Is Shiba Inu Dying?

Long gone are the days when only the select few had their fingers on the money print. We’re at a point in history when pretty much anybody/anywhere can mint their own crypto money!

And, if you can’t make a new token from scratch, just make it on top of an already established network, such as Etherium. Explains the whopping 8000 tokens crowding the crypto realm as of 2022.

The concept of uniqueness had kind of been lost on crypto. No one token out there can any longer boast being one of a kind, save perhaps Its Majesty Bitcoin (being the trailblazer it is.) Others (aka altcoins) are doomed to be given a good run for their money by other, ten times the flashier tokens that crop up by the bucketful at a time.

And now with the various ‘Shizza Inus', ‘Inas Shinus’ and other numerous ‘meme-coins’ popping up on the radar every couple days and stealing crowds of ravenous two-week hodlers, Shiba Inu is going to be incessantly hard-pressed not to lose its supporters to the next ‘billionaire overnight’ token.

So, is Shib one foot in the grave already, or was last year just a warm-up before a bright future?

Let’s pull up some data to see what’s under the hood.

Value is the dial that shows what happens to supply and demand backstage. Simply put, higher prices mean more people are buying - leaving less supply, whereas lower prices indicate people are selling - adding to supply.

Shib’s value had made two insane gains in price, both back in 2021. First the token was able to climb up to $0.000040 in May; come November the value doubled, now reaching $0.000080 per token. However, only roughly 25%-35% of  each previous peak would be retained in the months that followed: down to $0.000010 the first time and then $0.000030 the second time, which is still carrying on today.

You can almost hear the agonized ‘This is the end!’ during every such tumble down the hill.

An interesting observation to make is that Shiba Inu's value would plummet every time the token was listed on the next crypto exchange. You’d think being listed on more exchanges would help gain more exposure, and ultimately increase demand.

Hodlers is another indicator that is just as important. In a way, it shows how much people trust Shib has got good things coming. That is to say, there’s currently around 1.1 million unique addresses holding the token, indicating that trust wasn’t lost. For comparison’s sake, it took Bitcoin three years to wrangle up an equal amount of hodlers!

However, times are different now. For all people the times back in 2011, Bitcoin might have been an alien technology - too dangerous to meddle in, hence the slow going. Shib, on the other hand, graced us with its presence when crypto was a well-known thing to most crypto crazies. So that kind of comparison may not be the most fair one.

Burns. Shiba burns have kept their foot on the gas, gaining more speed as we speak. Whether through the official burn portal launched by the devs, or via independent projects, it’s getting to the point where there’s at least a billion tokens burned on a daily basis! And that number seems to be growing.

So, under the hood it doesn’t look so bad: more exchanges are listing Shib every now and then, the Shib Devs keep the upgrades coming, now there’s Shibarium, if still in its infancy, the 1 million Shib gang is still around... So why’s the value been struggling then?

Could be that the initial spikes in value were caused solely by the novelty of Shiba Inu. Lots of hungry whales poured in, made their millions and washed out, leaving small-time holders steadying the rocking boat.

Whatever it is, Shib as well as its followers should keep their guard up and keep doing their part for the community. The token is not dying, according to data. It’s just that it has outgrown its infancy phase during which people would appreciate it for being a new fancy trinket alone. Now’s the time to roll up the sleeves. More challenges are on their way.

It’s probably going to get worse, before it gets better.