Shiba Inu (SHIB), a meme coin spoof, is testing out a move into the metaverse in an attempt to do something practical with its market position.
Calling it the Shiberse, it is described as “an immersive experience for our ecosystem and the Metaverse space.” Even though the teaser warmed up SHIB’s 2.7 million followers, it failed to excite the market. At $0.0000206, it is only 10% up from its January flash crash low.
Like most of the major altcoins SHIB and its doggy pal DOGE followed bitcoin (BTC) down which saw its own price drop 26% over the weekend of 20 January. Around $200bn of value was wiped off the value of cryptocurrencies worldwide while investors’ cash headed for less volatile havens.
So, what is shiba inu all about, and, in this unstructured environment, what is the outlook for its price?
In this article, we take a look at the latest developments to help you consider if the shiba inu could be a suitable coin for your investment portfolio.
SHIB could be on Robinhood very soon
The so-called “meme coin”, shiba inu, was launched in August 2020. It’s a play on the dogecoin (DOGE) meme, which is itself a parody on the cryptocurrency space. Coins themed around the Shiba Inu dog breed have gained popularity as investors look for the next bitcoin (BTC) to invest in.
The shiba token attracted the attention of investors in May, when it spiked by 2,405% in three days to hit a peak of $0.0000388 on 10 May, in a rally caused by Elon Musk’s appearance on the Saturday Night Live television show. His appearance prompted a sell-off in DOGE as he referred to the cryptocurrency as a “hustle”, having talked it up in previous weeks.
The shiba coin price quickly fell back and largely traded between $0.000006 and $0.000008 over the summer.
A petition on Change.org demanding the Robinhood exchange list Shiba citing the presence of rival dogecoin keeps building signatures but is it making a difference? The petition notes that Binance, another exchange, has listed Shiba which caused a 16% price uplift. At the time of writing it seems to have reached a peak of around 556,000 signatures.
Prices of the shiba inu (SHIB), dogecoin (DOGE) and shiba floki (FLOKI) cryptocurrencies jumped after Elon Musk tweeted a photo of his Shiba Inu puppy in a Tesla on 4 October reigniting interest in the coin. Then Musk admitted he did not own any of the cryptocurrency and it dropped 7%.
But over the next few days it recovered – in fact it rose by more than 40%. Then over November the share price dropped 23%. The news of the Kraken listing and Volk’s appointment led to another sharp rise. Now, 2 February, the coin now stands at $0.00002056 giving a market capitalisation of $11.3bn ranking it 15th.
On 29 November eCommerce retailer Newegg said it would accept SHIB as payment on its platform. Previously it has agreed to take BTC, LTC and DOGE.
The price was bouyed in late November when SHIB was listed on the Kraken exchange and announced the appointment of gaming veteran William Volk which signals a move into that direction.
Hints of where that move will take it were given on 8 December when Shiba Inu revealed it had signed a strategic work-for-hire contract with Playside, the Australian video games developer. Under the deal, described as a “fixed-price, milestone-based agreement” the pair will develop a multiplayer Collectable Card Game.
On the same day the exchange Bitstamp announced it would be listing SHIB from 9 December.
On 8 December BitPay, a bitcoin payment service provider, announced SHIB was joining the ranks of coins it supports allowing users to “buy, store, swap and spend” SHIB.
On 31 December to further its stated commitment to decentralisation, the forces behind Shiba Inu (SHIB) said they were to launch Doggy DAO (decentralised autonomous organisation) in what they call a “stage-by-stage metric and phased approach”.
The first phase is to give “immediate power to the community” to decide which crypto projects and pairs will be on its exchange will be, and how the $BONE (another shiba inu token) rewards of Allocation Points are to be distributed amongst them. The second phase will allow the community to make generic proposals.
On 13 January it was reported that a large scale investor or whale had bought 58.9 billion SHIB worth around $2m.
The developers have formed an ecosystem around the shiba inu coin, creating other tokens such as LEASH and BONE. ShibaSwap, which runs on the Ethereum blockchain, launched on 6 July. Burning coins to reduce the supply in circulation creates the potential for the price to move up further.
The developers are preparing to launch a collection of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) next week, which will contain 10,000 images of Shiboshi characters. They will initially only be available to purchase on ShibaSwap, with a secondary market on the OpenSea NFT platform.
While the NFTs will be priced in LEASH and ether (ETH), buyers can name their Shiboshis for an additional fee of $100 paid in SHIB. The remaining funds will be burnt to the SHIB burn wallet.
There are currently 549 billion shiba inu coins in circulation, with the maximum supply set at one quadrillion, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
As always, you should be aware that the past price performance is no guarantee of future returns.
So, what’s the outlook for shiba crypto after the rally? What do forecasts indicate for 2022 and beyond?
Shiba coin price prediction: Will SHIB return to record highs?
The SHIB price has fallen its October all time high of $0.00008841 to $0.00002056 (3 February). Can it maintain that price?
At the time of writing, technical analysis showed that short-term sentiment on SHIB remained bearish, according to CoinCodex, with six indicators giving off bullish signals compared with 21 bearish signals. The daily simple and exponential moving averages were suggesting sell. The Relative Strength Index (RSI) was at 24.67. The RSI moves between zero and 100, and is considered overbought above 70 and oversold below 30.
Wallet Investor says its shiba inu price prediction was for $0.000059 for this time next year and predicted SHIB could be trading at $0.000210 by 2027.
The shiba inu (SHIB/USD) forecast from DigitalCoin predicted that the price could average $0.000028 in 2022, rising to an average of $0.000034 by 2023. The algorithm suggested the price could reach an average of $0.000045 by 2025.
For the longer term, the shiba inu coin price prediction for 2025–2030 from Coin Price Forecast suggested it could remain volatile, moving from $0.00011 at the end of 2025 to $0.00013 in 2030.
It’s important to keep in mind that cryptocurrency markets remain extremely volatile, making it difficult to predict accurately what a coin’s price will be in a few hours, and even harder to give accurate long-term estimates. As such, analysts and online forecasting sites can get their predictions wrong.
We recommend that you always do your own research, and consider the latest market trends, news, technical and fundamental analysis, and expert opinion before making any investment decisions. Never invest more than you can afford to lose.
