Shiba Inu is a dog-themed meme coin that was firstly launched back in 2020 and became momentarily popular and is continuously being one of the 15 biggest cryptocurrencies in the world years later.
The token has been highly volatile, susceptible to trends in social media and on several occasions, endorsements by highly renowned personalities, such as Elon Musk.
Can Shiba Inu Survive the Crypto Winter?
Although traditional investment experts advise against the adoption of meme coins, their popularity among crypto investors is admittedly quite strong. It’s good to know expert opinions weighed against pros and cons for a better look at both the bull case and bear case for this leading player within the meme coin space.
In the words of Grzegorz Drozdz, a market analyst at Conotoxia, the story of Shiba Inu is only a classic example of the unpredictability and volatility of meme coins within the digital asset market.
The meme coin has been developed in August 2020 by an anonymous developer going under the name ‘Ryoshi’. It is part of the family of top dog themed cryptocurrency tokens, which also includes Dogecoin, DOGE, and DogWifHat, WIF. As part of the most intriguing sub-section of the crypto market to have garnered considerable investor attention, SHIB came out of a meme.
Drozdz stated:
“The cryptocurrency quickly gained popularity mainly due to the support of celebrities such as Tesla founder Elon Musk. Its success has led to the creation of many copies, but Shiba Inu remains the most recognisable of these cryptocurrencies.”
This bevy of ups and downs is shown by the price history of SHIB. After endorsement by Elon Musk, its price went full 4,000% in three months to a high of $0.000035. But it was very short-lived as the meme coin fell afterward, erasing 90% of its value.
Of course, after the initial hype, another larger rally occurred six months later when Musk announced that Tesla electric cars could be purchased with Dogecoin. It sent the price of meme coin up to $0.000075, up 1,200%. Shytoshi Kusama, the lead developer of the Shiba Inu (SHIB) has recently even sent an open invitation for a sit-out with Musk.
However, the 2022 bear market sent the coin crashing back to shed about 90% of its peak value.
Is Meme Coin Craze Over?
Crypto assets had a quietly positive year with many doing exceptionally well in 2023 and starting this year on a strong note. There has been much hope for the crypto market, with signals that regulators may take more steps toward recognition.
In December, US regulators approved 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs-a milestone considered a great step in making crypto an officially accepted investment class.
Predicting the future of most cryptocurrencies, including SHIB, is tough. However, its future trajectory might be dictated by several factors.
It’s just that, despite the volatility, a broader bull market for cryptocurrencies would often lift all assets, including this meme coin. As a matter of fact, the more investors and institutions understand the potential of digital currencies, the better this is for the entire crypto market, let alone for SHIB.
The approval of the spot Bitcoin ETFs drove the price of Shiba Inu over 350% in two weeks at the beginning of the year. Despite the general good performance of the market, the coin has dropped back to just above its price in January.
Another important reason is that meme coins are so incredibly popular that their interests surge in a very sudden manner, based on social media trends and sometimes celebrity endorsements. However, how long this popularity will be maintained or sustained is very hard to predict. Analysts note how unpredictable it is to know how long this interest will last.
Other Side of the Story: Analysts Say New ATH Coming
On the other hand, a well-known personality within the SHIB community, $SHIB KNIGHT, has some highly positive hopes on the ability of SHIB to achieve a new ATH. In a post, $SHIB KNIGHT has noted that the dog-themed token is set for a major price blastoff, which could see it surge past $0.00008616 for a new ATH.
Credit: X.com
If $SHIB KNIGHT’s projection is anything to go by, Shiba Inu might blow past the previous ATH of $0.00008845 recorded on October 28, 2021. The strategist hasn’t provided a possible target for SHIB but has maintained that the token is setting up for a new high. Their positive projections for SHIB have been similarly made by other prominent crypto strategists such as Eunice Wong and Javis Marks.
These analysts stay bullish about this meme coin, based on positive news in the SHIB ecosystem. The recent spike in Shibarium TVL is one of the major updates. Shibarium is Shiba Inu’s Layer-2 blockchain. It merely took a week for Shibarium’s TVL to reach $3.64 million after the liquidity staking solution of K9 Finance, the Bonecrusher, was launched.
Following the launch of Bonecrusher on Shibarium, the daily transaction volume of the network surged by a whopping 82% to 7,060 transactions. Increased Shibarium transaction volumes may significantly reduce the circulating supply of the SHIB cryptocurrency.
There are even rumors that the Shiba Inu team will disclose “something big” during the fourth quarter of this year, adding more drive to SHIB’s adoption. These promising development may lead this meme coin to where it should be: its rise to a new all-time high.
Shiba Inu: Navigating the Volatile World of Meme Coins
Of late, the crypto markets have seen a meme coin mania, where a lot of meme coins are shooting up in price and new ones keep cropping out of nowhere. Great as that excitement might sound, investors should not forget that highly speculative and usually lacking inherent utility are properties that characterize meme coins.
Events that are less predictable, such as tweets by Elon Musk, have been known to create volatility in cryptocurrency markets in the past. As such, analysts do warn that investment in this coin comes with considerable risk, and predictions of its price are way more difficult to make than for other more established cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
While Bitcoin has more historical data and further extended analysis on the market to base predictions upon, Shiba Inu is relatively new, under highly volatile conditions, which makes it difficult to give any performance forecast.
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