Which Cryptocurrency Could Be a Millionaire-Maker? Shiba Inu vs. Chainlink

Key Points

• Chainlink is in testing by financial institutions.

• It also has a clear path for its coin to gain in value with more usage.

• Shiba Inu's layer-2 blockchain is its main hope of becoming more valuable.

• 10 stocks we like better than Shiba Inu ›

When it comes to assets that investors look to for 100-fold returns that would make them millionaires, cryptocurrencies are often near the top of the list. And with many tales of meme coins like Shiba Inu (CRYPTO: SHIB) and altcoins like Chainlink (CRYPTO: LINK) making investors rich overnight, it's no surprise why.

But are those tales just leftovers from yesteryear, or are those two assets still potential millionaire-makers today? Let's take a look at each and analyze where they stand.

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Chainlink has a real engine for value capture

Chainlink is the leading oracle coin and cross-blockchain interoperability network.

In short, it delivers price feeds and messages that power lending apps in decentralized finance (DeFi), tokenized asset funds, and even some cross-chain transfers. Its data services now touch roughly $100 billion of on-chain value as of this month, which is a very strong proxy for how critical its services have become to the crypto sector. And although it has many smaller competitors, none are even 10% of its size, and none appear likely to threaten its dominance anytime soon.

It's also becoming a favorite of financial institutions working on the blockchain as a result of a few successful pilot programs. Even older financial services providers like SWIFT have been running experiments with Chainlink.

That usage, plus a lot of usage from other types of customers, feeds through to the coin's value directly. Chainlink's economics are designed so users pay for data oracle services they use, and other participants can stake LINK, the chain's native crypto, to help secure those services and generate a return.

Skeptics will rightly note that not every pilot program becomes a paycheck and not every integration translates to rising token value if there isn't much usage volume generated. Still, the investment thesis here is that more assets, data, and institutions depend on Chainlink each quarter, which raises switching costs and expands the set of revenue funnels where paying in LINK is the default. If that continues, the asset has a clear trajectory toward continuing to gain in value.

Does that equate to millionaire-maker potential? Not on a short time scale, and probably not at all.

Its market cap of $16 billion could (and likely will) increase by several multiples during the coming years as a result of increasing adoption, and it would still not be enough for most investors to become rich, at least not without making an excessively large investment upfront.

This dog coin still faces the same headwinds it always has

Shiba Inu doesn't have any utility like Chainlink does. But it does have widespread name recognition, a history of going to the moon at least once before, and the ability to eternally ignite the hopes of investors looking for millions. For now, the only real way it can increase in value is by fickle bursts of hype within an environment of euphoric market sentiment, which is nothing to base an investment on.

There is, however, a (fairly improbable) avenue by which it could generate lasting traction and demand for the token.

That way is the Shibarium Layer-2 (L2) chain. Originally conceived as a way to make the chain into a destination for gaming, DeFi, and perhaps even non-fungible tokens (NFTs), every action taken by users on the Shibarium burns some Shiba Inu, which in theory over time could constrict the coins in circulation and increase their value.

Despite a large historical transaction count, current levels of activity are very modest, with about 9,600 daily transactions and minimal daily fees, which is quite thin for a network meant to be the ecosystem's growth engine. Its DeFi data tells a similar story. Total value locked (TVL) on Shibarium's seldom-used decentralized exchanges (DEXes) sits near $1.7 million, indicating a very limited pool of capital at work relative to larger L2s.

So the Shibarium is not going to juice the value of Shiba Inu sufficiently to make it a good investment, and talk of it making investors into millionaires is, at this point in time, equivalent to a pipe dream.

Could that change? It might, but it will require sustained reasons to use the chain that are not primarily meme-driven. That means useful applications and measurable growth in fee volume, and as of now, those ingredients are missing.

Thus, neither of these coins belong in the likely millionaire-maker club.

Between the two of them, Chainlink is by far the better contender, as it does have a pretty good runway for a significant amount of growth. It's still worth buying and holding for the next few years or so for wealth-building purposes -- but the same can't be said of Shiba Inu.

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Alex Carchidi has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Chainlink. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.