TL;DR
The circulating supply of Shiba Inu dwindled last year due to the billions of tokens burned. The price of SHIB is increasing by 115% on a yearly basis, thanks to numerous potential factors, including the combustion mechanism, the progress of Shibarium and others. The burning continues
The popular meme coin initially had a total supply of one quadrillion tokens. At launch, 50% of the amount was locked on the Uniswap decentralized exchange to provide liquidity, while the remaining half was sent to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.
The computer programmer later donated trillions of SHIB to the Indian Crypto Relief Fund and other charities. He eventually burned the remaining 410 trillion SHIB tokens, worth approximately $6.7 billion at the time.
Buterin’s initiative was followed by an imminent price hike for the dog-themed meme currency. After all, fundamental principles of economics dictate that a reduction in circulating supply combined with non-decreasing demand should be followed by a pump.
In 2022, the Shiba Inu team officially adopted a burning mechanism that allows the community to voluntarily send tokens to a dead wallet. According to a recent publication, over 44.6 billion SHIB, worth just over $1 million, were destroyed throughout 2024.
While the USD equivalent of the storage may not seem that impressive (given the fact that it is spread over 12 months), continued efforts in this field will make the meme currency scarcer and potentially more valuable.
Meanwhile, the burn rate has increased by about 100% in the last 24 hours, resulting in nearly 1.9 million SHIB sent to a null address.
SHIB Price Outlook
The reduced circulating supply of the meme coin throughout 2024 could be one of the reasons why its price has registered a solid 115% increase between January 1st of last year and the beginning of 2025
SHIB Price, Source: CoinGecko
Other factors include the rise of the cryptocurrency market, most notably the meme coin niche, and Shibarium’s further advancement.
The Layer 2 Scaling Solution, which aims to foster the development of the Shiba Inu ecosystem, passed numerous milestones last year. Around Christmas, the total number of transactions processed using the protocol exceeded 700 million, while before that, wallet addresses exceeded 2 million.
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