How To Buy Shiba Inu Coin UK – Beginner’s Guide

Looking to buy Shiba Inu coin UK? What a year this Dogecoin spin-off had in 2021! If you had made a $2 investment in SHIB on January 1st 2021, you would have been a millionaire by the beginning of 2022. But, since its October peak, the price of SHIB has fallen away by over 70%. Is it time to buy the dip? Or is it too late to cash in on this charismatic crypto?

Below we dig into the background of this ERC-20 token that, along with Dogecoin, has headed the pack of dog-related crypto. We assess SHIB’s strengths and weaknesses. We investigate where to buy Shiba Inu coin in the UK and recommend top brokers and exchanges where you get a safe investing space and a good deal. 

Where to Buy Shiba Inu Coin in the UK

Wondering where the best place to invest in cryptocurrencies in the UK is? Let’s cover the cheapest and safest options in 2022. 

1. eToro – Overall Best Place to Buy Shiba Inu Coin UK with Tight Spreads

You can buy Shiba Inu UK with as little as $10 with the popular crypto broker eToro. But it’s not just limited to SHIB, you can buy Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin and 46 other trending cryptos with a minimum investment of $10. eToro offers a broad selection of stocks, 250 ETFs, commodities and indices, but it is with crypto that eToro shines. That’s because this broker is regulated by the stringent FCA of the UK (as well as by CySEC, FinCEN and ASIC overseas). Regulation is rare in the crypto sector, and means you are dealing with a decent business. 

Certainly, with 23m investors worldwide, eToro has attracted quite a following since its launch in 2006. Newcomers are particularly welcome at eToro. The interface is a cinch to use. An efficient ticket help system gives you back-up if you get stuck. And, best of all, eToro offers two unique tools for crypto newbies: CopyTrader and crypto Smart Portfolios.

Allow any of 660+ crypto traders to take the tough decisions for you with eToro’s CopyTrader. You simply allocate funds, choose a trader — and the software will use your funds to match their trades in real-time. You can review all sorts of stats on each trader. You can copy many traders at once. And you can opt out of CopyTrader at any time.

Another way to benefit from expert advice is to buy into one of eToro’s 8 crypto Smart Portfolios. These are strategic positions on the crypto sector devised by eToro analysts. Each features a particular strategic theme, including AI analysis, diversification and sub-sector. Smart Portfolios can save you a lot of time as well as reduce your investment risk. You will need a minimum investment of $1,000 — and note that you only leave the position in one go (you cannot trade your position in bits as you can with ETFs, for example).

If you want to simply buy Shiba Inu Coin UK, the eToro process is simple. You sign up. You get verified. You deposit GBP using convenient PayPal, bank transfer or credit/debit card. You use the funds in your account to purchase your crypto. eToro will then hold onto it for you at no extra charge until you sell it. You can transfer some crypto you buy with eToro to your free eToro Money crypto wallet (regulated by the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission). This wallet comes with an unloseable key and empowers you to send/receive/exchange crypto, as well as stake crypto with eToro for rewards.

If you want to buy Shiba Inu Coin UK on the move, check out eToro’s smartphone app. It is the most downloaded trading app in the UK.

Cryptoassets are highly volatile and unregulated in the UK. No consumer protection. Tax on profits may apply.

2. Huobi – Top-Rated Crypto Exchange with 4M Users

If you are looking to buy Shiba Inu Coin UK, what immediately makes Huobi crypto exchange stand out is that they are giving away 20,000 SHIB when you sign up! That’s alongside a sliding scale of cash incentives totting up to $300.

Founded in China, with offices in Japan, Korea and Singapore, Huobi is focused on Asia-Pacific. This might make it seem an adventurous choice if you are deciding how to buy Shiba Inu Coin UK. But Huobi is worth a look. 

It offers 348 crypto in all, as well as 60 payment options. It has the third highest trading activity of any exchange in the world. You can fund your account and buy crypto using Huobi’s maker/taker structure, buy crypto direct with credit card (but not SHIB), or — as with Binance — use P2P trading. Like Coinbase, Huobi keeps most of its client funds in cold storage. And it runs a HKD 50,000 scheme to reward Huobi users for reporting possible fraud issues onsite (Trading Protection and Guardian Project).

In summary, Huobi offers a range of powerful crypto options, but fees are not clearly reported onsite. And, like all SHIB vendors we have reviewed apart from eToro, protection by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority is not available.

