By Bram Berkowitz

It's been more than a month since the presidential election, and crypto prices are still surging. President-elect Donald Trump has nominated several extremely crypto-friendly candidates to his cabinet, and Bitcoin (BTC 2.86%), the world's largest cryptocurrency, has surpassed $100,000 several times. Many other cryptocurrencies, like Dogecoin (DOGE 3.71%) and Shiba Inu (SHIB 5.09%), have benefited as well, with Dogecoin up about 150% since Election Day and Shiba Inu up roughly 50%. With the sector rolling, is Dogecoin the better buy at under $0.55, or is it Shiba Inu at less than $0.0004?

Dogecoin: the first meme token

Software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer created Dogecoin in 2013 as a joke. The meme token, which has a Shiba Inu mascot, didn't take off for several years. Momentum started building after Tesla Chief Executive Order Elon Musk discussed Dogecoin publicly in 2019. Later, Musk would eventually say that Dogecoin was one of three currencies he owned (the others being Bitcoin and Ethereum). Mark Cuban, owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, found the token amusing and even began accepting Dogecoin as payment for Mavs game tickets. Dogecoin hit its all-time high in May 2021 as investors pumped the token higher in anticipation of Musk's appearance on Saturday Night Live, where he talked about the token.

Dogecoin rose to prominence about the same time that traders were beginning to harness the power of social media for investing. Dogecoin showed just how powerful a prominent online community could be for an asset. To this day, it's not uncommon to see Dogecoin spike if Musk tweets about the token on X to his more than 206 million followers.

But there's nothing special about the utility of Dogecoin's network. Like many other cryptocurrencies, Dogecoin can be used to make digital payments, and it is often used online for tipping -- though not much more than that. Another drawback of Dogecoin is that it has an unlimited supply and therefore is not a scarce asset. Bitcoin has a finite supply of 21 million tokens, and many investors view it as a hedge against inflation.

Shiba Inu: A newer contender

Shiba Inu was created in 2020. If Markus and Palmer were wondering how far they could take a crypto joke, then pseudonymous Shiba Inu founder (or founders) Ryoshi wanted to see how far they could take a joke about a joke, given that Shiba Inu appears to be at least somewhat inspired by Dogecoin's mascot.

Shiba Inu and Dogecoin differ in several ways. While Dogecoin has its own network, Shiba Inu is an ERC-20 token, meaning it was developed on Ethereum's blockchain. ERC-20 is a set of standards developers must follow when creating tokens on Ethereum's network. Additionally, Shiba Inu has a fixed supply. Ryoshi launched the token with a supply of 1 quadrillion. The supply was reduced to 589 trillion after Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin destroyed 410 trillion tokens and donated another trillion.

In 2023, the Shiba Inu developers introduced Shibarium, a Layer-2 protocol built atop Ethereum that helps relieve congestion, speed up Shiba Inu transactions, and make them less expensive for network participants. Shibarium helped Shiba Inu scale, and the network now uses a small amount of transaction fees to burn more tokens and help get the large supply down.

Which is the better buy?

Dogecoin and Shiba Inu are alike in many ways. They are extremely volatile tokens that will likely outperform in bull crypto markets and underperform in bear markets. There's not a lot of rhyme or reason other than crypto enthusiasm as to why they move the way they do. For this reason, I wouldn't recommend purchasing either. However, if I had to pick one, I would probably go with Shiba Inu. I like that the developers have taken steps to improve the network and reduce the supply of tokens. Over time, this may pay off.

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