Shiba Inu exploded onto the market in August 2020, formed by the mysterious 'Ryoshi.' It has surfed the meme coin wave strongly, shaping itself as the Ethereum-based rival to Dogecoin, even borrowing the same Japanese dog for its logo and calling itself the 'Dogecoin killer.'

However, Ryoshi saw SHIB not just as a joke; it was a bold question: what if a cryptocurrency project was entirely driven by the power of the people? This effort for a truly decentralized experiment, built by the community, has created a loyal following globally, the 'SHIBArmy,' who are always at the forefront and center of SHIB's adventurous journey.

Where Did SHIB Come From and How Was It Built?

Ryoshi, like Bitcoin's mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto, has gone underground and then disappeared from social media in May 2022, but prior to that emphasized that the community, not any founder, holds the true power.

The 'WoofPaper' project—its new version based on a traditional white paper—presents a vision of power for the people.

The initial setup of SHIB was anything but normal. One trillion tokens were created right from the start. Half of these astonishing numbers were sent to Uniswap to maintain trading liquidity. The other half took a controversial route to Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum.

Then, Buterin 'burned' 90% of his SHIB holdings by sending it to a dead wallet, effectively erasing it. The remaining 10%, worth over a billion dollars at that time, he donated to COVID-19 relief in India and other charities.

Thanks to Buterin's massive burn and the ongoing efforts of the community to burn more tokens, the actual amount of SHIB in circulation has decreased significantly from the original trillion.

By mid-May 2025, you will see about 589 trillion SHIB tokens circulating. Token burning is a key strategy to tighten supply, and even the transaction fees on Shibarium, Shiba Inu's Layer-2 network, are partially converted into SHIB and burned.

The market pulse of SHIB (Mid-May 2025)

The trading life of Shiba Inu is indeed quite tumultuous, simple, and clear:

  • Price: SHIB is traded in the range of $0.000015 to $0.000016.

  • Market value: Its total value is in the range of $8.9 billion to $9.62 billion, often ranking within the top 15 to 18 cryptocurrencies. You get this number by multiplying the current price by the current number of tokens.

  • Trading activity: Over the past day, people have traded SHIB shares worth between $459 million and $578 million.

  • Looking back:

    • SHIB peaked at an all-time high of around $0.00008616 to $0.000090 in October 2021 (the exact number may vary slightly depending on whom you ask).

    • What was its lowest point? A fraction of a penny, from $0.000000000056 to $0.00000000008165, in August/September 2020.

  • Recent moves: SHIB has shown some encouraging signs of price increases in the past week and month, although there have also been rapid declines.

The big dream: Will SHIB actually reach a price of $0.01?

Talking about SHIB reaching a penny is significant within its community. But when you crunch the numbers, the mountain SHIB has to climb looks very large.

For SHIB to reach $0.01 with around 589 trillion tokens on the market, its market cap would need to skyrocket to an unbelievable $5.89 trillion.

Think about that for a moment:

  • Compared to today's SHIB: The target of $5.89 trillion makes SHIB's current market cap of about $9 billion look like pocket change.

  • Against the Crypto Titans:

    • Bitcoin (BTC): Bitcoin's value, despite fluctuations, is usually in the hundreds of billions, sometimes exceeding $2 trillion. For SHIB to reach $5.89 trillion, it would have to be much larger than typical Bitcoin, potentially even several times the value of the entire current cryptocurrency market.

    • Ethereum (ETH): Ethereum, usually the second cryptocurrency, often has a market cap of hundreds of billions—estimated around $300 billion to $327 billion around May 2025. SHIB's dream of $5.89 trillion would completely overshadow Ethereum's current scale.

  • Against global corporate giants:

    • The largest publicly traded companies in the world, names like Apple and Microsoft, are valued at about $3.1 trillion to $3.3 trillion by May 2025. Saudi Aramco is also in that league. Other tech giants like Nvidia, Amazon, and Google (Alphabet) also have valuations up to trillions.

If SHIB reaches $0.01, that means its total value would have to surpass these global giants. This only illustrates the almost unimaginable increase in interest, perceived value, and cold, hard cash that would need to flow into SHIB.

Token Burn: The search for scarcity

The idea behind token burning is very simple: reduce the total supply of SHIB, making it more scarce, and hopefully if people still want to buy it, the price will go up.

