Shiba Inu (SHIB) is the second-largest meme-inspired cryptocurrency. It’s safe to say that it was all the rage for a couple of months back in 2021 when its price reached its all-time high on October 28th, 2021, clocking in at $0.00008616.
While that may not seem like a lot, it’s an increase of a few hundred thousand percent in less than a year – Shiba Inu (SHIB) became a global phenomenon where everyone was looking to get on the bandwagon fashionable.
Fast forward a few months later, the price is down some 90% from its all-time high, social sentiment is practically non-existent, and interest in cryptocurrency has disappeared. In this article, I attempt to provide a few reasons why this happens. But first, let’s start with the numbers.
No one cares about the Shiba Inu (SHIB)
This statement itself might be a bit of a stretch – there are still people following the project. But SHIB’s popularity was so high in the second half of 2021 that those currently involved pale in comparison. And there is data to back it up.
Google Trends
First off, data from Google Trends reveals that the searches for the “Shiba Inu” keyword are down to levels seen before the hype of October and November last year. Google Trends is a common way to gauge retail interest in a certain topic.
Of course, it should also be noted that the term “Shiba Inu” is used to describe a particular breed of dog, hence the name of the cryptocurrency. Therefore, people interested in the coin itself are probably even less so.
And while many might argue that this is because of the overall decline in the crypto market (and they would be partially right), Bitcoin didn’t see such a massive decline in retail interest. Data shows that the searches for “bitcoin” are down around 50% from their 12-month peak, whereas searches for “ethereum” are down about 65%. These are notable declines but are nowhere near the 95% crash in interest that Shiba Inu experienced from its 12-month peak.
Social Mentions
Data from popular analytics resource InTheBlock provides additional information about the social presence of Shiba Inu. Based on multiple social indicators, interest in cryptocurrency is clearly plummeting. For example, sentiment on Twitter has been trending down for quite some time.
The same is observed across another community-building platform – Telegram. The members of the SHIB channels are declining and so is the sentiment over there:
Clearly, interest in Shiba Inu (SHIB) is plummeting, but why?
Why is Interest in SHIB Plummeting?
Well, for once, it has to do with its unsustainable growth that was evidently based mostly on sheer speculation. To support this, CryptoPotato reported back in October 2021 (when the trend was peaking) that SHIB futures trading volume had gone up by a factor of 78x in a matter of seven days.
Futures contracts are primarily used by speculators who want to take advantage of higher positions when profitable market opportunities arise. Their growing number is indicative of the massive speculation that plagued the market.
At around this time, stories of SHIB-made millionaires started popping left and right. On October 31st, 2021, the cryptocurrency was up 100,000,000% since January that year. That’s right – one hundred million percent. This meant that anyone who had invested as little as $1 on January 1st would have literally been a millionaire, had they hold to the stack.
This invites a certain crowd of investors who don’t care, at least, what they invest in. People were rushing into SHIB and SHIB-inspired copies like crazy and the interest was sky-high. At one time, other memecoins like Floki Inu advertised on physical locations like the London Underground station or some transit buses.
What’s the problem with that? Well, that’s the kind of unsustainable growth that I was talking about. The problem is that the moment the music stops, the crowd loses interest. In this case, it’s the price – the moment the price stops soaring and charting new all-time highs, people who were in it only for the monetary gains either sell out and never look back again or hold on to their bags in hopes of a miraculous recovery.
Data from InTheBlock shows that about 72% of those who hold SHIB are at a loss. Of course, that’s to be expected, given that the price is down 90% from its all-time high, but it also shows that many people were looking for pumps long after the price had climbed thousands of multiples.
Usually, only people with massive conviction remain interested at times of peak despair and SHIB’s crowd just didn’t seem to have that… at all.
