When it comes to meeting the man behind the multibillion-dollar crypto giant Shiba Inu, the biggest challenge is actually meeting him. To all intents and purposes, he doesn’t exist.
Shytoshi Kusama is not his real name. No one has a clue what he looks like. He has never been photographed in public, his voice never heard, and his whereabouts – even by continent – remain a mystery. Crypto conspiracy theorists suggest he is an alter ego of Elon Musk.
What no-one denies is that in the space of just three years, Kusama has become one of the most powerful, successful and elusive crypto stars on the planet. The crypto meme coin Shiba Inu, which he is lead developer of, has fluctuated in valuations between $10 billion and $41 billion. In 10 months from January 2021 to October 2021, the price of the decentralised Ethereum-based token SHIB rose by 27,000,000 percent. Yes, you read that right – 27 million percent.
The masterplan of creating a crypto meme coin run by its own community – the ShibArmy – has attracted an estimated 50 million recruits, while its real leaders continue to remain anonymous.
Yet suddenly, here we are, in an inconspicuous café (in one of world’s 195 countries) at 3 AM. It has taken weeks of meetings with intermediaries and jumping through multiple security protocols, but Kusama is here. And not just him, but also his right-hand man Kaal Dhairya, widely seen as the industry’s greatest ever tech genius. Famous for not being famous, they are finally ready to talk – and later walk – into a specially created studio, for their first ever photo shoot, albeit with their faces and features fully concealed once the cameras start flashing.
“I guess now you know. I’m not Elon Musk. But I would like to talk to him, show him how it should be done,” says Kusama.
When it comes to disruption beyond recognition, wealth beyond imagination and power beyond contemplation, Musk and Kusama have a lot in common – apart from the fact that nobody knows who Kusama is.
“I prefer it that way, and I don’t plan to ever reveal my identity. The fact that we can sit here in this coffee shop, no security outside, nobody recognises me, that’s actually worth more than any amount of money. Maybe one day in many years to come I’ll be sitting on a beach somewhere, and I’ll show my friends a story about Shiba Inu and say, ‘I did that.’ But they probably won’t believe me,” he says.
He’s right about that. Who could believe that a one-time Uber driver in Los Angeles and part time food delivery courier in New York, Kusama and Dhairya, are now leading the number two most traded cryptocurrency in 2023, second only to Bitcoin. Shiba Inu is believed to be largest decentralised community in the world, and its X account has just under three million followers. The journey from driving punters to driving prices has been remarkable.
“Our goal is to be the world’s first trillion-dollar decentralised entity,” says Kusama, adding: “Right now less than 5 percent of the world is on crypto – not only do we see it exploding, but we see memes being the gateway to crypto and blockchain, and Shiba Inu being the brand that will lead the world from Web2 to Web3.” Only a fool would bet against them succeeding.
In private, once their masks are removed, Kusama and Dhairya are nothing like their fake public personas suggest. A couple of geeks from a mysterious country? No, instead meet two electrifying, articulate, and intelligent individuals. Highly entertaining, witty, humble – but with an astonishingly well laid out plan that they believe will cement Shiba Inu’s place in history for the next hundred years.
Whilst Kusama and Dhairya are confident the future belongs to Shiba Inu, their past – never before fully revealed until now – is worth a movie in itself.
Shiba Inu is actually the brainchild of another mysterious crypto star “Ryoshi”. SHIB was created as a decentralised token in August 2020. Ryoshi then gave 50 percent of all SHIB to the Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin. Confused? There’s more. Buterin donated his collection of SHIB, alongside burning 410 trillion SHIB in the process.
“Ryoshi had a specific plan which was to create five tokens and multiple pieces of technology. His goal was if someone could actually build all these things, then we could overtake Doge. That was also the plan – he was the Dogecoin killer.”
Dogecoin was created in 2013, believed to be the first ever meme coin – launched as a satirical cryptocurrency to make fun of Bitcoin. At its peak, Dogecoin was worth over $90 billion, and has been promoted by the likes of Elon Musk.
