Nasdaq-listed online retail giant Newegg Commerce, Inc. (NASDAQ: NEGG) made a grand gesture yesterday to announce its new “friendshib” with the Shiba Inu ($SHIB) project.
What Is Shiba Inu ($SHIB)?
Here is how South Korean crypto exchange Korbit described this meme-based cryptocurrency when it announced on November 23 that it was going to list $SHIB:
“SHIB is inspired by Dogecoin. Last August, anonymous developer Ryoshi developed the motto “Experiment in decentralized governance”. Although it claims to be a Dogecoin killer as much as it benchmarked Dogecoin, there are a few important differences except that it is a meme coin with a pet dog as its mascot.
“First, since ShibaInu is an Ethereum-based ERC-20 token, it can be easily integrated with the Ethereum ecosystem and can be used in a variety of ways. A decentralized exchange (DEX) called ShibaSwap is in operation, and in addition to this, a ShibaInu incubator that sponsors artists, and an NFT collection that can be purchased with ShibaInu tokens have also been launched.
“Second, unlike Dogecoin, which operates on its own mainnet, forked from Litecoin, ShibaInu benefits from the security-verified Ethereum network.
“Third, ShibaInu was distributed evenly using Uniswap’s liquidity pool. As a result, Etherscan confirms that token holders are well decentralized.”
What Is Newegg?
Newegg, which was founded in 2001 and is headquartered in the City of Industry in California, is one of America’s largest tech-focused online retailers and it “serves a global customer base throughout Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and the Middle East”.
Newegg was the first major e-commerce company to accept Bitcoin as a means of payment in 2014 via a partnership with crypto payment processor BitPay. Earlier this year, Newegg added support for Sogecoin ($DOGE) and Litecoin ($LTC).
Newegg’s Support for $SHIB
Last Friday (November 26), Newegg confirmed via the following tweet that it would soon start accepting $SHIB as a payment method:
Then, yesterday (November 29), Newgg officially announced via a press release that in early December, it will start accepting $SHIB as a payment method with the help of BitPay. It also mentioned that it has started a “massive digital out-of-home (DOOH) campaign” using a massive LED video display that is mounted at the top of The Reef’s 12-story building in downtown Los Angeles .
The Reef is “an 860,000 sf complete creative habitat tailored to meet the needs of the innovators, entrepreneurs, and diverse creators that make Los Angeles the creative capital of the world”. It is “easily accessible just blocks from the Harbor and Santa Monica freeways, and is walking distance from the Blue Line and the Expo Line light rail from Downtown to Santa Monica”.
According to the manufacturer (SNA Displays), this impressive display “stands approximately 56 feet tall and is 750 feet long, wrapping around two corners of the building and facing three different downtown streets in Broadway, Washington Blvd., and Hill St.” It is 852 pixels high and 11,376 pixels wide, which means “the 41,000+ square foot LED screen contains 9,692,352 total pixels”.
Andrew Choi, Director of Brand Marketing at Newegg, had this to say:
“We are always looking for ways to innovate the shopping experience on Newegg.com, and something our customers want is greater flexibility and options, including the ability to pay with a wide range of cryptocurrencies. Through our partnership with BitPay, we have the ability to move quickly and lead the market with flexible cryptocurrency payment options. To that end, we’re excited to offer SHIB as a payment option on Newegg.com.“
DISCLAIMER
The views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptoassets comes with a risk of financial loss.
