Key Points

• Despite extreme levels of volatility, Shiba Inu’s price has rocketed higher since its launch in 2020.

• The token’s price is driven by short-lived hype cycles, which are impossible to predict.

• If Shiba Inu gets to $1 at the current token supply, the numbers are hard to wrap your head around.

• 10 stocks we like better than Shiba Inu ›

The entire cryptocurrency market is worth $3.8 trillion, as of this writing on the morning of July 16. Despite that scale, critics rightfully view the industry with a bit of skepticism. Several crypto scams still exist, and crypto's utility is questioned by many.

However, some tokens have emerged as huge winners for risk-seeking investors, thanks to their ability to draw a large community of supporters. This is exactly what Shiba Inu (CRYPTO: SHIB) has done. It's trading 84% below its peak but has still skyrocketed since its launch in 2020.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »

Maybe the momentum will continue through the rest of this decade. Can Shiba Inu reach $1 per token in 2030?

Image source: Getty Images.

Hype and speculation

Shiba Inu's historical price chart resembles a roller-coaster ride because there have been short periods of massive price upswings. This happened in late 2021, when Shiba Inu's price hit a record in October that year during a raging bull market. It also occurred twice in 2024, but the price tanked in the months that followed as the demand wasn't sustainable.

This tells me that the token's price is influenced by short-term hype cycles. Those who can correctly time these, buying and selling at the right moments, will see big gains. But that's impossible to do consistently without a tremendous amount of luck.

Shiba Inu's path to $1

Shiba Inu's token currently trades at $0.0000139. For the price to reach $1 in five years, it would need to rise 72,000-fold. This translates to a monster compound annual growth rate of 836%. In comparison, Bitcoin, the world's most valuable digital asset, has seen its price increase at a yearly clip of 67% in the past five years.

There are 590 trillion Shiba Inu tokens in circulation. Keeping the supply constant, this implies an illogical $590 trillion market cap at the end of the decade.

The U.S. economy, which is the largest in the world, reported an annualized gross domestic product (GDP) of $30 trillion in Q1 2025. Nvidia, the most valuable company on Earth and the champion of the artificial intelligence (AI) race, has a market cap of over $4 trillion. It's not realistic for Shiba Inu to reach $1 per token at the current supply.

However, the network is trying to improve the situation. Shiba Inu is in the process of burning coins. This could introduce an element of scarcity that might drive interest.

The current pace of this activity won't put a meaningful dent in the supply, as only 180,000 coins were burned in the past 24 hours. Even if the token supply were reduced significantly to help the price grow, the entire network wouldn't necessarily be worth more. Holders would simply have fewer tokens that have a higher nominal price.

Hanging on

The fact that Shiba Inu trades 84% below its peak indicates the market's waning interest. Yes, there will likely be random occurrences when the price spikes, only to come crashing back down. Unless there are real-world use cases that support broad user and developer adoption, I think Shiba Inu will likely just hang on and survive in the years ahead.

The supporters will point to things like the layer-2 Shibarium that's meant to lower fees and speed transaction times. There's also ShibaSwap, a decentralized exchange, and a metaverse. However, I don't see any value here.

Making things more difficult is the competition Shiba Inu faces. There are so many tokens out there that speculators can play with and some are surely more volatile. For those true investors seeking a safer long-term opportunity in the crypto space, nothing beats Bitcoin.

Should you invest $1,000 in Shiba Inu right now?

Before you buy stock in Shiba Inu, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Shiba Inu wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $652,133!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,056,790!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,048% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 180% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of July 15, 2025

Neil Patel has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Key Points

• Shiba Inu has not enjoyed the same success as many other cryptos this year.

• Shiba Inu is largely viewed as a meme token that lacks real-world utility.

• But there is one catalyst that could help the token take off, although it is far from a certainty.

• 10 stocks we like better than Shiba Inu ›

Shiba Inu (CRYPTO: SHIB) has been a top cryptocurrency since it sprung to life in 2020, but that's largely because of its cult-like following on social media as one of the major meme tokens. Many investors still don't take the token seriously because it lacks a real use case or technical advantage over any of its peers. Still, there is one catalyst that could help Shiba Inu catch fire.

Could a negative eventually become a positive?

Shiba Inu has never had a lot to offer from a use-case perspective, aside from its fervent community on social media that has made it a top 20 cryptocurrency by market cap. Shiba Inu started as an ERC-20 token, meaning it was developed on the Ethereum network and abided by a set of principles that any token wishing to operate on the network must follow.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »

Image source: Getty Images.

In 2023, Shiba Inu launched Shibarium, a Layer-2 solution on Ethereum to help ease congestion issues on the network. Shibarium essentially lets Shiba Inu settle transactions off of Ethereum's network, which is intended to scale the Shiba Inu ecosystem and make transactions cheaper. The Layer-2 solution has also led developers to start building decentralized applications on Shibarium, offering more utility than it once had.

Like many cryptocurrencies, one issue with Shiba Inu is its large supply of tokens, which makes it difficult to benefit from any kind of supply-and-demand dynamic.

After all, one of the reasons investors love Bitcoin is because there will only be 21 million tokens ever mined. Shiba Inu launched with nearly 1 quadrillion tokens. However, the supply has been greatly reduced. Shiba Inu founder Ryoshi, who remains anonymous, gave 505 trillion SHIB tokens to Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, who put most of these tokens in a dead wallet and then donated the rest.

Today, there are 589.5 trillion tokens in circulation, according to CoinMarketCap. Now, that's still a huge amount, but if Shiba Inu can keep reducing total supply over time, perhaps demand will pick up and drive the price higher. Shibarium actually created a burning mechanism, which moves 70% of base transaction fees into SHIB tokens that then get burned and deleted from the total supply. The purpose is to bring down total supply over time.

