Shiba Inu is extending a weak trend, down 93 percent from its 2021 all-time high (ATH).

The Crypto Basic, a blockchain media outlet, reported on April 8 that Shiba Inu is trading at $0.00000613, sharply below its October 2021 all-time high of $0.00008854.

During the 2021 surge, Shiba Inu’s market capitalisation topped $54 billion, placing it among major cryptocurrencies. At the time, it at one point overtook Dogecoin to become the most valuable meme coin. That coincided with a period when strong market optimism spread into meme coins.

But the trend later changed. CoinGecko data show the current price is still up more than 600,000 percent from early levels, but investors who entered near recent-year highs are facing large losses.

A reduction in supply in May 2021 is cited as a driver of the price jump. Shiba Inu, created by an anonymous developer known as Ryoshi, started with a total issuance of 999.9 trillion tokens. Developers then sent 50 percent of the total, or 500 trillion SHIB, to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin (비탈릭 부테린). Buterin burned 410 trillion of them and donated the rest to charities. That permanently removed 41 percent of total supply and ignited a rise in the price.

Structural limitations typical of meme coins are also coming back into focus. Meme coins are known for excessive speculation and short lifespans, and many cases lose momentum over time because they depend heavily on overheating and community support. Shiba Inu has survived for a relatively long period, but it has not avoided a decline in value.

The decline steepened in the 2022 bear market. Shiba Inu fell to $0.00000543 in June 2023, dropping to a level with an additional zero after the decimal point. In this market cycle, while Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP and BNB made new history, Shiba Inu only managed to form a peak at $0.00004567. That is far below its 2021 high.

Market reaction is mixed. Many holders are currently sitting on unrealised losses, and scepticism is also emerging that, given its nature as a meme coin, recovery could take longer. Concerns were also raised that Shiba Inu’s recovery path appears longer than that of other cryptocurrencies.

On the other hand, an expansion in users was presented as a positive signal. Recently, 5,000 to 12,000 new wallets have been added each month, and such inflows were described as typically preceding a rise in network activity. The number of Shiba Inu holders has almost doubled to 2.93 million from 1.5 million a year earlier. The steady increase in the number of holding wallets stands out even as the price fell 45.8 percent over the same period.

Some market analysts are also leaving room for a rebound. A market watcher, MMB Trader, said a time will come when Shiba Inu shows a major weekly rise again and projected a rally to $0.00007730. For now, as price weakness and a rise in holders continue at the same time, whether an actual rebound occurs depends on future network activity and a recovery in broader market risk appetite.