The hype around Shiba Inu and the metaverse of SHIB has now reached the mainstream media. In a new article, CNBC examines whether Shiba Inu can displace the still largest meme coin Dogecoin from its throne in the future.

And the verdict should please the SHIB community: CNBC believes SHIB will overtake its biggest competitor, though it could take “more than a year.”

Shiba Inu Vs. Dogecoin

As CNBC discusses in its article, both dog coins have dominated much of the meme coin market share in recent years. Other meme coins, such as FLOKI, fall far short of the capital that SHIB and DOGE have already been able to attract through their large fan communities.

Right now, however, Dogecoin still holds a significant lead of more than six billion dollars in market capitalization over SHIB. That lead could gradually melt away, however, according to the CNBC analysis, due to Shiba Inu’s initiatives of “unique use cases.”

“The utility is undoubtedly the most significant indicator of a project’s potential,” CNBC’s analysis states. In the case of Dogecoin, the media outlet sees the main utility as a payment method, with Twitch, AirBaltic, AMC, Tesla and GameStop, among others.

In contrast, Shiba Inu’s use cases are much broader. The project is tapping into the DeFi sector through its decentralized exchange ShibaSwap, offering NFT creation and trading, and is currently developing its own layer-2 scaling solution Shibarium. However, CNBC predicts the biggest use case will be the metaverse:

Shiba Inu’s metaverse, which is likely to debut by the end of 2023, and a number of games including Shiba Eternity, Shiba Run, and Shiba March, all contribute to the project’s growth potential as well. In contrast to Dogecoin, each of these initiatives offers a unique use case.

A second area which the analysis looks at is the on-chain data of both meme coins – specifically the number of daily active addresses. Since the beginning of the year, SHIB has averaged 5,000 to 6,000 transactions per day.

Dogecoin is still clearly ahead here. The number of daily active addresses is well over 50,000 at DOGE, indicating that its network is attracting significantly more investors. The main reasons, according to the media outlet, are its “early-mover advantage and well-known celebrity endorsers, like Elon Musk.”

CNBC’s conclusion, therefore, is:

Despite higher percentage gains and greater use cases, Shiba Inu still falls short of Dogecoin’s dominance in the meme sector. Therefore, it may take longer than a year for Shiba Inu to close that over $6 billion gap in market cap and overtake Dogecoin.

Shiba Inu Goes To Hollywood

In a recent tweet, Marcie Jastrow, advisor to the Shiba Inu Metaverse team, hinted at Hollywood’s growing interest in the virtual world. After the  National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show, she tweeted:

Well another NAB over – been a great few days of panels and interviews. Shib the Metaverse is the talk of hollywood and Shibarium can run it all – we got this shibarmy.

Yep one of the best panels due to @techcatgirl jumping in the audience and including. https://t.co/r6MTuDEiuW

— Marcie Jastrow (@marciejastrow) April 19, 2023

At press time, the SHIB price was $0.00001095. Due to the market-wide correction on the crypto market, SHIB has broken out of the ascending triangle pattern to the downside.