Bitcoin is still worth buying, but not Shiba Inu.
2026 has not been kind to cryptocurrency investors so far. Most major tokens declined as investors worried about high interest rates, macroeconomic headwinds and competition from traditional commodities like gold and silver.
However, instead of avoiding the entire crypto sector, investors should probably just be more selective about the coins they buy. It always makes sense to buy blue-chip leaders like Bitcoin (BTC +3.20%)but it might also be better to avoid altcoins like Shiba Inu (SHIB +2.67%).
Image source: Getty Images.
The token to buy: Bitcoin
Bitcoin’s price is down about 30% over the past 12 months, but it remains the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency, with a market capitalization of $1.4 trillion. It is also still up over 70% over the past five years, even after going through a freezing crypto winter in 2022 and 2023.
Bitcoin has seen wild price swings during this period, falling from around $68,000 in November 2021 to a multi-year low of around $16,000 in November 2022. Yet it has recovered from this swoon thanks to several catalysts.
Today’s change
(3.20%) $2175.66
Current price
$70153.00
Key Data Points
Market capitalization
$1.4 billion
Daily scope
$67677.00 -$70616.00
52 week range
$60255.56 -$126079.89
Volume
52B
Falling interest rates pushed investors toward Bitcoin and other riskier assets, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) finally approved its first spot-price exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and the token underwent its final halving – which halves its mining rewards every 4 years – in 2024. More institutional investors have accumulated Bitcoin as a hedge against inflation, and more companies and countries have created ” Bitcoin Treasures.”
Bitcoin will remain volatile in this volatile market, but it has clear advantages over other cryptocurrencies. It is still actively mined with powerful computer chips, its supply cap is 21 million tokens, and almost 20 million of these tokens have already been mined.
As we head toward Bitcoin’s next halving in 2028, its scarcity could make it more comparable to gold or silver. If this happens, its price could stabilize and rise again as investors revalue it to protect against the monetary expansion of fiat currencies.
The token to avoid: Shiba Inu
Meanwhile, investors should avoid smaller coins like Shiba Inu, which have lost almost 60% of their value over the past 12 months. Shiba was created as a parody of Dogecoin (DOGE +2.34%)itself a parody of Bitcoin, in 2020. It has risen about 12,000 times since its market debut in 2020, but three issues could limit its upside potential over the next few years.
First, Shiba Inu cannot be exploited. Its creators have struck its entire reserve of a quadrillion chips on EthereumIt is (ETH +4.64%) blockchain. Nearly half of these tokens were burned, but most were burned by Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, to whom the Shiba Inu development team gifted over 500 trillion SHIB tokens in 2020.
Today’s change
(2.67%) $0.00
Current price
$0.00
Key Data Points
Market capitalization
$3.7 billion
Daily scope
$0.00 -$0.00
52 week range
$0.00 -$0.00
Volume
161M
Therefore, it is unlikely that Shiba Inu will ever be valued due to its scarcity in the same way as Bitcoin. This makes it a weak hedge against the devaluation of fiat currencies.
Second, the SEC has not approved any spot price ETFs for Shiba Inu. T. Rowe Price filed an application for the first Shiba Inu ETF last November, but it’s unclear if it will ever be approved. The lack of a spot-price ETF will likely limit its appeal to institutional investors.
Finally, Shiba Inu is not as useful as Ethereum, which supports tens of thousands of developers across its Layer 1 (L1) blockchain and Layer 2 (L2) rollups. Shiba Inu offers its own L2 blockchain, Shibarium, to support the development of Ethereum-compatible applications at higher speeds, but it will likely never become a major development platform.
Shiba Inu might attract some traders in the short term, but I think it will disappear within a few years. However, Bitcoin could still rebound once its near-term headwinds dissipate.
