Is Shiba Inu Dead?

What is Shiba Inu?

Shiba Inu (SHIB) is a meme-based cryptocurrency that was launched in August 2020. 

Inspired by the Shiba Inu dog breed, the cryptocurrency was modeled after another popular memecoin of the time — Dogecoin. 

Shiba Inu quickly grew in popularity, but its price collapsed in May 2022. 

Since its heyday, SHIB’s price has been mostly steady (though the project has been seeing a new wave of popularity in 2024). 

It’s important to note that while SHIB hasn’t reached its previous highs, the project continues to have an active and loyal community. As of the time of writing, SHIB is still a top-15 cryptocurrency by market capitalization. 

Shiba Inu: Pros and Cons 

In the past, SHIB has seen significant volatility. Before investing, you should do your research and consider your own unique risk tolerance. 

Pros 

• Loyal community: Shiba Inu has a vibrant and loyal community — known as the ‘SHIB Army’ — that has survived a cryptocurrency bear market. 
• Recognition: Shiba Inu is one of the most well-recognized memecoins in the world — giving it an edge over competitors. 
• Deflationary supply: SHIB’s supply has been decreasing over time — which means that its value has the potential to increase! 
• Investment and new development: Shiba Inu has announced exciting new projects in recent months, and in 2024 received $12 million in investment from crypto venture capitalist firms like Comma 3 Ventures and Big Brain Holdings.

Cons 

• Speculative: Shiba Inu's investment potential is highly speculative. While the project does have a vibrant community, it’s clear that much of its value is derived from short-term traders. 
• Limited utility: Critics claim that Shiba Inu’s utility is limited, and that most value is derived from the meme-based nature of the project. Some say that Shiba Inu’s team has not lived up to the promises laid out in its roadmap. 
• High supply: While SHIB’s supply is deflationary, it is still very large — meaning that it may be difficult for the cryptocurrency’s price to increase. 
• Memecoin competition: SHIB has yet to reach its pandemic highs — which might suggest that past investors have moved on to other memecoins. 

The rise and fall of Shiba Inu 

Shiba Inu experienced a meteoric rise in 2021, a year after its ‘Woof Paper’ was published by a group of pseudonymous figures called Ryoshi. 

Shiba Inu’s rapid rise was likely due to multiple factors — including the popularity of dog-based memecoins and the project’s viral marketing. The project had more than 580,000 community members in its peak, with unique applications like ShibaSwap (a decentralized exchange) and Shiboshis (NFTs). 

SHIB saw a huge decline in price in 2022. It’s likely that this drop could be partially attributed to global economic conditions and a general bear market in crypto. You can calculate profits or losses in your SHIB investments with the SHIB profit calculator.

Some SHIB critics claimed that this price drop was inevitable due to the fact that the project had little intrinsic value. 

Why is SHIB’s price going up again? 

Shiba Inu saw a huge spike in price in 2024 — partially attributed to activity from a single crypto whale who transferred more than 3.2 trillion units of SHIB within a 24-hour period. 

It’s also likely that SHIB’s price has been increasing due to new projects that have been announced by the development team (more on this in the next section). 

While Shiba Inu has not reached its pandemic price highs, it’s important to note that the SHIB community is still vibrant and that the project is far from ‘dead’. 

What’s next for Shiba Inu? 

In recent years, Shiba Inu has made an attempt to distance itself from its ‘memecoin’ beginnings, and prove itself as a serious crypto project. 

In 2023, Shiba Inu developers launched Shibarium — an Ethereum Layer-2 network designed for fast and cost-effective means of settlement for DeFi protocols. 

The same year, Shiba Inu launched Shibicals — which use NFC chips to link real-world items to NFTs. 

In 2024, Shiba Inu raised more than $12 million in a token funding round to help fund its privacy-focused network on Shibarium. 

What are the controversies around Shiba Inu? 

Here are a few common reasons why Shiba Inu has faced criticism: 

• Token Distribution: A significant portion of its supply is owned by ‘cryptocurrency whales’ — high net worth crypto wallets. This means that the project may be subject to price manipulation. 
• Lack of Transparency: Shiba Inu has been criticized for a lack of transparency on long-term goals. 
• Memecoin Nature: Memecoins like SHIB have been criticized for lacking substance. While Shiba Inu does have some DeFi applications, critics claim that the project’s value is mostly based on short-term speculation. 

What are the problems around Shiba Inu’s supply? 

Shiba Inu had an initial supply of 1 quadrillion tokens (that’s 15 zeroes!) 

A significant portion of SHIB’s supply was sent to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin as a marketing gimmick. Buterin went on to burn more than 410 billion tokens of SHIB — effectively removing them from the total supply. 

The Shiba Inu network also implemented a burn mechanism to reduce supply over time. A small portion of network fees are burned with every transaction. 

Today, SHIB still has a large circulating supply. At the time of writing, SHIB’s supply is more than 589 billion units! 

Why is Shiba Inu’s large supply a bad thing? 

The price of an individual cryptocurrency is its total market capitalization divided by the total number of units.

Price = Market Cap/Units of Cryptocurrency 

Because Shiba Inu’s supply is so large, it’s difficult for the cryptocurrency’s value to increase significantly. 

Conclusion

While Shiba Inu has seen dramatic highs and lows, the project is far from dead. The project continues to have a strong community and receives new investment from crypto venture capital firms.