Shiba Inu (SHIB), one of the market’s largest memecoins, is still far from its glory days. The token is trading more than 90% below the all-time highs it reached in October 2021.
Even with gains of about 5% during April’s price action, the rebound looks limited in the broader context—especially as investors weigh the long-term forces that can either lift a token or keep it pinned.
No Fast Scarcity, Bigger Downside
A recent Motley Fool report points to several structural factors that have helped shape Shiba Inu’s current performance and could continue to influence where it goes next.
One of the biggest issues is the coin’s supply. SHIB’s total supply is roughly 589.5 trillion tokens, with nearly all of that supply already in circulation. While a major portion was removed from circulation in 2021, the remaining amount is still so large that it doesn’t change the overall picture.
The report emphasizes that the supply scale makes it difficult to tighten Shiba Inu in a way that would noticeably impact price.
To illustrate how challenging meaningful supply reduction would be, the report notes that even if 1 trillion tokens were permanently removed every single day for a full year, hundreds of trillions would remain. In practical terms, that means supply-driven scarcity is unlikely to occur quickly enough to create a major upward re-pricing.
At the same time, the report highlights a key downside that works in the opposite direction: there is no comparable built-in mechanism that rapidly reduces supply when demand weakens.
Near-Zero Warning For Shiba Inu
The report also warns about the risk of a slow, sustained decline. It suggests that as investor attention fades and capital rotates toward other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), SHIB’s combination of large supply and limited scarcity could make it vulnerable to continued downward pressure.
In that scenario, the report goes as far as saying Shiba Inu could drift toward near-zero levels by the end of 2026, not as a sudden collapse, but as the result of prolonged weakness.
Beyond supply mechanics, the report also points to SHIB’s ownership and distribution. It argues that the token’s supply is concentrated among a small number of wallets. According to the report, the top 10 wallets hold more than 60% of SHIB’s total supply.
This matters because SHIB’s price, the report suggests, is heavily influenced by trading behavior—who is buying and who is selling at any given time. When large holders control a substantial portion of circulating tokens, their decisions can have an outsized effect.
If a few major wallets choose to sell, the added supply can weigh on price. At the same time, the report notes that many of the remaining Shiba Inu holders are small retail investors, who typically have limited capital to absorb large sell orders.
The report connects this to a reinforcing cycle. As Shiba Inu prices decline, investor interest often weakens further. That can lead to reduced trading volume and thinner liquidity, which then makes the market more sensitive to selling pressure.
At the time of writing, SHIB was trading at $0.0000063, marking a slight increase of 1.8% over the past seven days.
Featured image created with OpenArt, chart from TradingView.com
