Shiba Inu (SHIB -4.12%) is a meme cryptocurrency that has attracted investors for one major reason: its microscopic price. Currently, one Shiba Inu token can be purchased for the low, low price of $0.00000968; that's less than one-100,000th of $ $1.00.
Imagine how much fatter a Shiba Inu stake would get if the price rose to one-10,000th; a minuscule rise on a per-token basis, but a giant leap for those with considerable holdings.
With those kinds of numbers, it's worthwhile to look at how Shiba Inu has performed since the Great Crypto Surge of late 2023. And, by extension, whether it behooves investors to slap down some money now on this curious, ultra-cheap digital currency.
A little dog that likes to bark
Life was good for crypto investors as 2023 came to a close. Data indicated that inflation, that scourge of the global economy, was melting away.
In reaction, officials at the Federal Reserve said that they would aim to reduce its key interest rate not once but several times this year. Lower rates are a boon for digital money since all things being equal, they encourage investors to take on riskier plays, like cryptos.
Like many of its fellow cryptocurrencies, Shiba Inu floated higher on those wings of optimism. But it didn't rise as much as you might expect from a highly volatile, very low-priced asset riding a blast of air. Anyone placing $500 on the token on Nov. 1, 2023, at $0.00000798 apiece would have bought a whopping tally of almost 62.7 million Shiba Inus.
Man, that's a lot of dogs running around at once.
Today, Shiba Inu trades at $0.00000968 a pop, so that November investment would have grown to $606.16 for a return of 21%. Of course, that's nothing to sneeze at for a holding of barely over three months, but there have been far more glittering success stories in the cryptoverse lately.
To their credit, Shiba Inu's developers are trying hard to make the token more than the novelty investment that came on the heels of the similar Dogecoin. In mid-2021, they launched the decentralized exchange ShibaSwap, following this a little over two years later with the ambitious Shibarium, a platform anchoring a suite of crypto projects like gaming apps, decentralized finance (DeFi), and a metaverse.
For a meme crypto, then, Shiba Inu has come quite far, and its developers are obviously eager to make it the center of a busy suite of offerings.
They've also clearly worked hard at legitimizing the token as a medium of exchange and/or store of value; it's been listed on influential exchange site Coinbase for years now, and even managed to get a few mentions from big-megaphone Tesla leader and meme crypto advocate Elon Musk.
It's a nice animal, but...
While it's admirable that the powers behind Shiba Inu are hotly ambitious, there are many crypto projects in various niches competing for the investor dollar.
DeFi is a particularly popular segment, with potentially lucrative rewards to be had for the right middleman blockchain or Layer 2 solution. Competitors to the other components of the Shibarium platform also abound.
For Shiba Inu to continue providing competitive returns, one or more of said offerings must pull well ahead of the pack. This is a crowded space, however, and the token has never managed to entirely shake its reputation as a jokey meme play (I'd say that Dogecoin has struggled with the same).
Its minuscule price works against it, too; this likely reminds experienced investors of low-value penny stocks.
So although I admire certain aspects of Shiba Inu's rapid development in a relatively short time, it doesn't seem like the best investment in the cryptoverse to me. I think higher returns can be had by pushing capital into other coins and tokens.
