — One of The Largest US Crypto Exchanges With Advanced Trading Platform, Over 290 Cryptocurrencies With Low Fees, And A Crypto Wallet 

Coinbase is one of the largest US crypto exchanges that offers a vast number of cryptocurrencies to trade, NFTs and even ENS (Ethereum Name Service) usernames via its Coinbase Wallet. The latter is a useful feature for those who want to have a username, say tom.eth, and use that username to receive funds instead of a 42-digit wallet address.

Curious how to buy Shiba Inu coin on Coinbase? The process is simple. Download Coinbase’s mobile app, open an account and fund it. After that, look for Shiba Inu and enter the amount you wish to buy. This makes it accessible for beginners.

But where Coinbase shines is its tools for seasoned traders and investors. That’s because Coinbase Pro offers advanced charts, over 250 cryptocurrencies, a maker-taker fee model, and access to APIs where you can build your own trading bots and take full advantage of the platform.

The maker-taker fee model for pricing favors traders who do large volumes. The way this works is you place a limit order, meaning the order is not executed until the price is reached. This comes with a cheaper fee because you are a market maker. If you execute your order based on the current market price, you pay the taker fee because you are taking that order from the market.

Being a market taker, you’ll pay between 0.05% and 0.6% fees based on volume, while the market maker fee ranges from 0.00% to 0.40%. So if you buy Shiba Inu with a market order, you will pay the taker fee, which is higher. But if you buy Shiba with a limit order, you would pay less in fees, since you are market-making.

With Coinbase, you can stake 68 cryptocurrencies with an annual percentage yield (APY) of up to 10% depending on the crypto. Unfortunately, you can’t stake Shiba Inu at Coinbase yet. 

3. Kraken — A Leading Crypto Exchange for Beginners And Seasoned Traders Where You Can Trade Crypto on Margin, NFTs And Futures 

Kraken is one of the most popular crypto exchanges globally with over 190 supported countries. You get to trade over 230 cryptocurrencies as well as crypto futures. Should you want to increase your potential reward, you can trade on margin with up to 5x leverage. This means you can buy $50,000 worth of crypto with $10,000. This also makes it riskier, though.

Beginners can quickly learn how to trade with a vast library of resources through a user-friendly app available for Android and iOS devices. Seasoned traders would probably get the most out of it via Kraken Pro. This second platform comes with advanced charts and APIs for building trading bots.

Kraken uses the maker-taker fee model where traders who do large 30-day trading volumes benefit from paying the lowest fees. Depending on the amount you trade each month, you can pay anywhere from 0.00% to 0.16% for market making and between 0.04% and 0.26% for market taking.

This means that if you want to buy Shiba Inu by setting limit orders at a certain price and it gets filled, you pay the lower, market maker fee because you are “making the market”. If you trade with market orders, meaning you take the order from the market makers, you pay the taker fee.

Kraken lets you stake your coins to earn an APY of up to 24%, but you can only stake 12 coins and Shiba Inu isn’t one of them. 

4. Binance — One of the Largest Crypto Exchange Globally With Over 150 Million Users Where You Can Trade Over 500 Cryptocurrencies, Futures And Options

Binance is one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world that caters to over 150 million users. That’s because it offers the most extensive suite for crypto enthusiasts including crypto trading and peer-to-peer exchange, crypto futures and options trading as well as trading on margin.

Beginners get to use a streamlined app for buying and trading crypto. But seasoned traders get to use all the perks Binance has to offer. There’s even an API that you can use to build your own trading bots on top of the advanced charts and indicators.

There are over 500 cryptocurrencies to choose from, including Shiba Inu, Bitcoin and Ethereum as well as more obscure coins and tokens that you likely never heard about.

Because Binance offers a variety of crypto products, the fee structure may seem complex at first, but for spot trading, it uses the maker-taker fee structure. Users who trade less than $1 million in 30 days, get to pay a 0.1% maker fee and taker fee. You can further lower this number if you pay with BNB tokens.

With Binance, you can stake your coins for a select number of days such as 30, 60, 90 and 120. The longer you stake your coins, the higher the APY. You can also stake Shiba Inu, but the appy is very low at 0.01%.

5. OKX — A Popular Crypto Exchange That Offers Spot and Derivatives Trading, Staking, Borrowing And NFTs

OKX is a popular crypto exchange that offers over 300 cryptocurrencies to trade, including Shiba Inu, Bitcoin, Ethereum and more. If you’re looking to simply buy crypto and hold it, you can do so on the spot market or via peer-to-peer exchange.

