Wall Street suffered an upset in 2022 as all three major US stock indexes posted their worst performance since 2008. Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500:and: Nasdaq Composite: ended the year down 9%, 19% and 33% respectively. But this pales in comparison to the pain of cryptocurrency investors.
In November 2021, the combined value of more than 20,000 digital currencies reached almost $3 trillion. As of the end of 2022, more than 22,000 total cryptocurrencies had a valuation of just under $800 billion. In less than 14 months, the cryptocurrency space lost $2.2 trillion in value.
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Shiba Inu’s record gains are still fresh in the minds of crypto investors
Despite this massive decline, what hasn’t been forgotten is the millionaire-making potential of this asset class. Meme symbol Shiba Inu (SHIB: -0.94%) stands out as perhaps the best example of what can happen when a digital signature “goes to the moon.”
More than two years ago, when the clock struck midnight on January 1, 2021, crypto investors had the opportunity to buy SHIB tokens for $0.0000000000073. Less than 10 months later, on October 27, 2021, these same coins will reach an intraday high of $0.00008841. By removing six zeros after his decimal point, the Shiba Inu won over 121,000,000%. It would turn a $1 investment into $1.21 million in one year, commission-free. We may never see a return of this magnitude in such a short period of time.
What SHIB demonstrated in 2021 is the power of social media driven momentum. Its growing visibility, combined with a series of strategic initiatives put forward by Shiba Inu breeders in 2022 and beyond, has made it the hottest asset on the planet. Even after ending the year with a significant pullback, SHIB coins have grown by nearly 46,000,000% in 2021.
Of course, 2022 was a completely different story for digital currencies, Shiba Inu included. Last year, SHIB fell more than 90% from its all-time high. But realizing that anything is possible in the crypto arena (as SHIB has already proven), the focus shifted to the future. Specifically, the Shiba Inu community believes it could reach $0.01 in 2023.
Let’s first look at what would have to go right to catapult Shiba Inu to $0.01, and then examine the feasibility of such a move.
What needs to happen for SHIB to reach $0.01?
To reach the equivalent of a penny, Shiba Inu would need to return approximately 111,900% from where it was trading in the late hours of January 11, 2023. For this to happen, there must be a series of catalysts and events. flawlessly executed.
What could easily be the biggest catalyst in 2023 is the anticipated launch of the Shibari layer-2 blockchain project. Shiba Inu is an ERC-20 token built on it Ethereum: blockchain. Although Ethereum is a well-trusted network, it is prone to congestion and high transaction fees due to its popularity. Shibarium aims to fix this by significantly reducing the cost of transactions. A successful public launch of Shibarium is necessary before Shiba Inu developers can fully engage in other ventures.
What other ventures, you ask? If Shibarium’s launch goes well and transaction costs are reduced, Shiba Inu’s developers may turn their attention to blockchain-based games. One of the main attractions of blockchain-hosted games is that users can retain ownership of their characters and innovations through non-fungible tokens (NFT). These NFTs can be bought and sold on NFT markets, assuming transaction costs are minimal, hence the need for Shibarium.
While the developers are busy expanding the Shiba Inu ecosystem, we should also not see anything from a massive coin burn event. A coin burn is similar to a publicly traded company implementing a stock buyback program. If a company buys back some of its common stock and reduces the total number of shares outstanding, each remaining share is scarcer and likely worth more. Coin burning sends tokens to dead blockchain addresses where they can no longer be accessed. By reducing the circulating supply of outstanding tokens, each remaining coin should theoretically be worth more.
Ultimately, Shiba Inu will require social media momentum and buzz equal to what we witnessed in 2021. Cryptocurrency communities on social media tend to drive momentum.

Image source: Getty Images.
Can Shiba Inu hit $0.01 in 2023?
Unfortunately for SHIB wearers, we do not live in a utopian world, and the aforementioned catalysts have not been implemented flawlessly. Even if one or more of these tailwinds come into play in 2023, there is no chance Shiba Inu will reach $0.01.
For example, Shibarium’s public launch is rumored to take place in the third quarter of 2022. However, developers confirmed that issues with the Level 2 blockchain project delayed its launch. This is not a particularly good sign for a project that has a significant impact on almost every other initiative. There is currently no official launch date or timeline for Shibarium.
While blockchain-based gaming and NFTs were exceptionally hot investments in 2021, interest in NFTs has absolutely fallen off a cliff since January 2022. NFT trading volume fell to $466 million in September from $17 billion just eight months earlier, according to Bloomberg data. The buzz around blockchain-based gaming and NFT markets is all but gone.
Coin burning doesn’t seem to help the Shiba Inu much. When Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, who was gifted half of SHIB’s circulating supply by its mysterious creator, sent over 410 trillion SHIB tokens to a dead blockchain address in 2021, SHIB benefited enormously. However, according to CoinMarketCap.com, there are still in the neighborhood of 549 trillion SHIB tokens. There are simply no imaginable burnouts that could disrupt such a massive coin supply. This means that a price of $0.01 would make a Shiba Inu worth about three times as much Apple: — and it would make absolutely no sense from a valuation perspective.
While there isn’t much tangible information for cryptocurrency investors, what is clear is that Shiba Inu is nothing more than a payment coin, and not even a particularly popular one. Payment coins are not unique in the digital currency arena, and Shiba Inu has seen only minimal growth as an accepted form of payment over the past eight months. According to online business directory Cryptwerk, only 710 mostly obscure online merchants accept SHIB as payment as of January 2023.
But history may be the cruelest for the Shiba Inu. Except Bitcoin:, nearly every cryptocurrency that briefly gained 20,000% or more eventually lost between 93% and 99% of its value in the two years following their peak. SHIB may be down 90% from its all-time intraday high, but history suggests it has plenty of downside.
Presented without any competitive edge or differentiation, SHIB seems unlikely to reach $0.01 in 2023.
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