Shiba Inu and the Pursuit of a Dollar

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Now, I’ve spent a fair bit of time looking at markets, and one thing I’ve learned is that humans are remarkably good at inventing things that don’t quite make sense. And Shiba Inu, a cryptocurrency launched in 2020 by someone calling themselves Ryoshi, is a prime example. It sprang into existence, seemingly as a playful riff on Dogecoin, and then…well, it went a bit bonkers. In 2021, it delivered a return that can only be described as astronomical – 45,278,000%. A mere three dollars, invested at the right moment, could theoretically have become a million. Which is…a lot of dog treats.

The timing, as these things often are, was impeccable. We were in the early stages of the pandemic, interest rates were scraping the bottom of the barrel, and governments were essentially printing money like it was going out of style. It created a sort of speculative froth that swept through everything – stocks, property, tulips, you name it. Everything seemed possible, and a digital token based on a breed of dog was as good a candidate for improbable success as any.

But as anyone who’s ever blown bubbles knows, they don’t last. By mid-2022, Shiba Inu had lost over 90% of its peak value. It’s currently trading at levels not seen for five years, which, in cryptocurrency terms, is practically prehistoric. The question, then, is whether it can stage another comeback, and whether it might, against all odds, reach the symbolic $1 mark. The answer, as is often the case with these things, is…complicated. And involves a lot of zeroes.

The Problem with Demand

The fundamental truth about any currency – digital or otherwise – is that it needs to be used. If people actually buy things with it, that creates demand, and demand, in turn, supports its value. Shiba Inu, alas, hasn’t exactly become the preferred method of payment at your local grocery store. Or, indeed, at many stores anywhere. It’s a bit like inventing a perfectly good language and then finding out nobody wants to learn it.

Its volatility doesn’t help. Businesses don’t like accepting payment in something that could lose half its value overnight. Imagine running a bakery and finding out your sourdough starter is worth less than the flour you used to make it. And then there’s the technology it’s built on. The original Ethereum network, while perfectly respectable, struggles to handle a lot of transactions quickly and cheaply. It’s a bit like trying to run a modern highway system on a network of dirt tracks.

Developers created Shibarium, a sort of side road to bypass the congestion, but it hasn’t exactly transformed Shiba Inu into the PayPal of the crypto world. As of today, only about 1,130 businesses worldwide accept it. That’s…not a huge number. They’ve also dabbled in virtual worlds and digital land, but so far, it hasn’t generated a significant amount of actual value. It’s a bit like building a lovely castle on a very small and remote island.

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The Implausibility of a Dollar

Let’s do some numbers, shall we? There are 589.2 trillion Shiba Inu tokens in circulation. At the current price of $0.000006, the total market capitalization is $3.6 billion. Now, if each token were to reach $1, the market cap would jump to…$589.2 trillion. Which is, frankly, a rather astonishing figure. For perspective, Nvidia, currently the most valuable company in the world, is worth a mere $4.8 trillion. All the gold ever mined is worth around $36 trillion. And the entire global economy, in 2026, is estimated to be around $123.6 trillion. You can see the problem.

The community is attempting to address the supply issue by “burning” tokens – essentially sending them to a digital black hole where they can never be recovered. The idea is that reducing the supply will increase the value of the remaining tokens. It’s a bit like reducing the number of apples in a basket – if demand stays the same, each apple should be worth more. However, even if they burned 99.99998% of the tokens, it wouldn’t fundamentally change the equation.

The Long, Long Burn

If they reduced the supply to 3.6 billion tokens – a number that would theoretically justify a $1 price – it would take an extraordinary amount of time. Last month, they burned around 102.5 million tokens. At that rate, it would take approximately 479,000 years. Which, as anyone will tell you, is a rather long time to wait for a return on investment. And even then, it wouldn’t create any real value. Investors would have 99.99998% fewer tokens, so their net financial position would be exactly the same. It’s a bit like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

And even if you passed those tokens down through the generations, the inheritance would be worth far less after 479 millennia of inflation. The value of a dollar, or any currency, erodes over time. It’s a fundamental principle of economics. So, even if Shiba Inu did reach $1 in the distant future, it wouldn’t be the windfall some might imagine.

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2026-03-02 03:33