Cryptocurrencies don't have anywhere close to the allure that they had in the past. But that doesn't negate the fact that several of them have made some investors wealthy in recent years.
While there have been some big crypto winners, none has delivered the phenomenal returns achieved by Shiba Inu (SHIB 3.18%). And it didn't take very long for those gigantic gains to be generated. Here's how much you would've made if you had bought Shiba Inu in early 2021.
Barking all the way to the bank
Shiba Inu's price on Jan. 1, 2021 was a minuscule $0.000000000119. This super-low cost stood out as one of the main draws for the meme coin. You could've bought more than 8.4 billion SHIB tokens with only $1.
Let's suppose, though, that you were especially enamored with Shiba Inu back then. Instead of buying $1 worth of the cryptocurrency, you shelled out $10, to pick up over 84 billion tokens. Assuming you didn't sell along the way, your initial $10 would have been worth more than $742,850 by the end of June 2021.
Many investors would have been tempted to cash in with that jaw-dropping gain. However, the best was yet to come.
At its peak price of $0.00008845 on Oct. 28, 2021, Shiba Inu would have turned your $10 into more than $7.43 million. Again, it would probably have been difficult to resist the urge to take the money and run with that huge amount. But how much would you have made if you had held on? There's good news and bad news.
The bad news is that an initial investment of $10 in Shiba Inu in early 2021 wouldn't be worth anywhere close to $7.43 million today. The good news is that your tokens would still be valued at roughly $889,000. That's a return of more than 89,000% in a little over 18 months.
The future won't be like the past
There's no way to turn back the clock and buy Shiba Inu in early 2021. But can you still make a massive fortune with the meme coin?
Don't count on Shiba Inu generating a jaw-dropping return going forward as it has in the past. It's no longer flying under the radar like it was at the beginning of last year. And despite the number of zeros in its price, Shiba Inu isn't nearly as cheap as it was back then.
Just as important, the dynamics of the overall cryptocurrency market have changed significantly. Many investors aren't as willing to take on the same level of risk as they were last year. The competition between cryptocurrencies for investing dollars has also increased.
It's possible -- and perhaps even likely -- that Shiba Inu will never regain its highs set in the fall of 2021. Some think that Shiba Inu is a cryptocurrency to be avoided no matter what. Why? Mainly because it doesn't have a competitive advantage, compared to other tokens.
Lower your sights
However, the future doesn't have to mirror the past for Shiba Inu to still make investors richer. There are several factors that could enable the meme coin to deliver solid gains over the next year and beyond.
An aggressive burning strategy for Shiba Inu would remove coins from circulation and potentially boost its price. The upcoming launch of the Shibarium layer-2 solution could attract new developers to the Shiba Inu ecosystem. The Shiba Inu metaverse could bring in users. The headwinds for the overall cryptocurrency market could also subside, benefiting Shiba Inu.
The odds are heavily against Shiba Inu turning an initial investment of $10 into $889,000 down the road. There's no guarantee that the token will even generate positive returns over the long term. However, it's still possible that Shiba Inu could be a big winner for investors who lower their sights.