  • Past burn: Over 410 trillion SHIB tokens, about 41% in the first burn, have gone up in smoke since day one. Vitalik Buterin's massive burn was a significant part of that.

  • Currently, how burns happen:

    • The power of the people: The SHIBArmy takes direct action, sending tokens to 'dead' wallets that cannot be used. Websites like Shibburn.com always track this community's efforts.

    • The contribution of Shibarium: When people transact on the Shibarium network (paying fees with BONE tokens), some of that is converted to SHIB and burned. Since Shibarium launched in August 2023, it has helped burn tens of billions of SHIB. For example, a 24-hour period saw over 28 million SHIB burned, a remarkable jump in the burn rate. On another occasion, in March 2025, the burn rate reportedly surged to 8,470% after a wallet burned a billion SHIB.

  • Are burns really effective? This is a hotly debated topic. While a lot of SHIB has been burned, the large amount that remains means the current burn rate may not change prices much. Experts calculate that for burns to make a real dent, either the burning process needs to accelerate significantly, or more people need to want SHIB at the same time. The team behind Shiba Inu sees burning as a game of patience. Some hope that steady, faster burns through Shibarium could, within five to ten years, reduce the supply enough to help prices, assuming the entire ecosystem grows and the market performs well. However, the head of marketing for SHIB has warned against rapid burn programs from unrelated projects, emphasizing that true burns need to come directly from the reserves or income of the project itself.

Even achieving a more modest level of $0.001 without surpassing Bitcoin's usual dominance would increase SHIB's market cap to about $589 billion - still a significant jump.

Building more than just Buzz: Enhancing SHIB's utility

The developers of Shiba Inu are not just sitting idle; they are busy trying to give their tokens real jobs. This is a crucial step to attract serious long-term investors and shed the 'just hype' label.

  • Shibarium (The Speedy Layer-2): This network is built for faster, cheaper transactions and is key to SHIB's growth plans. It hosts applications (dApps), decentralized finance (DeFi), NFTs, and dreams of a metaverse. The total value locked (TVL) on Shibarium has increased, recently reaching $3.38 million and then $3.79 million. There is even an ambitious goal to capture a significant portion of Ethereum's TVL.

  • TREAT Token: This new coin will serve several purposes: rewarding users on ShibaSwap and in the game Shiba Eternity, supporting the upcoming stablecoin SHI, and promoting Layer-3 technology.

  • SHI Stablecoin: The team plans to launch this stablecoin to provide a reliable means of transaction within the Shibarium world, although this launch still needs clearer rules for stablecoins.

  • SHIB: Metaverse: Imagine a virtual world for the community to gather, create, and govern. SHIB tokens could even be used to personalize virtual land there.

  • Shiba Eternity: This is a collectible card game, and they are planning to release a play-to-earn version for Shibarium.

  • Upgrading ShibaSwap: The project's decentralized exchange is about to be revamped to enhance trading options and transform it into a full-fledged data hub.

  • What else is going on? Keep an eye on Shiba Hub (a new community hub), K9 Finance (for staking on Shibarium), a privacy-focused Layer-3 testnet, and a complete DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) for all tokens in the SHIB ecosystem.

Success in the real world and facing competition

While the SHIB world is certainly growing, its real-world usage outside of the community and speculative trading context is still gradually taking shape.

  • Comparing SHIB:

    • Dogecoin (DOGE): Another coin that started as a meme, Dogecoin is trying to become a daily payment method.

    • Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL), Polygon (MATIC): These are more established names with real-world applications in DeFi, NFTs, smart contracts, and business solutions, boasting significant partnerships.

If projects like Shibarium can provide SHIB with more real-world applications, it could definitely attract more interest and cash. But that's a tough road: widespread adoption, the actual effectiveness of token burns, fierce competition, the mood of the broader market, and regulatory decisions will make the difference.

The power of Hype and SHIBArmy

Being realistic: community excitement, social media storms, and endorsements from influencers have caused SHIB's price to soar (and crash) in the past. The dedication of the SHIBArmy is a real plus. But relying solely on hype often leads to a wild, unstable ride. For SHIB to seriously aim for targets like $0.01 and maintain that level, it needs to build real value through actual use and widespread acceptance.

