SafeMoon Inu (CRYPTO:SMI) calls itself a community-driven meme and gaming token. It’s developing its own play-to-earn metaverse gaming platform, SMI Play, which will offer special benefits to SMI token holders.
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The name of SafeMoon Inu is a combination of SafeMoon (CRYPTO:SAFEMOON) and Shiba Inu (CRYPTO:SHIB), two tokens that became popular despite offering practically zero value as investments. However, SafeMoon Inu emphasizes that it’s not affiliated with SafeMoon in any way.
The name alone is a glaring red flag, but let’s take a closer look at SafeMoon Inu to see if it has anything to offer.
What makes SafeMoon Inu unique?
The only notable feature of SafeMoon Inu as a crypto token is a 2% fee on every transaction that gets redistributed to SMI holders called the “anti-paperhand system” because it’s intended to reward holding SafeMoon Inu and discourage selling.
Many other crypto tokens, including SafeMoon, do the same thing. The only difference is the fee each token charges and how much it redistributes to holders. SafeMoon Inu has one of the smaller fee amounts; some tokens charge 5% to 10% of every transaction.
SafeMoon Inu is also trying to set itself apart through its metaverse gaming platform. SMI Play will reportedly offer in-game non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that players can earn, buy, collect, trade, or melt and sell. SMI holders will receive a special status and extra benefits based on the amount of tokens they have.
SMI Play will launch with one game, Moonshot Voyage, a top-down-view looter shooter. The game has missed its original estimated release date, which was the first quarter of 2022, but there’s a tech demo available on the SafeMoon Inu website.
Where SafeMoon Inu came from
Little is known about the creation of SafeMoon Inu or the team behind it. The white paper states that SafeMoon Inu was launched on May 13, 2021, by early community members based all over the world. There’s no information provided about the community members or the developers.
How SafeMoon Inu works
SafeMoon Inu is an ERC-20 crypto token issued on the Ethereum (CRYPTO:ETH) blockchain. It has a maximum supply of 1 trillion SMI tokens. On every transaction using SMI tokens, SafeMoon Inu takes a 2% fee. It distributes the fee to all SMI holders as a reward.
Although the SMI Play platform is still in development, the team has released some information on the additional benefits for SMI holders. Players will get what’s called an SMI rate boost, based on the number of SMI tokens they have. The boost increases their chances of getting rarer in-game items.
Players can also get the following special statuses, which will offer more benefits, based on their wallet balances:
- Fish: Requires 1 million SMI tokens.
- Dolphin: Requires 100 million SMI tokens.
- Whale: Requires 1 billion SMI tokens.
These may seem like large amounts, but keep in mind that the price of SafeMoon Inu is only a very small fraction of a penny.
Partnerships
SafeMoon Inu signed a partnership agreement with Enjin in October 2021. Enjin is a company that offers blockchain gaming products, with the most famous being Enjin Network, a social gaming platform.
The agreement makes SMI Play’s first game, Moonshot Voyage, a member of the Enjin Adopter Program. The game will use Enjin’s zero-fee JumpNet blockchain for minting NFTs and allow players to melt NFT items in return for the Enjin Coin (CRYPTO:ENJ) backing those items.
Can I make passive income with SafeMoon Inu?
You make passive income automatically when you own SafeMoon Inu. Whenever a transaction takes place, you’ll receive your portion of the 2% transaction fee for being an SMI holder.
Although this is one of the selling points of SafeMoon Inu, remember that the passive income is paid in SMI tokens, a volatile cryptocurrency of dubious value. If you buy SafeMoon Inu and the price drops, you’ll most likely still lose money even after factoring in that passive income.
Unique risks
SafeMoon Inu doesn’t give the impression of a serious or professional project. It starts with the name, which was clearly a way to get attention by copying elements of SafeMoon, Shiba Inu, and Dogecoin (CRYPTO:DOGE), all of which were popular at the time. This has caused some issues for SafeMoon Inu. Its original Twitter account was suspended, likely due to the name being too similar to SafeMoon’s name.
It’s not like there’s any connection between SafeMoon Inu and any of those other cryptocurrencies, so this was purely a marketing strategy. Even SafeMoon Inu’s website and several of its social media accounts include a disclaimer that it’s not affiliated with SafeMoon at all.
The SafeMoon Inu white paper is also full of red flags. It doesn’t mention any use cases for the token or reasons to buy it, instead opting for vague fluff. Here are a few examples:
- It states, “SafeMoon Inu is basically fixing what other projects are missing.” There’s no explanation of what other projects are missing or how SafeMoon Inu fixes that.
- It claims, “SafeMoon Inu deserves as much visibility as possible.” It doesn’t give a reason why, but the writer did make sure to include the donation address for the “Community Marketing Wallet.”
- It repeats much of the same text in the introduction and tokenomics sections. This isn’t by any means a long white paper, so the fact that there was so little to say isn’t a good sign.
Is SafeMoon Inu a good investment?
SafeMoon Inu is a terrible investment. It’s another of the thousands of crypto tokens with no real purpose or reason for existence.
The supposed benefit of SafeMoon Inu is that holders earn rewards from the 2% transaction fee. This is a common system that doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. If the only thing a cryptocurrency has going for it is a not-excessive transaction fee, what’s the point of buying it? Quality cryptocurrency investments have real-world utility and aren’t just designed to funnel money to their holders.
Fans of SafeMoon Inu will likely point to its upcoming gaming metaverse as the thing that will drive its value to the moon. Although this is theoretically possible, the reality is that many projects are trying to do the exact same thing because crypto gaming is extremely popular.
So far, SafeMoon Inu’s gaming platform has one game that didn’t make its estimated launch date. It doesn’t look like anything that’s going to revolutionize the gaming world, but you can check out the tech demo if you want to see for yourself.
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How to buy SafeMoon Inu
SafeMoon Inu isn’t the easiest crypto to buy. You won’t find it on any of the biggest crypto exchanges. The simplest way to buy it is on its website with a credit or debit card, but it will cost you. Fees are generally at least 7% to 8% of the transaction and can be much higher if you’re buying a small amount.
The other option is to go to a decentralized exchange, connect a blockchain wallet, and trade another cryptocurrency for SafeMoon Inu. One decentralized exchange where you can find SafeMoon Inu is Uniswap (CRYPTO:UNI).
SafeMoon Inu may not be affiliated with SafeMoon, but they have one thing in common: They’re both crypto tokens that serve no purpose and make for poor investments.