- Shiba Inu began 2023 on a good note, and its price rallied thanks to the bull market.
- Shibarium’s adoption rose, managing to outshine Arbitrum and Optimism as well.
The year 2023 was significant for Shiba Inu [SHIB] as several major developments took place. And yet, despite all the updates, one can argue that Shiba Inu still failed to fly to the moon.
With the year now behind us, here’s AMBCrypto’s overview of how the ecosystem did in 2023 and whether it failed to meet investors’ expectations.
How did the year begin for Shiba Inu?
Shiba Inu stepped into 2023 with an entry price of about $0.000008. However, things soon turned exciting as the meme coin’s price rallied significantly, thanks to bullish market conditions in the first few months of this year.
Because of the price uptick, investors’ confidence around the token surged. The same was evidenced by the massive spike in its positive sentiment in January 2023.
Source: Santiment
Though the price hike stirred up joy among investors, SHIB enthusiasts were still not happy as its much-awaited Shibarium did not launch. The L2 was supposed to launch many months ago, but nothing concrete came up until the third quarter of the year.
The Shibarium launch incident
For the Shiba Inu ecosystem, there was nothing bigger in 2023 than the launch of Shibarium. After much delay and rumors, it was released on the 16th of August, 2023, making it the hottest topic of discussion in the crypto industry.
However, the launch did not go as expected, as SHIB’s price did not respond accordingly.
Before the launch, SHIB was trading at nearly $0.000011. However, post-launch, the token’s price plummeted to $0.000009 in just a matter of two days.
The meme coin’s social metrics, such as Weighted Sentiment and Social Volume, also dropped along with its price, which looked concerning at the time.
Source: Santiment
The misery did not end there, as a few days after the launch, the L2 faced server issues, because of which they had to run the L2 in private mode for quite some time.
This mostly happened because the Shiba Inu team wasn’t ready to handle the sheer amount of traffic that entered the Shibarium ecosystem after the launch.
AMBCrypto reached out to David Kemmerer, CEO of CoinLedger, to get his expert opinion on what went wrong with the Shibarium launch. He said,
“The launch certainly came with challenges – technical difficulties being the primary issue. Right when it went live, there was such a high traffic volume that Shibarium essentially had to stop temporarily due to its network crashing. This situation revealed the importance of network scaling, which I think a lot of other companies will look to as an example of how to proceed for future launches. Though things originally didn’t go well for Shibarium and the outlook on their gains wasn’t exactly living up the hype, things have recently started to improve.”
He also mentioned how this entire episode can be taken as an example of how the crypto space has unique complications that other types of investments do not.
Shibarium makes a comeback!
Though the initial launch did not go as planned, the L2 later picked up speed as it hit quite a few milestones. AMBCrypto reported a few months ago that Shibarium had recorded more than three million transactions since its Mainnet launch.
At the time, it had a total of 26,691 accounts. Fast-forward to December, and the L2 has continued to grow as its numbers improved.
Shibariumscan.io’s data revealed that at the time of writing, Shibarium’s total transactions exceeded 134 million — a commendable number to achieve.
Its total wallets hit 1.3 million, total blocks surpassed 2.1 million, and it had a consistent average block time of five seconds. At press time, its daily transactions stood at 6.1 million.
Source: Shibariumscan.io
Shiba Inu’s L2 has also been outshining other popular L2s on multiple fronts.
AMBCrypto checked Artemis’s data and found that while Shibarium’s daily transactions stood at 6.15 million at press time, Arbitrum [ARB] and Optimism [OP], two of the most popular L2s, were behind Shibarium.
Finally, while OP’s daily transactions were in the thousands, Arbitrum’s daily transactions spiked on the 16th of December and touched 5 million — a figure that was lower than Shibarium.
Source: Artemis
Though these aforementioned metrics looked optimistic for Shiba Inu’s L2, the network is yet to mature and touch new highs by overcoming its flaws.
AMBCrypto reached out to Ryan Lee, Chief Analyst of Bitget Research, to get his take on the same. He commented,
“So far, the main problems with Shibarium are a lack of projects and chain instability. According to the Shibariumscan block explorer data, the Shiba Inu-launched Shibarium Layer2 Ethereum network went live on Aug 17 only to suddenly stop generating blocks. It was not until Aug 24 that block generation was restored, which dealt a great blow to user confidence.”
