Should You Buy Shiba Inu While It's Worth Less Than $0.01?
The canine-themed cryptocurrency still needs to carve out a defensible niche.
Shiba Inu (SHIB 7.97%) has only traded at fractions of a penny since its launch nearly four years ago. The meme token, which was created as a parody of Dogecoin (DOGE 3.91%), started trading at $0.000000000056, hit an all-time high of $0.000086 in October 2021, but now trades at about $0.000018.
However, that means a $100 investment would have grown to $153.57 million before shrinking back to roughly $30.36 million today. That's an impressive gain, but some bullish investors believe Shiba Inu could still rise more than 58,700% to $0.01.
That view is backed by Lucie, a leading Shiba Inu team member who once told her 143,700 followers on X that she "always believed" it could hit $0.01. So should investors buy Shiba Inu while it's still trading far below that target?
Shiba Inu's strengths and weaknesses
Shiba Inu was built on the Ethereum blockchain. Its entire supply of nearly 1 quadrillion tokens was pre-mined before launch, but it's already burned (taken out of circulation) more than 40% of its tokens to tighten up its supply.
Shiba Inu uses the same power-efficient proof-of-stake (PoS) method as Ethereum instead of the energy-intensive proof-of-work (PoW) mining method used by Bitcoin and Dogecoin. Like Ethereum and other PoS blockchains, Shiba Inu's network supports smart contracts that can be used to develop decentralized apps (dApps), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and other crypto assets.
Therefore, Shiba Inu's value is usually gauged by the growth potential of its ecosystem. That long-term expansion could be driven by its cross-chain decentralized exchange (DEX), ShibaDEX, and its Layer-2 blockchain protocol, Shibarium.
However, Shiba Inu has three glaring weaknesses. First, it's still pinned to the Ethereum blockchain and ultimately limited by its speed restrictions. That means it processes its transactions at a much slower rate than Solana (SOL 2.69%), Cardano (ADA -0.47%), and other newer PoS blockchains that are gradually pulling developers away from Ethereum.
Second, a few anonymous whales still hold trillions of Shiba Inu tokens. These big investors could easily move its price with huge and unpredictable trades. Lastly, Shiba Inu is only accepted for payments at a handful of businesses, and it probably won't gain as much momentum as Bitcoin or Ethereum as a mainstr#eam payment options.