Cryptoassets are a highly volatile unregulated investment product. No UK or EU investor protection.

3. Coinbase – Popular Cryptocurrency Exchange

Coinbase is a giant exchange based in San Francisco, US. Unlike eToro, it does not offer assets other than crypto. Also, it does not offer FCA regulation like eToro. What it does offer is a trading environment that is recognised to be helpful to beginners, as well as the chance to buy Shiba Inu UK.

How to buy Shiba Inu Coin with Coinbase? Easy. The process is the same as with eToro. You set up an account, get verified, fund your account with GBP and use those funds to buy. You can store your SHIB with Coinbase. Or transfer it to your free Coinbase wallet. What Coinbase, though, won’t let you do is to deposit funds with PayPal; stick with eToro if PayPal is your preference, perhaps.

Coinbase has 73m+ verified users and a big public profile. In 2021, it was the first crypto exchange to go public on the stock markets (NASDAQ). You can trade Coinbase stock under its ticker COIN with eToro. What customers are often drawn with Coinbase is its famous security measure of keeping 98% of client funds in ‘cold’ storage: ie. mostly offline, away from the threat of cyber-theft. What customers do not like is Coinbase’s complex fee system, which combines flat fees as well as commissions. Watch out in particular for 3.99% commission on credit card transactions. Coinbase say they will be sorting out their fee structure.

Coinbase offers 151 crypto for trading. And it also keeps a list of most coins available on the internet. Coinbase reveals that there are over a hundred Shiba Inu spin-off coins, including King Shiba, ShibaDoge and Shiba Samurai. To buy these minor coins, you will have to track them down on other exchanges.

Cryptoassets are a highly volatile unregulated investment product. No UK or EU investor protection.

4. Binance – Leading Exchange to Buy Shiba Inu with Credit Card

Binance offers the most trade volume of any crypto exchange globally. It is a big and sometimes complicated site with a giant selection of crypto and many powerful tools. You will get the best of Binance as an advanced trader. But, for beginners, there’s plenty of support.

You can buy Shiba Inu Coin UK direct with credit card. A 3% fee on credit card transactions is currently reduced to 1%. You will need to sign up and get verified first. Or you can open an account, fund it with fiat currency, buy some stablecoins and use them to buy SHIB. Using the Binance P2P exchange, you can trade 500+ different crypto direct with other Binance users.

As a giant exchange, Binance can afford to set tighter spreads for crypto than broker eToro, for example. But it does charge a small commission on trades (0.1%) based on a maker/taker sliding scale. And remember: Binance is not regulated by the UK’s FCA. What it does offer in the way of security is the Binance Secure Asset Fund for Users, which is a discretionary fund for compensating customers who get ripped off or hacked. There’s also Binance’s Project Shield underway since December 2021, which aims to audit new crypto tokens coming onto the market and make sure they are not fraudulent.

Binance offers a free crypto wallet called the Binance Trust Wallet. There’s also a smartphone crypto app on offer (4.3/5 from 570k Google Play reviews). Make things easier on yourself by selecting the ‘Binance Lite’ option on the smartphone app. Like eToro and Coinbase, Binance offers great help material online. But customers complain that the verification process can get tricky – and don’t expect any social trading extras as with eToro.

Cryptoassets are a highly volatile unregulated investment product. No UK or EU investor protection.

5. CoinJar – Good Exchange for Crypto Beginners

CoinJar is a small Australian crypto exchange with a strong UK presence. You can deposit GBP with Coinjar with no deposit fee. Like eToro, the CoinJar site has a lovely, clean feel to it — which makes crypto trading just that little bit less daunting. Right now, you can buy Shiba Inu Coin UK (as well as sell, send and receive it) by using your free CoinJar wallet. You can even use the CoinJar credit card (Mastercard) to use SHIB for online shopping.

CoinJar offers three levels of crypto involvement: digital currency account (SHIB available), CoinJar exchange (SHIB coming soon) and the CoinJar Trading Desk (SHIB coming soon). With a standard CoinJar account you can buy crypto instantly using a credit card with a 2% flat commission fee. Binance are currently offering a lower fee, whereas Coinbase charge almost double that.