Lee also mentioned that, unlike the Odyssey projects of various Layer 2 chains, Shibarium did not launch with a complete participant or developer incentive.
A bird’s eye view of SHIB’s performance in 2023
When talking about Shiba Inu’s performance in 2023, it’s imperative to check when the meme coin hit its highest and lowest points this year.
AMBCrypto’s observation of Santiment’s data underlined that SHIB’s price hit its highest level in February.
Notably, the meme coin’s price touched its peak of $0.000015 on the 5th of February 2023. While this was the highest level, SHIB’s price reached its lowest peak of $0.000006 on the 10th of June 2023.
This was lower than the price at which SHIB began its year, which was $0.000008.
Source: Santiment
Since touching the aforementioned level, however, the meme coin’s price has somewhat continued to register a steady incline. It only witnessed a major price drop on the 12th of August when its value touched $0.000011.
Though Shiba Inu’s vision of reaching the moon remains unfulfilled, there is some good news. The meme coin managed to eliminate a zero from its price, which in itself is a commendable achievement.
Shiba Inu’s burn rate in 2023
Shiba Inu, being a deflationary asset, has always been under scrutiny because of its burn rate. For starters, deflationary cryptos are those whose supply declines over time. As the supply drops, the demand increases.
Based on the demand and supply theory, whenever demand increases and supply drops, the value of an asset also rises.
Though Shiba Inu boosted its soaring burn rate this year, nothing was reflected on its price chart purely because of SHIB token burns. According to SHIBBRUN, more than 410 trillion SHIB tokens have been burned to date.
Thanks to that, SHIB’s total supply was reduced to 589 trillion, while its circulating supply dropped to 580 trillion.
Shiba Inu managed to achieve this number by increasing its burn rate to over 100% or even 1000% multiple times over the last year.
However, the burns have not had a direct impact on SHIB’s price yet, as most of the meme coin’s price action could be attributed to the prevailing market trend throughout the year.
Source: SHIBBURN
Will SHIB end 2023 on a sweet note?
As AMBCrypto highlighted SHIB’s journey in 2023, it’s also important to take a look at how the year-end might turn out for the meme coin.
To understand that, AMBCrypto checked Shiba Inu’s daily chart. Our analysis found that SHIB’s price pulled back after touching the upper limit of the Bollinger bands.
Its MACD displayed the possibility of a bearish crossover at press time, which could push the token’s price down. Shiba Inu’s Relative Strength Index (RSI) registered downticks and headed toward the neutral mark.
Nonetheless, its Money Flow Index (MFI) remained bullish as it went up in the recent past. Therefore, investors should exercise caution before deciding on SHIB.
Source: TradingView
According to CoinMarketCap, at the time of writing, SHIB was trading at $0.00001028, with a market capitalization of over $6 billion, making it the 17th largest crypto.
Looking forward to 2024!
New years mark new beginnings, and the same might be true for SHIB. The meme coin’s dream of reaching the moon does feel ambitious, but considering the unpredictable nature of the crypto space, nothing can be said with the utmost certainty.
There are multiple prospects to keep an eye on for SHIB in 2024, beginning with Shibarium.
The L2 has already shown remarkable adoption, and the coming year might see a further surge in its adoption and usage. This could have a positive impact on the meme coin’s price.
Whether SHIB’s high burn rate has any impact on the token’s price will also be intriguing to watch. Not to mention, several expect 2024 to be a bull market. If that turns out to be true, the possibility of SHIB touching new highs seems likely.
Rahul Maradiya, Co-Founder & Global CEO of Dubai-based CIFDAQ, put it best when he spoke to AMBCrypto, saying,
“SHIB’s price trends this year reflect the fear, uncertainty, and doubt associated with a project that shows such vulnerabilities. However, as we move forward towards 2024, it makes sense that a rising tide lifts all boats. As Bitcoin remains at over $42,000, and as the first spot Bitcoin ETFs are likely to see approval soon, it is logical that altcoins like SHIB will see significant benefit from the increasingly broad investor class interested in digital assets.”