Shiba Inu once carried so much promise that the crypto space actually believed it will flip and overtake the “OG” (slang: original gangster) dog-themed crypto, Dogecoin.

But SHIB failed to live up to the hype, falling victim to the volatility that has been plaguing the cryptocurrency market this year.

At one point, Shiba Inu ranked behind Dogecoin in terms of market capitalization. But now, the crypto asset has fallen even further behind DOGE.

According to tracking from Coingecko, SHIB ranks 13th among all digital currencies, having a market cap of $5.9 billion. As of this writing, it is trading at $0.00001015, losing 7.8% of its value for the past week.

The way things are going on right now, one would think investors will veer away of the crypto. But in a surprising twist, Shiba Inu opens its doors to a substantial number of new holders this year.

Shiba Inu Holders Grow By 9%

According to data from CoinMarketCap, the number of Shiba Inu holders as of October 13, 2022 was 1,223,516. The figure is 9% bigger than the 1,114,483 number that was tallied on January 3.

This development comes as a total surprise, as Google Trends data revealed a significant decrease in the number of SHIB-related searches, reaching its lowest point in a year last July.

Image: Broke And Chic

As the crypto’s popularity dropped, analysts believed that interest for the meme altcoin was already fading.

But the SHIB team is not giving up on the asset, finding ways to introduce initiatives that increased the viability of the cryptocurrency.

Shiba Inu has already entered the gaming field and is utilizing the non-fungible tokens (NFTs) space.

It is perhaps because of this that there’s new data showing Indian investors are putting money into SHIB, hoping the asset will duplicate its performance in 2021 when it rose to prominence.

SHIB Tokens Burned In Hopes Of Triggering Price Rally

Recently, the Shiba Inu team announced it took control of the burn portal Shibburn.com from Ryoshi Vision.

Additionally, a new burn mechanism, much like the Shibarium protocol, will be introduced for users as the team is banking on massive token burning to somehow push SHIB prices to higher levels.

On October 13, Shibburn.com revealed 20 billion SHIB tokens were burned in just 24 hours, bringing the overall total to 410.38 billion.

A lot of work still needs to be done is this department as the current total supply of Shiba Inu is almost 1 quadrillion. Its circulating supply is over 589 trillion.

SHIB total market cap at $5.47 billion on the daily chart | Featured image from WBUR, Chart: TradingView.com

Disclaimer: The analysis represents the author’s personal views and should not be construed as investment advice.