During the meme coin mania of 2020-2021, Shiba Inu (SHIB -1.72%) It has captured the imagination of crypto investors by offering a potential path to billionaire status. And in fact, some crypto investors have become incredibly wealthy by investing in meme coins. However, Shiba Inu is currently down 90% since 2021, and many efforts to inflate the token's price over the past two years have not paid off as planned.
While things certainly don't look promising at the moment, there are still several possible scenarios where the Shiba Inu becomes the billionaire maker's cryptocurrency. I'm not saying these scenarios are likely, just pointing out possible paths to success. Let's take a closer look. Then you will be able to determine how likely it is.
Scenario #1: Reduce the supply of Shiba Inu coins
The first scenario involves Shiba Inu's coin supply, which is still a whopping 589 trillion coins. To put this number into perspective, the total supply over a lifetime is Bitcoin (Cryptocurrency: BTC) The limit is just 21 million coins. In my opinion, the only way to increase the price of Shiba Inu is to reduce the coin supply below 1 trillion coins.
The way this is done is through coin burning. This is simply the act of transferring coins to a “dead” (i.e. non-functioning) crypto wallet. Burning a coin removes it from the entire circulating coin supply, which (in theory) should help drive up the price of the cryptocurrency. With that in mind, Shiba Inu has launched a coin-burning campaign that has garnered a lot of attention.
But here's the problem. Even if Shiba Inu burned 1 trillion coins a year, it would take him 589 years for the coin supply to drop below 1 trillion. There are several scenarios for how Shiba Inu could burn nearly 10 trillion coins a month, but there are big questions about how sustainable that pace actually is. Even if he burns 10 trillion coins every month, it will take him 5 years before the supply of coins drops below 1 trillion.
Scenario #2: Increase demand for Shiba Inu tokens
The second scenario involves growing demand for Shiba Inu tokens. And the way to do that is by increasing the overall utility of the Shiba Inu blockchain. In theory, the more ways the Shiba Inu blockchain is used, the more demand for Shiba Inu tokens should increase.
Image source: Getty Images.
Central to this strategy was the August 2023 launch of Shibarium, a layer 2 scaling solution designed to increase the overall speed, efficiency, and throughput of the Shiba Inu blockchain. In many ways, Shibarium is similar to the popular layer 2 blockchains currently running on top of it. Ethereum (Crypto: ETH) blockchain.
However, the question is how much new demand Shibarium will create for Shiba Inu tokens. The launch of Shibarium was supposed to usher in a brave new world of blockchain gaming, decentralized finance (DeFi), and Web3 applications. Some speculated that large companies would use Shibarium for their blockchain projects. The number of transactions in Shiba Rium is expected to increase rapidly in 2024, but for now we have to wait and see.
Scenario #3: Shiba Inu as AI currency
Finally, there is the most unlikely scenario of them all. That means the Shiba Inu will become the currency of AI. Since the launch of ChatGPT, there has been growing discussion about the potential intersection of AI and cryptocurrencies. One potential use case is for autonomous AI agents to pay for data and computing resources in cryptocurrencies. These autonomous agents can be thought of as AI-powered bots that you trust with real money to perform tasks throughout the day.
Currently, most people believe that Bitcoin will become the currency of AI. In fact, late last year, Ark Invest devoted an entire 90-minute podcast to Bitcoin as the currency of AI. And in January of this year, Palantir Technologies (NYSE:PLTR) Co-founder Joe Lonsdale told CNBC that the three best candidates for AI currency are Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana (Code: SOL).
But what if Shiba Inu became AI currency? As Elon Musk famously said, sometimes the funniest outcome is the most likely outcome. And what could be more interesting than having the iconic Shiba Inu become the mascot of his AI? Once dog-loving AI bots start using Shiba Inu to pay for data and computing power, the price of the token will skyrocket I might.
An unlikely calculation to become a millionaire
Indeed, the formula for becoming a Shiba Inu millionaire is appealing. For example, the Shiba Inu is currently trading at an extremely low price of $0.000009. So for just $10 he can buy over 1 million Shiba Inu tokens. If the price of your token goes to $1, you are a millionaire.
However, as we saw in the above scenario, it is highly unlikely, if not impossible, that Shiba Inu's value would jump from $0.000009 to $1. Remember — Shiba Inu's highest price is just $0.00009, which is a little too close to zero for my liking. As a result, Shiba Inu dogs are probably little more than a lottery ticket these days and should not be part of a long-term buying portfolio.