With a lite version of OKX’s mobile app, crypto onboarding is made simple for beginners. On top of that, you can copy successful and popular traders and learn from their trades.

Advanced traders get to use the Pro version of the app, which comes with professional charts and indicators. You also get access to derivatives trading, such as options, futures and perpetual swaps. You can also trade on a margin of up to 10x.

OKX follows the maker-taker fee structure where anyone who trades below $5 million in 30-day trading volume pays a 0.08% maker and 0.1% taker fee. This means setting limit orders at a certain price will cost you slightly less in fees than buying directly on the spot market.

Additional OKX features include staking where you can earn up to 20% APY depending on the token and how long you stake it for. You can stake Shiba Inu for 5% APY at the moment, which is among the highest APYs you can currently get for Shiba.

How we Ranked the Best Places to Buy Shiba Inu

To help you answer the question of where to buy Shiba Inu crypto, we compared multiple exchanges in terms of fees, regulation and other features.

Fees to Buy Shiba Inu

Paying fees is one of the most important factors you should consider when choosing the best crypto exchange or trading platform. That’s because fees will affect your overall return on investment, especially if you frequently trade cryptocurrencies.

There are three types of fees you should compare between platforms:

• Deposit fees
• Trading fees
• Withdrawal fees

Here’s how that would work when we compare Coinbase and eToro:

• eToro has no deposit fees, charges 1% trading fee and a $5 withdrawal fee.
• Coinbase has no deposit and withdrawal fees for an ACH transfer, but since not everyone can use this feature, we’ll take the $10 deposit fee and $25 withdrawal fee for wire transfers, which is globally available. Buying Shiba would cost you 0.6% if you bought in with a market order.

Suppose you want to buy $1,000 worth of Shiba Inu coins and you sell them when you make a 50% gain or $1,500 in total.

If you went with eToro, you would have withdrawn $1,470 after investing $1,000. That’s a $1,000 deposit with no fees, a 1% buying fee, which is $10 and a 1% selling fee which is $15 on a $1,500 balance, plus a $5 withdrawal fee.

If you went with Coinbase, you would have withdrawn $1,442 with wire transfers. If you used ACH transfers for withdrawals and deposits, your $1,000 investment would be worth $1,491 when you withdraw.

Regulation

The crypto space is globally unregulated. This doesn’t mean it’s not safe to buy Shiba Inu or any other cryptocurrency. In fact, you can easily buy your crypto from most exchanges and trading platforms and then withdraw your coins and tokens into your own crypto wallet, such as MetaMask.

Some crypto trading platforms, though, own licenses to operate in select countries or jurisdictions, or are regulated for some assets on their platform. For example, Coinbase owns licenses for nearly every US state as well as in Germany, the UK, Australia and Ireland. Coinbase also has FDIC insurance of up to $250,000 per individual client, which is rare in the crypto space.

eToro, on the other hand, isn’t regulated in the crypto sphere but has multiple regulations including CySEC (Cyprus), FCA (UK), ASIC (Australia) and FinCEN (US). This covers assets such as stocks and ETFs, which you can also add to your portfolio in addition to your crypto investments.

Other Crypto Exchange Features

If you simply want to buy Shiba Inu and hold it, that’s fine. But if you want to do other things with your holdings, or trade other crypto assets, you can do so with some of the best crypto exchanges.

For example, exchanges like Binance and OKX let you stake your Shiba Inu, meaning you can lock them up for a certain period of time and earn more Shiba Inu coins as a reward. However, by doing so, you are at risk of losing your crypto if the exchange goes under.

Other features include borrowing stablecoins by using your crypto as collateral. This is a feature offered by OKX. Coinbase used to offer lending and borrowing in the past but has halted it for now.

Investors who want to have their crypto portfolio managed by other traders can do so with the copy trading features of eToro and OKX.

The Basics of Buying Shiba Inu 

Buying Shiba Inu is similar to purchasing other cryptocurrencies. You need to choose a reputable crypto exchange or a trading platform, such as eToro, Coinbase or Kraken, that lists SHIB and then deposit money in your account.

Typically, you will need to go through a know-your-customer (KYC) process to be able to withdraw your tokens.

Once your account is funded, you have to find the cryptocurrency pair with SHIB. If it’s not available to directly buy with USD, you would have to grab a stablecoin like USDT to exchange it for SHIB.

