Shiba Inu (SHIB 1.00%) was created as a parody of Dogecoin (DOGE 3.78%) -- itself a parody of Bitcoin (BTC 2.89%) -- and started trading at just $0.00000000051 per token in August 2020. The following October, it reached a record high of approximately $0.00008845. That rally would have turned a $1,000 investment into nearly $173.4 million.
Today, Shiba Inu trades at about $0.000006, so that initial investment would have shrunk 93% to roughly $11.8 million. Anyone else who chased the high-flying meme coin at its record highs is now underwater. Let's see why it might be smarter to simply forget this token, fueled by hype rather than longer-term catalysts.
Image source: Getty Images.
What happened to Shiba Inu over the past few years?
Shiba Inu isn't mined like Bitcoin (BTC 2.89%). It's an ERC-20 token which was created on Ethereum's (ETH 1.63%) Layer 1 (L1) blockchain, and its creators minted its entire supply of one quadrillion tokens upon its launch. They gifted over half of those tokens to Ethereum's co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, who subsequently burned most of them (removing them from circulation). But as of this writing, it still has a circulating supply of 589.6 trillion tokens.
Shiba Inu can't be valued by its scarcity in the same way as Bitcoin. It also doesn't natively support the development of decentralized apps or tokens like Ethereum, since it's merely a token that was created on Ethereum's L1 blockchain.
In 2023, its developers launched Shibarium, a Layer 2 (L2) network that runs on top of Ethereum and offers faster, more efficient, and cheaper Shiba Inu transactions than its L1 network. However, Shibarium still faces stiff competition from faster L1 blockchains like Solana and Ethereum's other L2 networks.
CRYPTO: SHIB
Key Data Points
Shiba Inu's price skyrocketed in late 2021 because stimulus checks, low interest rates, and social media buzz drove a stampede of retail investors toward meme coins and other speculative investments. But in 2022 and 2023, those tailwinds dissipated as rising interest rates and other macro headwinds drove investors back toward conservative investments.
Bigger "blue chip" tokens like Bitcoin and Ether bounced back as interest rates declined in 2024 and 2025, but smaller altcoins like Shiba Inu never revisited their all-time highs. Investors realized that hype, rather than clear catalysts, drove Shiba Inu's previous rally. As Warren Buffett once said: "You don't find out who's been swimming naked until the tide goes out". Shiba Inu's investors -- who had been "swimming naked" in 2021 -- found that out the hard way as macro headwinds depressed the crypto market and exposed the coin's glaring weaknesses. Therefore, it's smarter to stick with Bitcoin or Ether than bet on Shiba Inu's longshot recovery.
