Can a meme stock be taken seriously and survive the test of time? That's the billion-dollar (or maybe I should say, billion-token) question as Shiba Inu (SHIB 0.04%) buy-and-holders place their bets on a canine-themed coin with scant real-world adoption but underdog appeal.

Holding SHIB might be fun, but that doesn't mean it's easy. There's a certain victory in the fact that Shiba Inu is still here, yet the road to legitimacy -- and similarly, the path to a full penny -- is long, perilous, and strewn with would-be HODLers who couldn't handle the journey.

A lot can happen in a year

If you're going to reflect on the one-year performance of a micro-priced altcoin like Shiba Inu, you'll have to train your eyes to pore over decimal points and rows of zeros. I'll save you the eyestrain -- SHIB's decline from $0.00001162 a year earlier to $0.000007144 on Oct. 3, 2023, indicates a bruising 38.5% decline. Hence, $1,000 invested in Shiba Inu would have been slashed to $615.

Along the way, SHIB has swung dizzyingly high and crash-landed several times. That's the name of the game with sub-penny coins, so strap in and stay small (position-size-wise, that is) if you're going to hold Shiba Inu for more than just a day trade.

Despite the volatility -- or perhaps because of it -- SHIB remains in the top 20 crypto tokens by market cap. That's an impressive feat, considering market cap is partially a factor of token price and Shiba Inu's price is so diminutive.

What might help to buoy the SHIB price in the long term is the Shiba Inu community's passion for burning (i.e., destroying) the tokens. This community, which has a strong presence on X/Twitter (the official Shiba Inu ecosystem's account is here), is known for promoting token burns in order to reduce the supply. There's even a website dedicated to keeping track of SHIB-burning transactions.

Holders willing to destroy their coins for the group's benefit -- now that's what I call a dedicated community. Clearly, Shiba Inu isn't just a meme coin anymore.

Shibarium and the quest for validation

Frankly, SHIB won't likely achieve mainstream adoption in the near future. Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple, Shiba Inu isn't commonly cited as a token that's favored by megabanks or investment funds.

But then, that seems to be fine with the Shiba Inu community, which might actually prefer to stay small and esoteric. I hesitate to call SHIB a cult coin, but I get the distinct impression that the community may find it hard to attract new followers unless the usefulness and adoption of the token is greater than what it is today.

And, a major part of making Shiba Inu better is migrating it over to a Layer 2 network that runs on top of the Ethereum blockchain. Known as Shibarium, this network will (hopefully) enable Shiba Inu to scale up and out, such that it can be deployed in a variety of use cases ranging from Web3 applications to gaming and the metaverse.

Since its recent launch, Shibarium appears to be off to a good start and there's no shortage of updates on the Shiba Inu ecosystem's X/Twitter feed. If all goes according to plan, the official Shibarium blog promises that the Layer 2 blockchain solution for Shiba Inu will provide the "benefits of scalability, faster transaction times, lower fees, and an expanded development framework."

The goal, presumably, is to present Shiba Inu as a valid, multi-purpose ecosystem. Whether SHIB can actually shake off its meme-coin origins remains to be seen, but Shibarium's development certainly appears to be a step in the right direction.

So now, it's a question of whether SHIB can drop some of those zeros to the right of the decimal point. Given the community's unflagging enthusiasm and the developers' commitment to the cause, I'd say the odds are in the HODLers' favor -- but just remember that big price moves are par for the course and small position sizing is an absolute necessity with Shiba Inu.