Wall Street endured a miserable 2022, with all three major U.S. stock indexes delivering their worst performances since 2008. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500, and Nasdaq Composite finished the year lower by 9%, 19%, and 33%, respectively. But this pales in comparison to the pain felt by cryptocurrency investors.
In November 2021, the aggregate value of more than 20,000 digital currencies soared to nearly $3 trillion. By the end of 2022, more than 22,000 aggregate cryptocurrencies had a valuation of just under $800 billion. In less than 14 months, the cryptocurrency space shed $2.2 trillion in value.
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Shiba Inu's record-breaking gains are still fresh on the minds of crypto investors
Despite this massive downturn, what hasn't been forgotten is the millionaire-making potential of this asset class. Meme token Shiba Inu (SHIB 0.40%) stands out as perhaps the best example of what can happen when a digital token "goes to the moon."
Just over two years ago, when the clock struck midnight on Jan. 1, 2021, crypto investors had the opportunity to buy SHIB tokens for $0.000000000073. Less than 10 months later, on Oct. 27, 2021, these same coins would hit an intra-day high of $0.00008841. By removing six zeroes after its decimal point, Shiba Inu gained in excess of 121,000,000%. It would have turned a $1 investment into $1.21 million, excluding commission fees, in under a year. We may never see a return of this magnitude in such a short time frame ever again.
What SHIB demonstrated in 2021 is the power of social media-driven momentum. Its increased visibility, coupled with a number of strategic initiatives laid out by Shiba Inu's developers for 2022 and beyond, made it the hottest asset on the planet. Even after ending the year with a sizable pullback, SHIB coins gained close to 46,000,000% in 2021.
Of course, 2022 was a different story altogether for digital currencies -- including Shiba Inu. Last year, SHIB plunged more than 90% below its all-time high. But with the understanding that anything is possible within the crypto arena (as SHIB has already proven), attention has shifted to the future. In particular, Shiba Inu's community believes it could make a run at $0.01 in 2023.
Let's first take a look at what would need to go right for Shiba Inu to catapult to $0.01, and then we'll examine the feasibility of such a move.
What would need to happen for SHIB to moon to $0.01?
To hit the equivalent of a penny, Shiba Inu would need to deliver a roughly 111,900% return from where it was trading in the wee hours of Jan. 11, 2023. For this to happen, a number of catalysts and events would need to be flawlessly executed.
What could easily be the biggest catalyst in 2023 is the expected launch of the layer-2 blockchain project Shibarium. Shiba Inu is an ERC-20 token built on the Ethereum blockchain. While Ethereum is a well-trusted network, it's prone to congestion and high transaction fees as a result of its popularity. Shibarium aims to fix this by significantly driving down the cost of transactions. Shibarium's successful public launch is needed before Shiba Inu's developers can go full-bore into other ventures.
What other ventures, you ask? If the Shibarium launch goes well and transaction costs are slashed, Shiba Inu's developers can turn their attention to blockchain-based gaming. One of the chief lures of blockchain-hosted games is that users can retain ownership of their characters and innovations through non-fungible tokens (NFTs). These NFTs can be bought and sold at NFT marketplaces, assuming transaction costs are minimal -- ergo, the need for Shibarium.
While developers are busy expanding the Shiba Inu ecosystem, we'd also need to see nothing short of a massive coin-burn event. Coin burn is similar to a publicly traded company executing a stock-buyback program. If a company repurchases some of its common stock and reduces the total number of outstanding shares, each remaining share is scarcer and likely worth more. Coin burn sends tokens to dead blockchain addresses where they can no longer be accessed. By reducing the circulating supply of outstanding tokens, each remaining coin should, in theory, be worth more.
Lastly, Shiba Inu would require social media momentum and buzz on par with what we witnessed in 2021. Cryptocurrency communities on social media tend to be driven by momentum.
Image source: Getty Images.
Can Shiba Inu feasibly reach $0.01 in 2023?
Unfortunately for SHIB holders, we don't live in a utopian world, and the aforementioned catalysts haven't been executed flawlessly. Even if one or more of these tailwinds come to fruition in 2023, there's no chance Shiba Inu will reach $0.01.
For instance, Shibarium's public launch was rumored to be in the third quarter of 2022. However, developers confirmed that issues with the level-2 blockchain project delayed its launch. That's not a particularly good omen for a project that has substantial bearing on pretty much all other initiatives. At this point, there's no official launch date or timeline for Shibarium.
While blockchain-based gaming and NFTs were exceptionally hot investments in 2021, interest in NFTs has absolutely fallen off a cliff since January 2022. According to data from Bloomberg, NFT trading volume plunged to $466 million in September from $17 billion just eight months earlier. The buzz surrounding blockchain-based gaming and NFT marketplaces has all but disappeared.
Coin burn doesn't look as if it'll be of much help to Shiba Inu, either. When Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin -- who was gifted half of SHIB's circulating supply by its mysterious creator -- sent over 410 trillion SHIB tokens to a dead blockchain address in 2021, SHIB benefited immensely. However, there are still in the neighborhood of 549 trillion SHIB tokens outstanding, according to CoinMarketCap.com. There simply aren't enough burn events imaginable that would make a dent in such a massive coin supply. This means a $0.01 price tag would make Shiba Inu worth close to three times as much as Apple -- and that would make absolutely no sense from a valuation perspective.
While there's not a lot of tangible information for cryptocurrency investors to utilize, what is readily apparent is that Shiba Inu is nothing more than a payment coin -- and not even a particularly popular one at that. Payment coins aren't unique within the digital currency arena, and Shiba Inu has seen only a minimal uptick as an accepted form of payment over the past eight months. According to online business directory Cryptwerk, just 710 mostly obscure online merchants accept SHIB as payment as of January 2023.
But history might be the most damning thing of all for Shiba Inu. With the exception of Bitcoin, pretty much every payment coin that's delivered gains of 20,000% or greater in a short time span eventually went on to lose between 93% and 99% of their value in the two years following their peak. SHIB may be down 90% from its all-time intra-day high, but history would suggest it has much further to fall.
Presenting without any competitive edges or differentiation, SHIB looks to have no chance of hitting $0.01 in 2023.
