During the last big crypto bull run in 2021, Shiba Inu showed the highest returns among meme coins, attracting significant interest. However, now it seems that almost no one is interested in this. Why? To understand the reason, it is necessary to analyze two periods separately: around 2021 and from 2022 onwards.
The Shiba Inu SHIB token was launched on Ethereum in 2020. Initially, it wanted to be an alternative to Dogecoin on Ethereum, since Dogecoin (DOGE) has its own blockchain, and Ethereum did not have one.
It's worth remembering that Dogecoin, the first meme coin ever created (back in 2013), capitalized on the popularity of a meme based on an image of a Shiba Inu dog, so SHIB's reference to Dogecoin was almost explicit.
SHIB has remained relatively low-key in 2020 and hasn't seen any particularly interesting movements in the cryptocurrency market.
In 2021, thanks to Elon Musk's advocacy, Dogecoin's price soared, rising from less than 1 cent to over 73 cents in just a few months. This boom not only allowed it to reach its all-time high, which remains unbroken, but also to enter the top 10 major cryptocurrencies.
This market cap was excessive for a meme coin, so much so that at some point, Dogecoin's rally first began to slow down and then stopped completely. At the time, Shiba Inu had a ridiculously low market cap, so its growth potential was significantly higher than Dogecoin's.
So, at some point, the speculators' greed started to shift from Dogecoin to Shiba Inu, causing an explosive increase in buying pressure, and therefore the price, as selling pressure was very limited.
Between April and May 2021, when Dogecoin was slowing down and then reaching its all-time high and then retracing, the price of SHIB jumped sharply from less than $1 million to $15 million, and then accelerated even more between September and October, thus reaching an all-time high of $88 million.
Speculative bubbles that inflate in financial markets always burst sooner or later. They are often difficult to spot before they burst, and you never know exactly when.
It was clear that the Shiba Inu was undergoing a mega-speculative price explosion in 2021, but no one knew when it would burst. It began to burst as early as November 2021, but it was in May 2022 that the price began to plummet. It should be said that it never returned to its initial price, that is, below a millionth of a dollar, but stopped just below 7.
There was an attempt at a rebound in the SHIB price at the beginning of 2024. Indeed, in March it briefly exceeded 35 millionths, but this rebound was very short-lived. In September, it returned to below 13 millionths. It's worth noting that the minimums are increasing, as they increase from less than $1 million in 2020 to $7 million in 2022/2023, and then to $13 million in 2024.
In addition, with the Trump trade, the price of Shiba Inu returned above 30 million at the end of 2024, but during 2025 it dropped again to 13, which is also the current price. Thus, with the Trump trade, it was not even able to rise above the peak of early 2024, and the subsequent correction returned it to the lows of last year. These are not good signs at all in a year of a significant crypto bull run like this one.
At this point, it is not only reasonable to assume that it may be difficult to return to the 2021 highs, but that other meme coins are likely to emerge that will post much more significant rallies driven by the usual bubbles that, however, sooner or later burst.
History shows that meme coins usually shine during hype cycles but often have a hard time keeping their value over the long run. Shiba Inu is a clear example that while new tokens can quickly grab attention, older ones tend to fade into the background.
For example, newer projects like Maxi Doge have been catching attention in 2025 as part of the evolving meme coin landscape. While it’s far too early to say whether Maxi Doge can replicate the kind of rally SHIB enjoyed in 2021, its rise shows how investor attention tends to rotate between different meme-inspired tokens.