SHIB reached new heights last year, but what does 2022 have in store for the meme coin?
Contents
- A brief introduction to Shiba Inu
- ShibaSwap: Great expectations?
- A potted history of SHIB’s price
- Heist and crash
- The future
- FAQs
One of the market’s most popular alternative meme coins that has been getting a lot of attention recently is shiba inu (SHIB). But what has caused the interest and, more importantly, what is its future likely to be? Can we make a shiba inu coin price prediction? Let’s have a look at what is being said about the future of SHIB and the shiba inu coin price.
A brief introduction to Shiba Inu
At first glance, a cryptocurrency with a Shiba Inu dog as its mascot might seem like a rip-off of DOGE – but is there something more to it?
Shiba Inu (SHIB) was set up in 2020 by a mysterious founder, known only as Ryoshi. The idea behind SHIB was to create a cryptocurrency that was, in theory, 100% decentralised and run by its community. Unlike DOGE, which is based on bitcoin, SHIB is based on the Ethereum blockchain.
According to CoinMarketCap, as of 1 February 2022, there are more than 549 trillion SHIB coins in circulation – although there is some debate over the true number depending on the calculation you choose to use. CoinGecko, for instance, previously suggested that the amount was 50 trillion below CoinMarketCap’s figure, but the circulating supply given on the two sites is more closely aligned today. What is clear is that the maximum supply – the most coins that will ever be created – is one quadrillion, or a million billion. This means the price of a SHIB coin is always likely to remain relatively low.
That is not to say that it will not rise at some point, but the potential supply’s size does depress its price somewhat. Certainly, it will not reach the hallowed $1 mark without causing some serious financial disruption. But the coin’s low price also means there is potential for growth, although it’s important for investors to be realistic in their expectations.
As Ryoshi wrote in the Shiba Inu white paper (or ‘woof paper’): “We earned the nickname DOGECOIN KILLER because we have the ability to outpace the value of dogecoin, exponentially, without ever crossing the $0.01 mark.”
The other thing to note about the number of SHIB coins is that half the total supply was given to Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, who in May 2021 burnt 90% of them – the equivalent of 410.24 trillion tokens, worth more than $6.7bn (£4.9bn). Speaking at the time, he said: “I don’t want to be a locus of power of that kind.”
Also, last May, Buterin donated 50 trillion coins, worth around $1.2bn, to the India Covid Crypto Relief Fund to help those suffering from Covid-19. The billionaire described it as an “opportunity to turn the meme bubble into something that could actually do good for people”.
ShibaSwap: Great expectations?
On 6 July 2021, SHIB’s next step was to set up its own exchange – ShibaSwap – which also runs on the Ethereum blockchain. This allows people to exchange their SHIB for other cryptocurrencies in a decentralised exchange. Users can also get hold of Shiba’s other cryptos, LEASH (aka Doge Killer) and the recently launched BONE.
One thing to note when considering any shiba inu price prediction is that the coin has a devoted online fanbase with more than a million token holders. Considering the low shiba inu coin price and its limited utility, having more than 2.7 million Twitter followers and a subReddit with more than 463,000 members is pretty good going.
Although it is safe to say that these sites are not exactly the place to go for reasoned discussions about cryptocurrency utility and trends, you do have to give them credit for being positive, upbeat, enthusiastic and welcoming places for people who are interested in SHIB.
There is certainly more than a fair number of SHIB evangelists online, so it seems reasonable to think that this meme coin is not going away just yet.
So, what is next in store for a shiba inu coin price prediction in 2022?
—
A potted history of SHIB’s price
Let’s take a look at the history of SHIB’s price to give some context for the SHIB coin price predictions that follow.
When it launched in August 2020, SHIB was worth somewhere in the region of $0.0000000001. It stayed around that level for most of the first nine months of its existence. But then something happened.
When DOGE rallied in early May 2021, people started to look around for the next dogecoin, and a lot of them settled on SHIB. This meant that on 8 May, the day Elon Musk appeared on Saturday Night Live, the price exploded, going from $0.000005246 to $0.00001883 – a rise of roughly 260%.
While Musk’s appearance on the American TV institution hit DOGE’s price, SHIB continued to expand – reaching an all-time high of $0.0000388 on 10 May.