The obstacles and dangers ahead

Anyone considering SHIB should be aware of the following risks:

  • Meme Coin Madness: Since it started as a meme, SHIB's price can be highly volatile based on sentiment and speculation.

  • Crowded House: The cryptocurrency world is flooded with projects competing for attention.

  • The concern of lawmakers: How governments around the world decide to regulate cryptocurrencies, especially meme coins, could change the situation for SHIB.

  • Observing whales: While many of the largest SHIB wallets belong to exchanges or burn addresses, if some individuals hold large amounts, theoretically, they could crash the market by selling off.

  • That enormous supply: This is the biggest problem. With so many tokens, it is incredibly difficult for the price of each token to rise in any meaningful way.

The big picture of how it affects SHIB

Broader cryptocurrency market developments and the global economy significantly impact SHIB's price.

  • Market tides: SHIB tends to perform well when cryptocurrencies explode (bull market) but is heavily impacted when things calm down (bear market).

  • Bitcoin's signals: Bitcoin's fluctuations tend to dictate the ups and downs of most other cryptocurrencies, including SHIB.

  • Economic winds: Factors like inflation, central bank interest rate moves, and the stability of the global economy can make investors more or less willing to bet on riskier things like meme coins.

The $0.01 question: Fantasy or far-off possibility?

When asking experts whether SHIB can reach $0.01, you will receive many different answers, mostly 'not anytime soon.'

  • The believers: Some in the community and a few analysts have not given up hope. They point to SHIB's crazy past growth, the ongoing work to build its ecosystem (especially what Shibarium could do), and the impact of token burns. A few far-fetched predictions, like one from Changelly, even suggest that it could happen by 2040.

  • The skeptics: Most analysts believe that $0.01 is a very far-fetched number without a massive reduction, currently unimaginable, in supply or a surge in demand and market value. The sheer numbers involved in achieving a valuation in the trillions from the current level are just staggering.

  • What needs to be done: Almost everyone agrees that for $0.01 to become a far-off dream, you need a perfect storm: continuous, massive token burns; groundbreaking breakthroughs in how SHIB is used and the number of adopters; and an incredibly friendly market.

Beyond a penny: Other ways to measure the success of SHIB

Focusing solely on the $0.01 price could be shortsighted. It would be smarter to assess SHIB's overall health by monitoring:

  • Total value growth: Market cap steadily increasing.

  • Ecosystem victories: How much activity and money are flowing through Shibarium, new applications being built, and SHIB along with partner tokens (BONE, LEASH) are actually being used in the real world.

  • Community atmosphere: Is the SHIBArmy still active and feeling good about the project?

  • Burn rate: Is the token supply consistently and meaningfully decreasing?

  • Stable price: If the price's volatility starts to lessen, it means SHIB is maturing.

What regulators can do

The rulebook for cryptocurrency is still being written, and how governments, especially concerning meme coins, decide to act will certainly impact SHIB. In the United States, recent chatter from the SEC suggests that ordinary meme coins bought for entertainment, not for investment, may not be classified as securities, although they are still monitored by the CFTC for fraudulent behavior. The EU's MiCA rules are a big step towards a clear framework that will affect creators and cryptocurrency services. Places in Asia like Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong are all figuring out their own approaches, and some may be stricter on meme coins. Clear rules could make investors feel safer, but overly strict rules could stifle growth.

Shiba Inu's long-term strategy

Clearly, the team behind Shiba Inu doesn't want to win quickly; they seem to be building for the future by:

  • Expanding the world: With Shibarium, new tokens like TREAT and SHI, upgraded ShibaSwap 2.0, the Metaverse, and games.

  • Shrinking supply: Through continuous token burning.

  • The power of the people: Giving the community a voice through Doggy DAO.

  • Making friends: Like their recent relationship with the UAE's Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure to explore ideas around Web3.

So, what’s the bottom line? Shiba Inu has built an impressive community and is genuinely trying to create a useful ecosystem that thrives. However, reaching $0.01 is incredibly challenging, mainly due to the sheer number of SHIB tokens out there. The market value increase needed is enormous. This is not impossible in the chaotic cryptocurrency world, but it will require significant changes in how SHIB operates, how it is used, the number of people who want it, and market developments - things that are hard to imagine happening right now. Anyone investing should keep their expectations realistic and closely monitor the actual progress of the project as well as the status of the entire ecosystem.