Shiba Inu (SHIB) is up 1.5% within the last 24 hours and seven% on the week to trade at $0.00001019. However, it remains to be 41% lower than a 12 months ago, while rival Dogecoin (DOGE) is up 43% over the identical period. For the long-time SHIB holders: Will their patience ever repay and might the SHIB price realistically reach the long-dreamed of $0.01?
SHIB/USD price chart. Source: CoinMarketCap
The mathematics behind the dream
When Shiba Inu launched on Ethereum in July 2020, it began as a meme-driven community experiment. Five years later, it has evolved right into a multi-token ecosystem with its own Layer 2 blockchain, stablecoin plans and governance system. But the one-cent goal has turn out to be each a rallying cry and a mathematical wall.
At today's price of about $0.00001015 and a circulating supply of about 585 trillion tokens, Shiba Inu's total market cap is near $6 billion. Should the token ever reach $0.01, the implied valuation would exceed $5.85 trillion – greater than the GDP of most nations and greater than double Apple's current value. In other words, to succeed in this price, SHIB would need to increase in value by around 82,000% from its current level.
Even in the course of the euphoric 2021 bull market, when Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin burned 410 trillion SHIB and the token briefly rose over 1,000%, the market cap never exceeded the $40 billion mark. This moment demonstrated the explosive potential of SHIB price – but additionally the hard cap imposed by its enormous supply.
Why burns are central to the long run of SHIB
The only realistic path to higher valuations is thru token burning – the everlasting removal of tokens from circulation. The SHIB community has embraced this idea greater than every other project, making the burn a recurring event tied to networking activities, merchandise, and community campaigns.
As of October 2025, data from the SHIB burn tracker shows that greater than 410.7 trillion tokens have been permanently destroyed, bringing the overall supply to just about 589.2 trillion. Around 585.2 trillion remain in circulation, while just over 4 trillion are pledged. The latest 24-hour data saw a 234% increase in burn rate, with nearly 16 million SHIB sent to dead wallets.
SHIB burn data. Source: Shibbburn
However, these figures illustrate the size of the challenge moderately than progress. Even with such spikes, the annual burning volume of SHIB is lower than a fraction of 1% of the overall supply. At this rate, it might take centuries for the tokens in circulation to be reduced enough for the valuation to vary significantly.
Shibarium – the project’s Layer 2 proof-of-stake network, launched in August 2023 – was designed partially to unravel this problem. Every transaction on Shibarium contributes to automatic SHIB burns. In theory, greater network activity means faster deflation. In practice, the chain's day by day transactions haven’t yet reached levels that would trigger large-scale burns. Even if Shibarium processed 1,000,000 transactions per day, total monthly burns would remain within the low billions of tokens – well below the trillions needed annually to bring SHIB to $0.01.
Ecosystem expansion focuses on utility and governance
Despite these structural limitations, the event of the Shiba Inu has been significant. Its ecosystem now includes five tokens – SHIB, LEASH, BONE, SHI and TREAT – each fulfilling different roles. Shibarium offers scalability and low-cost transactions, while BONE controls its gas fees. Launched in early 2025, TREAT acts as a governance and engagement token and helped raise $12 million to develop a privacy-focused Layer 3 network. The upcoming SHI stablecoin goals to expand the financial utility of the project, and ShibDAO is transitioning governance to community-based voting.
This diversification signals a strategic shift: SHIB will now not be positioned as a purely speculative meme coin, but moderately as a platform for decentralized finance and gaming applications. But from a valuation perspective, these utilities support gradual stability – not a parabolic jump in prices.
Looking at historical performance and current burn rates, SHIB's path to a penny stays mathematically unlikely under current conditions. The supply is simply too large and the burning speed is simply too slow. To reach this milestone, either the overall supply would need to decline by greater than 99% or the worldwide crypto market would need to grow to levels unprecedented in financial history.