When you have the amount of Shiba Inu you want, you may consider staking it to earn even more, or you can withdraw it to your personal wallet and hold it there until the time comes to sell it.

Keep in mind that prices can fluctuate significantly in short periods due to market sentiment, news, and social media trends. Make sure to do your own due diligence and research before diving into any cryptocurrency investment.

What is Shiba Inu?

Shiba Inu (SHIB) is a meme crypto coin created in August 2020 by an anonymous individual or group known as Ryoshi. The coin was inspired by the Shiba Inu dog breed from Japan, but also it was probably inspired by the success of Dogecoin, which is also a Shiba Inu breed. 

This is the second most popular meme coin, behind Dogecoin, with a market cap of $4 billion. That’s a larger market cap than coins like Monero, Avalanche, Arbitrum and NEAR.

SHIB is built on the Ethereum blockchain, meaning you need an ERC-20 compatible crypto wallet, like MetaMask, to hold your SHIB tokens. 

Recently, Shiba Inu has moved away from the meme coin status and started to expand its ecosystem by adding additional tokens like LEASH and BONE. The latter is the governance token that will give voting rights to its holders within the Doggy DAO, while the LEASH is a token to give benefits and exclusive perks to the ecosystem supporters.

Shiba Inu Uses 

Shiba Inu has grown from a meme coin to a full Ethereum-based ecosystem. It continues to evolve, and its adoption and utility are expected to grow in the coming years. However, these are the current use cases of Shiba Inu:

Utility Token Within the Ecosystem

SHIB is primarily utilized as a utility token for various activities and services, including peer-to-peer digital payments. Additionally, SHIB can be used as a payment method with businesses that accept it, like Newegg.

In the upcoming metaverse within the Shiba Inu ecosystem, SHIB will be used as a payment method when adding pictures on your land plots, renaming your land plots, leasing HUBs and more. Each time you use SHIB within the metaverse to pay for any of these actions, those SHIB tokens will be burned.

The ecosystem’s other tokens are the LEASH, which gives exclusive perks to holders, and BONE, which is the governance token that gives BONE holders voting rights over the Shiba Inu DAO. BONE is also the token used to pay for gas transactions and to reward the SHIB, LEASH and BONE token stakers.

Shibarium Ecosystem

The Shiba Inu community has built the Shibarium, which is an Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain network, aiming to turn Shiba Inu into a complete crypto ecosystem with lower transaction fees and faster transaction throughput.

Adding the Shibarium has paved the way for building a decentralized exchange, a metaverse and a Web3 game. Some of the completed projects include:

• ShibaSwap is Shiba Inu’s decentralized exchange where you can buy the ecosystem tokens or swap any other ERC-20 token.
• Shiboshis NFT collection of 10,000 Shiba Inu pixelated dogs is live on Ethereum and you can buy them on OpenSea.
• DIG function is ShibaSwap’s liquidity pool where users can yield farm or create their own liquidity pools.
• BURY staking mechanics lets you stake your Shiba Inu ecosystem tokens (SHIB, LEASH and BONE) to earn yield in the form of BONE tokens.

Is Shiba Inu a Good Investment?

While Shiba Inu has grown in popularity within the meme token space and it showed its potential for growth, it’s still a speculative investment. For comparison, Bitcoin is considered a store of value and Ethereum is considered the best blockchain for decentralized finance. Shiba has just started to build on top of Ethereum and has a lot to prove going forward.

Speculative Nature of Crypto

Most cryptocurrencies are considered to be highly speculative as they aren’t company stocks that produce value. This means token prices are often driven by market sentiment, news and macroeconomic factors.

This is what makes Shiba Inu a high-risk/high-reward investment, though. Given that the macroeconomic factors with high-interest rates and high inflation don’t favor riskier assets like cryptocurrencies, any investment in the space is speculative at the moment.

However, SHIB trades at a 91% discount from its peak price of 0.00008845. This means if SHIB ever gets back to its peak prices, that would be a 1,128% gain from where it’s currently trading. Keep in mind, there’s no guarantee that SHIB will ever return to its peak prices.

Competitive Edge

Shiba Inu is widely considered to be a meme coin, which to some extent it is, but it recently proved it can be more than that. With a growing ecosystem with a full-fledged layer 2 blockchain, Shiba Inu can be one of the leading meme coins in the next bull market.