Similar to eToro’s Smart Portfolios, CoinJar offers portfolios of crypto you can buy into called CoinJar Bundles. One example is the ERC-20 Bundle, which features all ERC-20 tokens available on CoinJar. Another is the CoinJar Universe, which features holdings in all CoinJar crypto. Even if you have initially set out to discover how to buy Shiba Inu Coin UK, these Bundles are worth a look as these are a great way to diversify and reduce your risk.

Cryptoassets are a highly volatile unregulated investment product. No UK or EU investor protection.

What is Shiba Inu Coin?

Shiba Inu (SHIB) is a hugely-successful ERC-20 token that took the crypto market by storm in 2021. It is one of many ‘dog-tokens’. These are novelty crypto with a canine theme. The first dog-token was Dogecoin, and the second was Shiba Inu. Shiba Inu is a breed of Japanese dog.

There are 549 trillion Shiba Inu coin in circulation. It is currently the 15th biggest crypto with a market capitalisation of almost £12bn. 

Should I Buy Shiba Inu Coin UK Now?

Buy The Dip

Along with the rest of the crypto sector, January saw Shiba Inu fall in value. But as late January turns into February, the price is rising. The price of SHIB has not been this low since last October — just before it went meteoric. With brokers like eToro making it possible to invest as little as $10 in crypto, some crypto-hungry investors might choose to deal with that FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) by buying now to see what happens.

Real-world Adoption

As a means of payment, SHIB is attracting real-world interest. Big US cinema chain AMC Entertainment is on track to accept SHIB, as well as online retailer Newegg Commerce. Approximately 600 businesses (including exchanges) accept SHIB for transactions.

Shiberse, Oshiverse and Shibarium

When developers continue to work on a crypto, it tends to attract more investor support, which maintains upwards pressure on the price. Shiba Inu has three major tech projects in the pipeline:

• Shibarium
  This is a layer-2 blockchain project to host SHIB transactions. Currently Shiba Inu coin is an ERC-20 coin tied to Ethereum. This means it inherits Ethereum’s flaws of slow speeds and high fees. Shibarium hopes to put an end to that and promote SHIB as a handy means of internet value exchange like Bitcoin.
• Oshiverse
  This is a play-to-earn video game in development.
• Shiberse
  Announced recently in late January 2022, the Shiberse is Shiba Inu’s stab at its own metaverse: an immersive virtual environment packed with NFTs to trade, no doubt, and NFT games to play. No prizes for guessing which crypto will be the in-house currency!

Shiba Inu Coin UK Staking

You can use SHIB for crypto staking. This means lending your crypto out for a given period and earning more coins as a result. Unlike its rival Dogecoin, Shiba Inu is compatible with the Ethereum blockchain, which has allowed the Shiba community to develop Dapps: in July 2021, a decentralised exchange called ShibaSwap was opened. Here you can stake SHIB for rewards as well as trade SHIB and Shiboshi NFTs.

SHIB Community

Public exposure is why Shiba Inu did so well in 2021. SHIB was the most searched-for crypto on coinmarketcap.com in 2021, with 188m searches. There are over a million holders of SHIB, according to wallet data from Etherscan. The community centres on a lively Reddit page. Half a million members of this ‘SHIBArmy’ have signed a petition to get SHIB listed on retail exchange Robinhood (hasn’t happened yet). In December 2021, a SHIB ‘whale’ (single purchaser) bought a whopping $136m of Shiba Inu Coin. And Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO whose support for Dogecoin and SHIB was so crucial in 2021, continues to tweet:

Musk owns a Shiba Inu breed of dog called Floki. 

Shiba Inu Coin Price

The price of Shiba Inu is currently $0.00002181. 

Shiba Inu Coin Price Prediction

With 70% of Shiba stock held by under ten investors, somebody knows something positive! That’s the rumour amongst the SHIB community. Some pro analysts, though, consider that Shiba Inu’s lack of differentiation from other ERC-20 tokens will not support a meteoric price rise in 2022 to match its 2021 success. But encouraging is the developers’ work in creating a level-2 blockchain Shiba system (Shibarium) and a whole metaverse (Shiberse). SHIB is going nowhere for the moment. But whether it will reach for the moon once more is perhaps more an article of faith than anything else. 

Ways of Buying Shiba Inu Coin

UK investors have many options to buy Shiba Inu coin UK.

Buy Shiba Inu Coin with PayPal

With broker eToro you can use PayPal to put money into your account and buy SHIB instantly.