But where do Kusama and Dhairya fit into all this? Before Shiba Inu, Kusama, who speaks six languages, explains he has, “done a lot of things,” including “working in music, photography, and as a barista.”
“I guess you could say I was just that ordinary guy you see at the bus stop.”
He went on to work as a business consultant before moving to Los Angeles, where he was a scriptwriter. “I was also an Uber driver, and one day this super rich guy got in the back. I said: ‘What do you do?’ He said: ‘If you want what I have, get into tech. So I did.”
That was the moment his world changed. He started dealing in crypto as a hobby, working in two cycles through a seven-year period.
“I made a little bit of money in my first crypto cycle, but I was just a normal guy – I went in with $4,000 and had a decent win with a token, and then walked into the Shiba Inu chatroom when there was 6,000 people. So I put in $3,000 and thought I’ll see what happens,” says Kusama.
He also read Ryoshi’s first blog which was about decentralisation. “The ethos of the blog being that you are just as important as anyone and you can take the reins, and you can do something for this community, as well as do something to change the world.”
He adds: “Through a twist of fate, I met Ryoshi in a chat room and submitted a simple idea to him, which was to have our 6,000 people change their Amazon account to smile.amazon, and make Bezos pay if we all had the same concept. Ryoshi said, ‘That’s a great idea, why don’t you run this project and take this whole plan forward?’ I said, ‘Sure I’ll do it, what’s the budget?’ He said, ‘You are the budget.’ I learned more in the next few weeks that I had done in years.”
The Ryoshi plan then still remains as the foundations of Shiba Inu today; five tokens, SHIB, BONE, LEASH and TREAT (which is on the way) – plus SHI (a stable token) and multiple technologies such as Shiba Swap. Once Kusama came on board, it would be enhanced across multiple levels, into different spheres and directions.
But first, he needed support. Kusama had engaged with Dhairya on chat rooms, and it was clear to him that the man he had never physically met before, living thousands of miles away, was the tech genius he needed alongside him.
“So I told Kaal I need you to quit your job tomorrow, I need you, and here is a year’s salary. He trusted me that this could be big, and in crypto you need at least one person you can trust, otherwise everyone around you is like sand or wind. They switch all the time to someone they think will make them more money. So Kaal was the guy I trusted to be here with me, working 20-hour days until we get it done. And, we did,” explains Kusama.
As for Dhairya, he recalls: “When I got the call, I thought what the heck, I’m in. He explained the whole situation to me. I had a very good understanding of the vision because I was looking into different companies and how companies like Airbnb were growing. When he showed me the vision, I thought yes, I get it. I have a talent for knowing what’s happening in future – I can see where blockchain is going and the impact it will have on humanity. I didn’t hesitate to join him.”
The two of them quickly started looking at Shiba Inu as a completely unconventional business model, as per the Ryoshi mandate. They point out that traditional giants such as Tesla and Virgin – in fact most companies – are based on the vision of its founder, who decides the plan, implements it and leads it.
“SHIB was more of an experiment. Ryoshi said I am going to create this token and send half of it to Vitalik Buterin. At the same time, anyone can go and do what they want. Don’t go and pay for influencers to market listings, you go out there and do it. Do something cool. And if we all work together in this way, we will build the world’s biggest decentralised community. That ethos is what drives us,” says Kusama.
Dhairya adds: “Think about what [Kendrick] Lamar did to beat Drake. He took the copyright off his songs, so everyone started making memes, videos and jokes about it. That helped it go viral. That’s what SHIB is. People build their own things with it, and our job is to give them the ability to amplify their message. And to make sure we take some of that market share and bring it back to the foundation, to the community.”
“It’s like a franchise with ethos. If you want to be part of the movement, you have to go through a checklist, and we make sure you are part of the same ethos, then you get the true mind of our marketing power. If tomorrow you want to do Shiba Coffee and you satisfy our checklist, and you are part of the framework we are creating, and you can take market share from Starbucks and push it back to the community, then the whole community is behind you.”