That’s because on the Shibarium blockchain, you can swap tokens, yield farm with liquidity pools, stake your SHIB to earn BONE, play games and build your land plots in the Shiba metaverse.

No other meme token can boast that. If the meme token community and the Shiba Inu supporters can rally behind this ecosystem, Shiba Inu could be a good investment for the next bull run.

Consider Your Investment Time Frame

When considering whether to invest in Shiba Inu, you have to have a time frame in mind. If you plan to hold SHIB tokens for the short term, know that the price is likely to be influenced by market news as well as Elon Musk tweets, which are known to move crypto markets.

Another huge factor in the short term is interest rates, which directly affect crypto prices. High-interest rates make borrowing money to invest in riskier assets expensive. It also makes bonds a better alternative for large investors. This means Shiba Inu is likely to continue trading sideways until central banks start to lower interest rates.

For this to happen, though, it’s likely to take years. The first interest rate cut is forecasted by Goldman Sachs analysts to happen in Q2 of 2024. This would make a Shiba Inu investment a more prudent option for the long term than the short term.

What is the Cheapest Way to Buy Shiba Inu?

If you’re wondering “how to buy Shiba Inu” in the cheapest possible way, you have to consider how many steps you are willing to take. Typically, the fastest way to buy SHIB is often the most expensive one.

For example, you can buy SHIB directly via credit card from centralized exchanges like Binance and Kraken. This comes with the highest fees of up to 3% or more, meaning for a $100 worth of SHIB purchase, you would pay $3 or more in fees.

But the question is “Where can I buy Shiba Inu coin cheapest?” First, find a cryptocurrency exchange where you can deposit fiat currency like USD or EUR without fees, such as eToro’s deposits or Coinbase ACH deposits.

This means your $100 deposit will be ready to purchase SHIB right away. Next to consider are fees for buying the coins. Typically, maker-taker fee models are cheaper in the long run. For example, Binance has one of the lowest maker-taker fees of 0.1%, meaning you can buy directly from the spot market or set up a limit order and you will pay the same fees.

Other exchanges like Kraken or Coinbase have slightly cheaper maker fees, meaning you set your SHIB buy order with a limit price and wait for it to be executed.

Another alternative is to buy a stablecoin, such as USDC or USDT and move it to your crypto wallet, such as MetaMask. You can then swap your stablecoins for SHIB tokens within MetaMask.

MetaMask pulls the quotes from multiple Ethereum decentralized exchanges, but if you prefer you can swap directly on such exchanges, such as Uniswap. All you have to do is connect your Ethereum wallet, set the currency you want to swap for SHIB and select Swap.

However, to get to a decentralized exchange, you have to go through a centralized exchange first.

Here’s how the best crypto exchanges compare in terms of fees.

Is Investing in Shiba Inu Safe & Legal?

To address the issue of safety and legality of Shiba Inu, it’s essential to dissect the regulatory landscape surrounding cryptocurrencies and the inherent risks associated with Shiba Inu.

Regulatory Landscape

Cryptocurrencies, including Shiba Inu, aren’t regulated yet. In many countries, buying, selling, and holding cryptocurrencies is legal, provided investors pay their taxes and adhere to anti-money laundering regulations.

However, some countries have imposed partial or complete bans on cryptocurrency trading and investing because of concerns over financial stability, illicit activities and the lack of centralized control.

On the other hand, in countries such as El Salvador Bitcoin is legal tender, meaning you can buy pretty much anything anywhere in the country with Bitcoin.

Before investing in Shiba Inu, you should familiarize yourself with the regulations of your own country to make sure you’re compliant with local laws.

Safety Concerns and Market Volatility

Similar to all cryptocurrencies, Shiba Inu is affected by market volatility. There can be significant fluctuations within short time frames due to market sentiment, news or crypto market dynamics.

This volatility can provide substantial gains, but it also carries the risk of significant losses as well. Because of that, you should never invest more than you are willing to lose.

Additional risks come in the form of scams and fraud which are rampant in the crypto industry. Luckily, crypto crime is down 65% overall compared to the same time in 2022. Despite that, you still exercise caution when dealing with NFT giveaways and offers that seem too good to be true.

Which is the Best Shiba Inu Wallet?

The only self-custodial wallet that can store your Shiba Inu coins is an Ethereum-based wallet like MetaMask or similar alternatives. This means you have to install a browser extension and create a new crypto wallet. Make sure to write down your seed phrase on a piece of paper and store it somewhere safe because if you lose it, you won’t be able to recover your in-wallet assets.

