Shiba Inu's Standing and Prospects for the Future

Shiba Inu is one of the best-known meme coins in the market right now. The only other digital currency in this category more popular than Siba Inu is Dogecoin, the project that led to the emergence of the meme-based crypto subset and inspired the creation of numerous dog-themed cryptocurrencies.

Despite meme coins' poor tokenomics and volatile nature, many investors, particularly those with a higher risk appetite, remain interested in them due to their low barriers to entry and the possibility of outsized returns. Therefore, questions regarding the Shiba Inu coin price and its long-term potential continue to circulate among market participants and analysts alike.

Origins and Design

Shiba Inu (SHIB) can be described as the parody of a parody. Its forerunner, Dogecoin, was created as a caricature of Bitcoin, to make fun of the craze that surrounded the crypto market and the numerous Bitcoin copycats that kept popping up, bringing nothing of value. Despite being intended as a joke, Dogecoin's price increased considerably

Ironically, by developing into a serious crypto in its own right, the meme coin became part of the very movement it once mocked and a subject of mockery itself. When Shiba Inu launched in 2020, it was obvious where its anonymous creator, known under the pseudonym Ryoshi, had gotten its inspiration from.

Both meme coins use a Shiba Inu dog as their mascots. As for technical structure, Shiba Inu was built on the Ethereum blockchain as an ERC-20 token. This means that, unlike crypto coins that are native to their blockchains, SHIB cannot be mined in the way that Bitcoin and other digital coins are. The entire Shiba Inu supply set at one quadrillion tokens was minted at launch. Then half of the tokens were sent to the Uniswap liquidity pool, and the other half was given to Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum's co-founder, who burned over 40% of the amount to reduce the circulating supply and create scarcity. This makes Shiba Inu a deflationary asset.

Current Standing

At press time, Shiba Inu was trading at $0.00001 and had a market cap of $5.84B USD, which places the token in the 21st position in the crypto market. That might not sound too bad for a meme coin, but when you put these figures against the all-time high of $0.000088 and the $41 billion market cap recorded in 2021, when SHIB was at its peak, you can clearly see that the token is not doing too well.

Shiba Inu's performance has been on a steady decline over the past few years, which is not in the least surprising since meme coins are known for their fickle nature and inability to maintain momentum for long periods of time. The token has lost almost 40% of its value over the past year, a striking contrast to the 105% price increase registered in 2024.

Like most of its peers, Shiba Inu doesn't have a strong value proposition or real use cases to sustain its growth and ensure long-term development. While more established coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum manage to stay afloat even during bullish periods, Shiba Inu struggles to stay stable in the market due to its lack of utility.

However, things change quickly in the crypto market, and even more so in the meme coin space, so it wouldn't be impossible for SHIB to bounce back in the future and increase in value.

Challenges and Future Perspectives

Although Shiba Inu is going through a difficult period, it still has several things working in its favor. First of all, the fact that SHIB is based on the Ethereum network provides a notable advantage. Ethereum employs a proof of stake (PoS) mechanism to reach consensus and validate transactions, which uses considerably less electricity than the proof of work (PoW) system that Bitcoin and other crypto assets are based on. This makes both Ether and Shiba Inu more eco-friendly than many of the cryptocurrencies in the market.

Shiba Inu has also been focused on expanding its ecosystem and developing real-world use cases by integrating new features like Shibarium and ShibaSwap. Shibarium, a Layer-2 (L2) network, is Shiba Inu's response to the low transaction speed and high gas fees imposed by Ethereum. This secondary chain is able to process transactions much faster at lower fees by taking these operations off the mainnet.

ShibaSwap is Shiba Inu's decentralized exchange (DEX), where users can trade tokens directly without having to resort to intermediaries. The meme token has also built a presence in the NFT and decentralized applications (dApp) space. Furthermore, Shiba Inu has expanded into the gaming sector with titles like Shiba Eternity and the metaverse project, SHIB: The Metaverse. In theory, these developments should enhance SHIB's appeal as an investment.

Unfortunately, none of these additions is unique or innovative enough to guarantee growth. Shibarium is not exactly a groundbreaking solution, and there are many other digital currencies that use PoS, have smart contract functionality, and are involved in the creation of dApps or the metaverse.

If interest in meme coins surges again, Siba Inu could see its price spike as well. Recently, a new cryptic message that Elon Musk posted on his social media platform X mentioned "dogs and decentralized fun," which could be interpreted as an endorsement of dog-inspired meme coins. This led to a brief increase in the trading volumes of the two leading canine tokens.

The majority of analysts believe that Shiba Inu won't be able to improve much his year, and there are no clear indications that the next one will be better. Since the meme coin's future seems as uncertain as ever, experts advise investors to remain cautious if they plan to add it to their portfolios and consider balancing their holdings with more stable coins that have proven their worth and utility over time.