Is the 75% accident in the future?

Further decline or revival: what lies ahead for the self-proclaimed killer of Dogecoin?

The situation of the second largest meme coin has recently taken a turn for the worse after a double slide in the last 14 days.

Some worrisome factors suggest that Shiba Inu (SHIB) could face a further crash in the near future, while a prominent analyst has predicted that it could hit a five-year low.

Free fall hasn’t happened yet?

While the Shiba Inu enjoyed significant growth last year, 2026 has been anything but painful. As of this writing, it is trading at around $0.000005467 (according to CoinGecko), representing a 60% year-over-year decline.

Its market capitalization has fallen to around $3.2 billion, widening the gap with leader Dogecoin (DOGE), which holds more than $15 billion in market capitalization.

According to Ali Martinez, SHIB could be on the verge of a crash as low as $0.00000138. This is not the first time an analyst has warned about such a scenario. Last month, he noted that the meme coin broke below the critical level of $0.00000667, and claimed that this could open the door to the meltdown of the aforementioned zone.

The Shiba Inu’s burning mechanism also suggests that a further pullback may be on the way. In the last 24 hours, after only 20,176 SHIBs were sent to a random address, the burn rate has dropped by about 99%.

The ultimate goal of the program is to reduce the total supply of the meme coin, potentially making it more valuable over time (assuming demand stays constant or goes north). It was adopted in 2022, and since then the team and community have destroyed more than 410.7 trillion tokens, leaving 585.47 trillion in circulation.

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Shibarium’s suspension progress is also a mitigating factor. Shiba Inu’s layer-2 scaling solution will see the light of day in the summer of 2023 and aims to help the project grow by reducing transaction fees, improving speed and increasing scalability. Last September, it suffered an exploit that shook investor confidence and caused widespread damage throughout the Shiba Inu ecosystem. Prior to this incident, the daily transactions processed on Shibarium were in the millions, while after that, they dropped to the thousands.

Bullish signals

Even as the meme coin struggles and the broader crypto market is under pressure, the supply of SHIB on centralized exchanges is dwindling. According to CryptoQuant, these reserves have fallen from 81 trillion tokens, the lowest point since May 2021.

The development can be interpreted as a positive sign, as it indicates that investors are not in a hurry to transfer their shares to such platforms: this move is usually seen as a pre-sale step.

Meanwhile, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) of the Shiba Inu briefly dipped below 30, indicating that the asset has entered oversold territory and is likely to recover. The technical analysis tool works from 0 to 100, and conversely, a ratio above 70 indicates that SHIB is overbought and ready for a possible correction. As of this writing, the RSI is at around 36 or very close to the bullish zone.