However, the crypto market took a big hit on 19 May and SHIB was affected along with the rest. It dropped down to $0.00000622 on 21 May before climbing to $0.00001159 on 24 May. It has not returned to those heights since.
On 17 June, Coinbase’s surprise announcement to list SHIB on its exchange led to the coin price rising from $0.00000728 to $0.000009331 in just over an hour – an increase of 28%. But this sudden boom was followed by a fall.
On 7 August, Shiba Inu developers tweeted that they had introduced a ‘burn procedure’ to reduce the supply of SHIB following a request from the community. Coin burns kill coins to remove them from circulation, thus slowing the rate of inflation. On the same day, developers also tweeted that they had added two new trading pools to ShibaSwap – Perlin and Ryoshi – and burned $25,000 in both SHIB and LEASH coins.
Heist and crash
Unexpectedly, on 10 August, a DeFi heist of the Poly Network saw $600m in cryptocurrencies stolen by a hacker known as Mr White Hat. The theft included 259 billion SHIB coins worth $2m. The vast volume of SHIB in circulation limited the hack’s effect on the coin’s price. The SHIB price went between $0.00000732 and $0.0000079 on 10 August, having moved between $0.0000071 and $0.00000788 the day before.
Next came September 2021’s crypto crash that wiped billions off the crypto market and saw the SHIB coin price hit a low of $0.000005782 on 8 September. By 17 September, it had risen to $0.000009138, but after a volatile few weeks, it stood at $0.000007388 on 1 October.
And then came another tweet from Elon Musk and his Shiba Inu dog that gave SHIB a 600% boost. SHIB went on to reach a new all-time high of $0.00008845 on 28 October, around the same time that an anonymous crypto whale purchased 276.6 billion SHIB tokens, the equivalent of $12.2m, according to WhaleStats.
SHIB continued to dominate headlines and became the third-most googled crypto of 2021. However, following three consecutive weeks of volatility and another tweet from Musk who revealed that he actually did not own any SHIB, the token slipped from the 11th-largest cryptocurrency with a market capitalisation of more than $41bn, to the 12th largest with a $21.1bn market cap, according to CoinMarketCap.
On 24 January 2022, SHIB tweeted it was entering into the Metaverse with “an immersive experience for our ecosystem” called the Shiberse.
—
On 1 February 2022, SHIB was trading at roughly $0.00002171 and is now the 15th-largest crypto with a market cap of $11.9bn, according to CoinMarketCap. So, what now for the future? What else should be considered when making a shiba inu coin price prediction for 2022?
The future
Looking at the future of SHIB, WalletInvestor suggests a coin price prediction 2022 of $0.0000552 by the end of the year. It expects it to reach between $0.0000589 by February 2023 and suggests a SHIB price prediction 2025 of $0.000170 by the end of December that year.
Meanwhile, Gov Capital says it could reach $0.000113 in February 2023, and will hover around the $0.000239 mark in early 2024. It suggests it could hit $0.000455 in February 2025, and $0.0007010 in the same month for 2026.
Finally, DigitalCoin says it could reach $0.00003008885 by the end of this year and get to $0.00003433809 in February 2023. It further suggests prices of $0.00004912216 in February 2025, $0.00004438969 in February 2026 and $0.00007060265 in February 2028.
FAQs
Possibly. Meme coins are highly volatile – prices can go down as well as up. Do your own research and always remember your decision to trade depends on your attitude to risk, your expertise in this market, the spread of your investment portfolio and how comfortable you feel about losing money. Never invest more than you can afford to lose.
It could. But considering how low the price is, it’s unlikely to happen any time soon. First, because doing so would pump a lot of money into the world’s economy, meaning there would be serious inflation.
Second, it is not really designed to reach those heights. The idea was that its low value would mean it could outperform competitors without it even breaking the one-cent barrier. That is not a criticism of the coin – it is just how it works.
Exchanges that offer SHIB include Dzengi.com, Kucoin, CoinBene, Capital.com, Probit Global, CoinDCX, WazirX, Binance, Crypto.com, Huobi OKEx, Coinbase and ShibaSwap.
