Shiba Inu is a breed that created a few millionaires a few years ago, and investors may be hoping for a return to its glory days.
Shiba Inu (Shiv -1.01%) It opened at $0.0000000000773 per token in 2021. By the end of the year it had reached $0.000035, a staggering gain of 45,278,000%.
That would have been enough to turn a perfectly timed $1,000 investment into $452 million. However, with very low trading volume, it is unlikely that an investor could have purchased $1,000 worth of Shiba Inu tokens at the initial price in 2021. That being said, an investment of just $3 could have made you a millionaire!
Since then, Shiba Inu has fallen 73% from its all-time high, and has recently recovered somewhat as sentiment across the cryptocurrency industry has improved, but will investing $1,000 today ultimately make you a millionaire?
The Shiba Inu community is looking to extract more value
Shiba Inu (and most cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin)’s biggest problem is that it has never found a use case beyond serving as a vehicle for speculation. For a currency to maintain its value, consumers and businesses need to trust it as a means of transaction, otherwise there is no point in owning it.
Unfortunately, a currency that loses most of its value after rising millions of percent in value would make cashflow management a nightmare for any business, so it’s no wonder that there are only 940 merchants worldwide that accept Shiba Inu tokens as payment for goods and services (according to Cryptwerk).
But developers are looking to provide even more value to token holders: last year they launched Shibarium, a layer-2 blockchain solution that aims to speed up transactions and reduce costs, solving some of the inefficiencies of traditional blockchains. Ethereum The network Shiba Inu was built on should, in theory, make the token more attractive as a means of trading digital goods such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
The developers also created an app-based digital card game called “Shiba Eternity” in 2022 to draw people into the Shiba Inu ecosystem. They also continue to develop the metaverse, where the tokens will have real-world uses. However, progress seems to have stalled in the virtual world, which failed to open as expected last year.
Image source: Getty Images.
Turning $1,000 into $1 million can be difficult
Investing $1,000 in Shiba Inu at the current price of $0.0000242 would give you 41.3 million tokens. Simple math tells us that these tokens would need to trade at $0.024 each for the position to be worth $1 million. In other words, Shiba Inu would need to make a 99,900% profit from here.
Is that realistic? Based on Shiba Inu’s current price and 589.3 trillion tokens in circulation, the market cap is $14.3 billion. A 99,900% increase would send the market cap soaring to a whopping $14 trillion.
In other words, the Shiba Inu MicrosoftIt is the largest company in the world, representing roughly half the value of the entire U.S. economy, which generated $28.2 trillion in gross domestic product (GDP) in the past 12 months.
Personally, I don’t think it’s within the realm of possibility, given the issues I just pointed out, especially the low adoption rate of the token. In reality, it’s nearly impossible to put a fair value on a speculative asset like Shiba Inu. Unlike a business, Shiba Inu doesn’t generate revenue or profits that can be used to assess its value. Instead, its price is determined by what the next person is willing to pay for it.
So investing $1,000 in a Shiba Inu is unlikely to make you a millionaire. You might be better off investing that money in the stock market instead.
Anthony Di Pizio has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool recommends buying Microsoft January 2026 $395 calls and selling Microsoft January 2026 $405 calls. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