Buy Shiba Inu Coin with credit card or debit card

Binance, Houbi and Coinjar offer instant credit card purchase for some crypto. But watch out for commissions. Note that eToro does not charge commission on debit card deposits, but it does charge a 0.5% currency conversion fee for depositing GBP.

Choosing an Shiba Inu Wallet

If you are considering how to buy Shiba Inu Coin UK, you need to consider how you will store it. Brokers like eToro will hold onto your crypto for you. But you might want to send or stake your SHIB, in which case you will need a crypto wallet.

The good news about the best crypto wallets is that they offer a safe place to store your valuable cryptocurrencies. We recommend the eToro Money crypto wallet because it is regulated by the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission. And, let’s face it, security comes first with a wallet. You can also manage fiat currencies with your Etoro Money wallet, which is a bonus, and it comes with an unloseable key.

When to Buy Shiba Inu Coin UK 

There are 2 timing strategies you can consider:

1. Buy and HODL (Hold on for Dear Life). This means buying straight away and holding your SHIB in the expectation that the price will rise over the long-term. The median hold time as of January 2022 for Shiba Inu Coin is around 70 days, according to Coinmarketcap.com.
2. You can take the guesswork out of crypto investing by a technique called Dollar Cost Averaging. This means investing a set amount according to a regular schedule. The idea is that small, regular investments will average out better than trying to time the market and getting it wrong. Who has a crystal ball, after all?

How to Buy Shiba Inu Coin UK – Tutorial

In deciding how to buy Shiba Inu Coin stock, you will want a vendor that makes things simple and safe for you. You will need to take 5 steps in all, beginning with choosing where to buy Shiba Inu Coin in the UK.

1. Choose a Broker or Exchange to Buy Shiba Inu Coin UK

You need to decide which is the best place to buy Shiba Inu Coin online. Broker or exchange?  You can buy crypto in such small portions nowadays that you can do both. We use global broker eToro as an example to show you how easy it is to buy Shiba Inu coin in the UK.

2. Sign up with eToro

Go to www.eToro.com. You can get started in seconds by signing in with Facebook or Google. Otherwise, fill in some personal details. Then answer some simple questions on investing.

(All regulated brokers and exchanges need to establish that you have some basic grasp of investing before allowing you to sign up. These are part of the new ‘Know Your Customer’ procedures you may have heard about.)

3. Verify your ID with eToro

Get ready for the second part of Know Your Customer: supply two scans of ID. You will need proof of who you are as well as proof of where you live. For quickest verification, use a scan of your valid passport.

Once verified, you will receive a notification email from eToro.

4. Deposit Funds with eToro

Log into your eToro account. Press the ‘Deposit Funds’ button at the bottom left of your screen. You can deposit in up to 15 different currencies. No fee applies apart from a currency conversion fee of 0.5% for GBP deposits (eToro accounts run in USD). 

You can use PayPal to deposit funds, credit/debit card, bank transfer as well as a range of payment providers like Neteller, Skrill, and Rapid Transfer.

5. Buy Shiba Inu UK with eToro in Seconds

Find Shiba Inu Coin UK by entering ‘Shiba’ in the top toolbar in your eToro account.

To access the Shiba Inu homepage on eToro, press the Shiba Inu logo highlighted in blue. Here you can access your newsfeed, stats and research on SHIB as well as powerful charting options. Or to press on, click the blue ‘Trade’ button on the right.

You can buy Shiba Inu Coin UK with a minimum investment of $10 with eToro. Enter the amount you want to spend. Press the ‘Open Trade’ button to execute your trade. You will receive SHIB in seconds. An onscreen notification will pop up to confirm your trade is done. You can review your SHIB in your eToro portfolio.

Conclusion

With so many crypto exchanges to choose from making the right choice can seem daunting. But now that you’ve read this in-depth guide you’re better equipped to buy cryptocurrency in the UK with ease. 

We recommend buying Shiba Inu UK and other cryptocurrencies with eToro as it offers competitive spreads, low fees and a convenient crypto wallet to store several supported cryptos. Open an account in a matter of minutes and start trading digital assets right now.

Cryptoassets are highly volatile and unregulated in the UK. No consumer protection. Tax on profits may apply.

Frequently Asked Questions when Buying Shiba Inu in the UK