Recent years in the crypto industry were highlighted by the rise of new projects. Some of which started outperforming their well-established competitors. Shiba Inu is one of the virtual currencies that saw this increase. Developed as a “DOGE killer”, which was considered the only successful meme coin, SHIB gained huge popularity in 2021. By October of that year, its value had increased by around 19,000,000%.
As of the date of writing, SHIB holds the 14th position in the list of the biggest cryptos by market cap. DOGE, at the same time, is holding the 9th place in the top 10 cryptos.
So, does Shiba Inu have any chance to get closer or even outperform Dogecoin in the following years? Dogecoin or SHIB: which meme coin will bring more returns as an investment? Let’s find this out.
Introduction to SHIB
Similar to DOGE, the SHIB token followed the concept of meme crypto, motivated by viral Doge memes with Shiba Inu dogs. However, eventually, Shiba Inu grew to something bigger than just a digital coin with a funny logo. It introduced some new solutions and evolved into a big blockchain-based ecosystem.
Currently, this ecosystem is powered by three tokens. Except for the original SHIB coins, users can utilize LEASH and BONE. These cryptos have different technical characteristics. SHIB doesn’t have a limitation on the total possible supply, whilst the numbers of supplied LEASH and BONE tokes are capped at 107,000 and 250,000,000 respectively.
The current supply of the SHIB token exceeds $549 trillion coins. Unlimited supply is one of the reasons why this cryptocurrency cannot be considered a real financial asset, according to some experts. As of the date of writing, this crypto is valued at $0.00001197, whilst its all-time-high price is $0.000086.
The development and growth of the Shiba Inu decentralized ecosystem were complemented by the launch of the ShibaSwap exchange. This is an advanced platform with liquidity pools and token swapping. It also allows staking coins, and holders of the governance crypto can take part in making decisions. The ecosystem also has its own NFT marketplace – Shiboshis.
Can SHIB win the competition against DOGE?
SHIB has already shown a spectacular performance by reaching a market capitalization of $6.5 billion in just 2 years after the launch. It’s widely regarded as the most successful “young crypto” currently available in the market.
Nevertheless, if we compare it to DOGE, it becomes clear that SHIB lacks utility. This problem is also common for DOGE. The biggest difference between them is that the first meme coin is much more popular than its “killer”. We can see this thanks to the activity of its community and its implementation as a payment method by some businesses. Currently, investors are more favorable toward Dogecoin, and in such conditions, SHIB has poor chances to outperform its main competitor.
Nevertheless, we should admire the effort of the Shiba Inu team. Although it doesn’t have such strong and influential fans as DOGE (just consider the support from Elon Musk), Shib’s team is building a very ambitious ecosystem. This motivates businesses to take a step further and start accepting this meme coin as a real payment method within their own ecosystems. It’s really increasing the utility and popularity of crypto.
What are the prospects of SHIB in terms of value?
As mentioned before, SHIB is traded at the lowest value in the top 15 coins by market cap. Although the low price might be attractive for investors, this value combined with the unlimited supply of coins is unlikely to create scarcity for the token and provoke its extreme surge in recent years.
In order to gain consistent value, SHIB has to go through a long and difficult way. Experts say that it’s likely to take more than 15 years for the token to reach the point of $0.01. There is a big chance that this won’t become true, as this prediction is relevant only for conditions in which the coin will be able to perform stable growth for several following years in a row.
Thus, SHIB investors aren’t recommended to expect that the token will reach the value of 1 cent in the nearest future.
Summary
Currently, the difference between the market caps of these two cryptocurrencies is $5 billion in favor of Dogecoin. This means that the hype around the first meme coin is still relevant for the crypto community.
However, on the whole, Shiba Inu is the best alternative to its major competitor. If the team manages to fulfill all its plans regarding the growth of the decentralized ecosystem, it has a great chance to introduce better liquidity and utility than Dogecoin. Besides, we can never say for sure what will happen in the crypto world the next day. That’s why, although believing that SHIB cannot become bigger than DOGE, we conclude that adding it to your portfolio is a worthy idea to consider.