The Shiba Inu (SHIB 0.33%) cryptocurrency was created by an anonymous developer named Ryoshi in 2020 to compete with the industry's original meme token, Dogecoin. It soared by a staggering 45,278,000% in 2021, which would have been enough to turn a perfectly timed investment of just $3 into $1 million.
However, the speculative fever that drove the rally inevitably cooled off, and Shiba Inu has since plunged by 85% to just $0.000013 per token. Meanwhile, the total value of all cryptocurrencies in circulation across the industry hit a record high of $4.2 trillion last month, fueled by President Donald Trump's pro-crypto administration, which has introduced a series of new initiatives designed to create value across the industry.
Shiba Inu has struggled to find a legitimate use case capable of creating sustainable upside over the long term, but President Trump's friendly policies might be a step toward changing that. On that note, could 2026 be the year Shiba Inu reaches the milestone price of $1 per token? The answer might blow your mind.
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Pro-crypto policies can't solve Shiba Inu's structural issues
Earlier this year, President Trump established a digital asset stockpile where the U.S. government will store a handful of different cryptocurrencies it seizes as a result of criminal activity. Shiba Inu isn't one of them, but this initiative is a vote of confidence for the industry overall.
The president also appointed crypto-advocate Paul Atkins to run the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and under his leadership, the agency has already withdrawn from several active lawsuits against some of the biggest companies in the industry. In theory, a friendlier regulatory environment will give crypto developers more freedom to come up with new use cases to drive long-term value, which could directly benefit Shiba Inu.
There are two primary ways a cryptocurrency can create value:
- It can attract widespread adoption as a currency, with millions of consumers and businesses using it in transactions.
- It can serve as a store of value for investors.
According to crypto directory Cryptwerk, just 1,073 merchants worldwide are willing to accept Shiba Inu as payment for goods and services. The meme-token is built on the legacy Ethereum network, which is notoriously clunky and expensive to use, detracting from its usefulness as a currency.
Developers have solved some of these inefficiencies with a Layer-2 blockchain solution, but it hasn't moved the needle. In my opinion, Shiba Inu's extreme volatility might be a bigger barrier to adoption, because extreme swings in value make cash-flow management a nightmare for businesses. This is an issue that lighter regulation can't really fix.
As for the second point, Shiba Inu simply hasn't proven its worth as a store of value because it hasn't set a new record high in four years, and it's still down 85% from its peak.
Shiba Inu's enormous supply creates a valuation problem
Shiba Inu's enormous total supply of 589.2 trillion tokens is one major barrier to further upside. Even at the current price of just $0.000013 per token, it still has a sizable market capitalization of $7.5 billion, which is impressive for such a speculative cryptocurrency.
Simple math dictates that a price of $1 per token would translate to a market cap of $589.2 trillion. That would be five times higher than the annual output of the entire global economy, which was $111 trillion in 2024. It would also be 11 times higher than the combined value of all 500 companies in the S&P 500 (^GSPC 0.49%), which stands at $52.5 trillion.
Simply put, there is no way Shiba Inu can reach $1 per token in 2026 -- or ever -- as things currently stand. The math just doesn't work.
However, the community is trying to remove tokens from circulation by "burning" them, which involves sending them to a dead wallet where they can never be retrieved. In theory, the price-per-token should increase in proportion to the number of tokens burned, carving a potential pathway to $1.
Burning enough tokens will take a mind-blowing amount of time
Shiba Inu's current market cap is $7.5 billion. If investors burned 99.99998% of the 589.2 trillion tokens currently on the market to leave just 7.5 billion remaining, that would theoretically drive the price-per-token from $0.000013 to $1.
However, since there is no net change in actual value, nobody would make any money. Even though each token would be worth $1, each investor would have 99.99998% fewer tokens, leaving their net financial position exactly the same.
But here's the mind-blowing part: Just 64.3 million tokens were burned last month, translating to an annualized rate of 771.6 million. That's a tiny drop in a nearly 600 trillion-coin ocean. Therefore, it would take 763,600 years to burn enough tokens to justify a price of $1 at the current pace, so none of us will be here when it happens.
Unfortunately, it gets even worse. Even though this exercise would leave each investor with the same net financial position, 763 millennia worth of inflation would leave everybody significantly worse off. Not even the extreme thought experiments are working out.
