The frenzy around meme coins took over the crypto market in 2021. With a monumental rise of more than 10,000%, Dogecoin (DOGE) thrashed every opponent and entered the list of top 10 digital currencies. The story of Shiba Inu (SHIB) was no different. The biggest rival of Dogecoin performed better than its counterpart in 2021. In fact, for a brief period, the market cap of Shiba Inu jumped above the overall value of Dogecoin.
Both meme coins witnessed strong growth among crypto communities during the last year. However, with a drop of over 60% from their all-time highs, several questions are rising around the future of Shiba Inu and Dogecoin. Even after the massive market correction, DOGE and SHIB have a market cap of $18 billion and $14 billion, respectively. Finance Magnates asked leading crypto voices to share their opinions regarding the future of meme coins.
"Memecoins like Dogecoin and Shiba Inu may be performing woefully at the moment, but this by no means implies they are fizzling out their relevance. The broader market is underperforming at the moment and by virtue of the nature, meme coins are poised to print a far wider rate of decline based on their volatility,” Sven Wenzel, the Co-Founder of Castello Coin, said.
Market Conditions
According to Wenzel, the current market conditions are tough but under the normal market situation, meme coins will skyrocket once again. “When normalcy seems to return to the market, we can expect Dogecoin and Shiba Inu to do what they know how to do best-that is, chart a massive upward growth. With the current market downturn, a number of investors have lost a lot of money, and the first instinct by many risk-takers will be to invest in tweet-sensitive coins that can help boost the prices of Dogecoin and Shiba Inu. Based on this, we are likely to see massive retail cash inflows into these top meme coins in a short while,” Wenzel added.
Doge and SHIB
Maria Stankevich, the Chief Business Development Officer at EXMO UK, believes that not all meme coins will disappear, some are here to stay.
“It is difficult to argue with the statement that along with the formation of the market, we will inevitably observe its natural cleansing from empty projects. But, we're still in the nascent phase, where most players feel pretty free with little to no regulation. For example, we can take the current situation with Elon Musk and McDonald's. After the publication of McDonald's, the Grimacecoin token was created on the Binance Smart Chain network, the value of which at the moment increased by more than 200,000%, to $2. It isn't easy to imagine such a situation in the traditional finance market, so most classic traders look at cryptocurrencies as a sandbox where children play,” she said.
“However, there is a trend mainly related to the regulation and protection of clients from scams. I would not say that all meme-coins will disappear. Dogecoin is a specific marker of the era of creation and formation of cryptocurrencies. The creators had no plans to launch the coin into space, and I am sure that none of them expected Elon Musk to become their ambassador. I think that shortly the number of dummy projects will decrease. Still, until there is proper regulation, there will always be people who hope for a magical way to earn money without doing anything quickly," Stankevich explained.
Rising Demand
Johnny McCamely, the CEO of CryptoClear, said that the short-term spike in Shiba Inu and Dogecoin is due to a rise in demand from investors. “Recent rallies in coins such as DOGE and SHIB are driven by a surge in demand to get rich quick, bitcoin is back above $40,000 USD and traders and investors are switching back onto Crypto. Many are wanting to make a quick gain via the likes of DOGE and SHIB, many other 'meme coins' as they are termed have popped up recently such as Marshall Rogan Inu (MRI). I believe this is a short-term spike due to the investor's demand to get rich quick,” he said.