One solution to this is eToro’s Money wallet. This is an on-chain wallet that holds your SHIB tokens, but if you lose your seed phrase, you can reach out to eToro support and they can help you recover it. If you’ve heard about the man who excavates a landfill to find his computer hard disk with 8,000 Bitcoins inside, know that with eToro Money, that won’t happen.

However, if you frequently plan to stake your SHIB or trade them with leverage, then storing your tokens inside a centralized exchange like Binance or Kraken could be the best way. Note, in case the exchange collapses, you will lose all the coins you have on the platform. Coinbase is the only crypto exchange that has FDIC insurance of up to $250,000 per person, meaning if Coinbase goes bankrupt, you can get your funds up to $250,000 back.

Hardware wallets like Ledger and Trezor are some of the best crypto wallets for storing your coins safely. That’s because they keep your seed phrase encrypted in an offline USB device, which you can unlock with a PIN number. What’s more, every transaction has to be approved by physically pressing the buttons on the device, meaning scammers won’t be able to steal your funds unless you approve the transaction.

How to Buy Shiba Inu – Detailed Tutorial

If you ask yourself how to buy SHIB, know that it’s a simple process. Here’s how that would look if you choose eToro.

Step 1. Open an eToro Account

Visit eToro’s website and select Join eToro. Enter your username, email address and password, and accept the terms and conditions and privacy policy. Select Create Account. Alternatively, you can create an account via your Google or Facebook accounts.

Step 2. Verify Your Account

You will receive an email to verify your address. Once you activate your account, choose your country of residence. Complete your profile with your personal name, birthday and gender. Next, add your address and answer the questions to complete your profile.

Step 3. Fund Your Account

Now that you have completed your profile, proceed to deposit funds. Your options include credit or debit card deposit, bank transfer and PayPal after you make your first deposit.

Step 4. Find Shiba Inu

With the money in your account, head over to the Discover tab and select Crypto from the list at the top. In the search tab, look for Shiba Inu. Select Shiba (in millions) with the symbol SHIBxM. This is the same Shiba Inu token except you can only buy in batches of one million each. This makes pricing easier to understand as you see $7 for one million tokens instead of $0.000007 for one SHIB.

Step 5. Buy Shiba Inu

Now that you have selected SHIBxM, select the Trade button and enter the amount in USD that you wish to spend on SHIBxM tokens. When you’re happy with the order, select Open Trade and your SHIBxM will be added to your portfolio.

If you’re wondering how to buy Shiba Inu with Paypal on eToro, know that you can’t do so directly. You can deposit funds in PayPal but only after you made your first deposit.

Conclusion

Shiba Inu is a meme coin that has slowly grown into an Ethereum layer 2 blockchain with its own token swap application, as well as dApps for staking, liquidity farming and more. It’s important to do your own research, understand the risks involved, and have a clear investment strategy before diving in.

Once you’re ready to buy SHIB, choose a trading platform, such as eToro, and buy the amount you want.

Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest.

References

• https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/05/04/coinbase-to-stop-issuing-new-loans-via-coinbase-borrow/
• https://www.coinbase.com/legal/licenses
• https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-basics/glossary/copy-trading
• https://blog.shib.io/shibarium-insane-influx/
• https://shibaswap.com/
• https://opensea.io/collection/theshiboshis
• https://www.shibthemetaverse.io/
• https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/2021/12/14/the-elon-effect-how-musks-tweets-move-crypto-markets
• https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-13/goldman-pencils-in-first-fed-rate-cut-for-second-quarter-of-2024
• https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-01-13/how-will-inflation-fed-interest-rate-hikes-crypto-crash-hit-stock-investments
• https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/08/25/bitcoin-ban-these-are-the-countries-where-crypto-is-restricted-or-illegal2
• https://www.nber.org/digest/202207/el-salvadors-experiment-bitcoin-legal-tender
• https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/crypto-crime-midyear-2023-update-ransomware-scams/
• https://www.businessinsider.com/james-howells-threw-away-bitcoin-dump-masterplan-get-back-2022-7
• https://www.marketwatch.com/story/shiba-inu-is-the-third-most-googled-crypto-in-2021-new-study-shows-11635282527
• https://www.fdic.gov/resources/deposit-insurance/
• https://www.binance.com/en/feed/post/1161708 
• https://www.binance.com/en/feed/post/1071530

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