So, where exactly is all this going? SHIB’s value has fluctuated massively to the tune of $30 billion, and initially, it looked like the lead developers were only fixated on crossing $90 billion, and in the process overtaken Dogecoin at its peak. But the rise in Bitcoin prices, and the fact that less than 5 percent of the world’s population are using crypto, means the potential is huge. The most startling number is that as of 2023, the total market value of Web3 stood at less than $3 billion, but with a CAGR of 48 percent by 2030. If there was ever a growth opportunity staring the world in the face, most experts would argue it is called Web3.
This all means that the goal for Shiba Inu has suddenly got a great deal bigger and more exciting. “We see memes being the gateway to crypto and blockchain, and SHIB is the brand that will lead the world from Web2 to Web3. We want to take market share from centralised entities like Google and move the world from centralisation to decentralisation. Our ultimate goal? That’s simple: to be the first trillion-dollar decentralised entity,” says Kusama.
Dhairya adds: “Businesses will either quickly move into Web3 in the next three to five years or be left in the dust. Some new brand will pop up that will have better engagement, or new revenue models, and the old business models won’t work. We want to look at every brand and say how can we help you, how can we create the perfect strategy to bring any business, person or country into Web3.”
If the pair’s trillion-dollar journey is likely to be enthralling, almost every spin-off resulting from it could be equally breathtaking. At one stage in the conversation, they bring up the Montevideo Convention of 1933, a treaty that defines what a state is, and what rights it has.
The treaty laid out the four criteria necessary for an entity to be entitled to statehood – a permanent population, a government, the capacity to enter into relations with other states, and a defined territory.
Apply that treaty to crypto and there is an argument for the existence of “social states” with digital territory. Given that the ShibArmy are described as “citizens”, could Shiba Inu declare its own kind of sovereignty? Well, it already did, though more as a “joke.”
“We are not planting flags saying we are going to take over the world,” says Kusama.
But in 100 years, could the world be populated by a number of “social states”? “Yes, it could. In which case we would have been the first,” he says.
What is certain however, is that even in 10 years’ time, there is little chance of Kusama and Dhairya revealing their true identities.
“It’s not about being anonymous, it’s more that we are private. People think we are just a meme, but we have a structure that can let us do business with anyone in this world, with multiple entities across the world. And we need to create something that can run without us. If there is no Elon Musk, there is no Tesla. If there is no Shy or Kaal, you will still have Shibu,” says Kusama.
He adds: “We helped build the meme industry and we are meme kings, whether we like it or not – and that wasn’t our intention. Or the plan. The long-term plan is to develop something that is eventually going to live forever – 100 to 1,000 years. That requires an incredible framework, a decentralised community, incredible partners, and an operating system that everybody can use. We already have all of those things, and that’s why we have done what no one else could even imagine.”
It’s fair to say they also have a decent whack of money and power, though neither seem particularly fazed about it. “Money is extremely important but what excites me more is the ability to make other people money. I often say in meetings this is great, but how can the average guy make money from this? But I also get to have a certain level of kindness – without anyone knowing who I am. Rich people attract a certain type of person,” says Kusama.
He is especially proud of the Shiba Foundation launched last year, which has already supported a huge number of individually inspiring people. It has also been a big contributor to boxing legend Manny Pacquiao’s many charitable projects.
And as for power? “Power is fleeting. But what is power? Power is the ability to laugh at the people who look down on you, who think that you are beneath them.”
It’s now 5.40 AM. I make one last, futile attempt to persuade them to publicly reveal their identities. They won’t play ball. I sign the documents confirming I will never discuss their appearance with absolutely anyone – not even the colour of their skin, accents or clothing. As far as they are concerned, we probably never met.
Kusama says: “Look, at the end of this year, we will hand everything over to the community and we step away – right now we are leads, by the end of year there will be committees of people who will lead certain things. So why come out? What would we gain? There is no reason to ever tell anyone who we really are.”
Photographer: Mattia Guolo
Digital & Photo Tech: Manfredi Prestigiacomo
Fashion Director: Qwan Anthony
Set Design: Yehia Bedeir
Follow us on