Still, since the launch of Shibarium, only about 5.5 trillion tokens, or less than 1% of the total supply, have been burned, if you back out the 505 trillion that were given to Buterin.

Can the supply actually decline meaningfully?

Shibarium has certainly made progress in reducing supply and billions of SHIB tokens are being burned each month. But billions doesn't mean much when you are talking in trillions. Many estimates indicate that it will still take many, many years at the current pace to reduce the supply of Shiba Inu to the point where the supply-and-demand balance would become an attractive selling point to investors.

Perhaps Ryoshi can give away more tokens or the burn rate will continue to pick up at an exponential rate that would start to make a meaningful impact, but it's unclear whether this will ever happen.

I will say, I do think the addition of Shibarium gives Shiba Inu more legitimacy than it had as just a meme token. Unfortunately, I don't think it's enough yet to make the token a buy. Shiba Inu is still highly speculative and very risky for investors. However, investors should continue to monitor the situation for improvements to the burn rate and lower supply.

Should you invest $1,000 in Shiba Inu right now?

Before you buy stock in Shiba Inu, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Shiba Inu wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $652,133!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,056,790!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,048% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 180% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of July 15, 2025

Bram Berkowitz has positions in Bitcoin and Ethereum. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin and Ethereum. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Only a handful of cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) and XRP (CRYPTO: XRP), have been able to avoid the worst of the declines in response to President Donald Trump's new tariffs.

Most top cryptocurrencies are down at least 20% for the year, with two major categories of cryptocurrencies -- Layer 1 blockchain networks and meme coins -- getting slammed especially hard. Let's take a closer look to see whether any of these beaten-down cryptos might be worth buying right now.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »

Layer 1 blockchain networks

Layer 1 blockchain networks, such as Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH), Solana (CRYPTO: SOL), Cardano (CRYPTO: ADA), Sui (CRYPTO: SUI), and Avalanche (CRYPTO: AVAX), have declined significantly. All of them still boast market caps of $9 billion or higher and still rank among the top 15 cryptocurrencies in the world. However, it has become obvious that many investors won't touch them.

The worst performer by a wide margin has been Ethereum. While Solana and Cardano are down a disappointing 20% on the year, Ethereum is down an eye-popping 46%. The investor sentiment around Ethereum is deeply negative, and the gap between Ethereum and its closest rivals appears to be narrowing.

Quite frankly, this shouldn't be happening. After all, Ethereum is the world's second-largest cryptocurrency, with a market value of almost $220 billion. It is one of only two cryptos (Bitcoin being the other) with a spot exchange-traded fund (ETF). During the past decade, it has had an impeccable track record of delivering outsized returns to investors.

Despite its current slide, Ethereum still appears to have the support of the Trump administration, which made it a cornerstone of its new U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile back in March. Members of the Trump family, including President Trump himself, have publicly vouched for Ethereum on social media. And World Liberty Financial, the crypto company affiliated with the Trump family, has made Ethereum a high-profile holding.

Meme coins

If there's any category of crypto that's performing worse than Layer 1 blockchains right now, it's meme coins. The current tariff environment has led to a stark risk-off mentality among investors, and there hasn't been a good reason to invest in meme coins for months now.

Image source: Getty Images.

Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE), the top meme coin by market cap, is down 45% this year. Shiba Inu (CRYPTO: SHIB), the second-largest meme coin, is down 37%. Pepe (CRYPTO: PEPE), the third-largest meme coin, is down 53%. And the Official Trump meme coin (which trades under the ticker TRUMP), the fourth-largest meme coin, is down a face-melting 84% since its debut back in January.

The message from investors could not be clearer: Stay away from meme coins. Even before tariffs, meme coins were risky, speculative investments. Now, they are complete dumpster fires, with Cathie Wood of Ark Invest recently suggesting that nearly all of them will soon be worthless.

That's not to say that some meme coins won't pop every now and then, but that's likely to be a dead cat bounce. (Or in the case of Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, a dead dog bounce.) Sorry, pet lovers, but I can't think of a worse place to invest your money right now. If you're buying animal-themed meme coins now, you're providing the exit liquidity for investors sitting on big losses right now.

Are any of these beaten-down cryptos worth buying now?

It might be tempting to sift through the crypto discount bin to see whether there are any bargains to be found. After all, we're talking about multibillion-dollar digital assets that have seen their value slashed anywhere from 20% to 50% in a matter of months. Surely, there's a good deal somewhere?

With that in mind, one crypto that might be worth exploring right now is Solana. Even amid tariff uncertainty, activity appears to be picking up on the Solana blockchain. And Solana has clearly emerged as the top challenger to Ethereum, which appears to be mired in an existential crisis these days. Best of all, we've seen how much Solana can pop. Back in 2023, Solana soared by more than 900%.

Just keep this in mind: Concerns about recession, inflation, and a potential trade war mean there is absolutely no appetite right now for many cryptocurrency investments. For now, Bitcoin remains the top crypto to target amid tariff uncertainty. Historically, Bitcoin has been more resilient than other cryptos in the face of economic and geopolitical uncertainty, and it could be your best option as a potential hedge against a global economic slowdown.

Should you invest $1,000 in Ethereum right now?

Before you buy stock in Ethereum, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Ethereum wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $594,046!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $680,390!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 872% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 160% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of April 21, 2025

Dominic Basulto has positions in Bitcoin, Cardano, Ethereum, Solana, Sui, and XRP. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Avalanche, Bitcoin, Cardano, Ethereum, Solana, Sui, and XRP. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.