As of this writing, the overall cryptocurrency market carries a market cap of just under $2.7 trillion. That's up from about $800 billion at the start of 2023. And it's close to record territory of just shy of $3 trillion.
There's no question that bullish fever has taken over the cryptocurrency industry. Whether it's positive sentiment in equity markets, or the recent approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs, these tailwinds are propelling some of the most speculative tokens to new heights.
Just in the past month, Shiba Inu (SHIB +2.02%) has soared more than 200% (as of March 25). Investors have taken advantage of a monster run-up for this token's price.
But can it reach $0.01 by the end of the decade? Let's see if that forecast 34,000-fold rise, from today's price of $0.000029, is a possibility.
Questioning Shiba Inu's utility
Seeing how strongly the dog-themed predecessor Dogecoin was catching on with the crypto community, Shiba Inu's founders wanted to create a more functional blockchain. Operating on top of the Ethereum network, Shiba Inu tokens can be used within its ecosystem of decentralized applications.
That sounds good in theory, but I suspect not many people deal with these tokens for anything useful. Instead, Shiba Inu's price movements are driven purely by speculative behavior. We're literally seeing this play out over the past month, since there haven't been any fundamental changes to the network.
Those who are skeptical of the industry will raise questions about the viability of probably every cryptocurrency. The thinking goes that this technology is a solution trying to find a problem to justify its existence. While I don't believe this is the case with a very tiny minority of digital assets, I think it's certainly the case with the vast majority of them. Shiba Inu belongs in that latter category.
There are some innovations in the works to bolster Shiba Inu's utility. Shibarium, a layer-2 scaling solution, hopes to speed up transaction processing and lower fees for users. Supporters want this upgrade to result in the crypto gaining more steam in applications like the metaverse and non-fungible tokens.
But it doesn't have a sizable developer community working on advancing its progress toward greater utility. This limits its chances of long-term success.
CRYPTO: SHIB
Key Data Points
The numbers don't add up
There are currently 589 trillion Shiba Inu tokens in circulation. That's a gargantuan figure that is difficult to wrap one's head around. If we assume that Shiba Inu gets to the coveted $0.01 mark, that implies its market cap would equal $5.89 trillion. That seems virtually impossible.
Bitcoin, the world's oldest and most valuable cryptocurrency, has a market cap of $1.4 trillion right now and astronomically greater potential for price appreciation over the long term than Shiba Inu does.
At that nearly $6 trillion market cap, Shiba Inu would be more valuable than Microsoft and Apple combined. That seems totally unreasonable.
Even though Shiba Inu isn't likely to soar 34,000-fold over the next six or so years to reach $0.01, it doesn't mean some investors aren't still interested in owning it. Last month's price rise shows the positive feedback loop at play, where fear of missing out (FOMO) takes hold of speculators before everything comes crashing down. Gambling on short-term price movements like this is a losing game.
Investors who want growth potential in their portfolios should consider Bitcoin as the best crypto to buy. Plus, there are other growth tech stocks to look at as well.
