- Billy Markus believes the metaverse project adds no utility to Shiba Inu.
- The programmer likened the project to a cash grab by developers.
- SHIB metaverse is the community’s latest attempt to shake off the meme coin tag.
In response to Shiba Inu’s Metaverse reveal, Dogecoin creator Billy Markus has expressed his belief that the virtual reality project added no utility to the SHIB token. Billy Markus went on to liken the metaverse launch to a cash grab.
Last week, after a long period of teasing, the developers of the Shiba Inu project announced the launch of the SHIB metaverse. The developers revealed that the metaverse would put together and display the unique journey and experiences of the Shiba Inu Community. The blog post read:
“The [SHIB] Metaverse is the culmination of our history as a community, virtually displayed, in a layer of beautiful visuals that showcase our innovation and unity with a place to truly call home.”
In the post, the developers also revealed that the metaverse would include 100,595 plots. According to the developers, these plots of land would be made available in batches, with the first batch comprising 36,431 plots in 4 categories with prices ranging from 0.2 ETH to 1 ETH.
Shiba Inu developers declared that the choice to use Ethereum was to avoid dumping the price of their native asset. However, landholders would burn the native Shiba Inu token for holders to rename their land. Developers also hinted that landowners would have an opportunity to make passive income.
 
 
However, Dogecoin creator Billy Markus is not impressed. He believes that the metaverse adds no utility to the Shiba Inu project. In his tweet, he said, “how is making a random metaverse and selling fake land with Ethereum adding utility to their project.”
However, Billy Markus’s dissatisfaction did not end there; he described the metaverse launch as a cash grab by Shiba Inu developers, “I mean whatever if people wanna give the devs even more money go ahead but if I was a shib holder I would be annoyed,” adding, “100000 land at .2-1 eth each => they are raising 100-300 million additional dollars beyond what they’ve already made from making shiba.”
Fighting The Meme Coin Tag
Shiba Inu was concocted to compete with Dogecoin and has often been dubbed the “Dogecoin Killer”. The token enjoyed a lot of success in 2021, growing by 45,000,000%. After such a great year price-wise, the community has pushed to remove the meme coin tag and show that the token has utility; the metaverse project is the latest effort to change this narrative.
Supporters of the meme coin have expectedly not taken Billy Markus’s comments lying down. One responded by saying that Billy was just resentful and that the only utility DOGE had was the support of Elon Musk.
Shiba Inu is currently down 1.31% in the last 24 hours and -6.39% in the last 7 days, trading at the $0.00002633 price point. Despite the “Dogecoin Killer” tag, the token remains 3 steps behind Dogecoin’s market cap, currently holding 15th place with a market cap of $14.4 billion.