Better Buy: Dogecoin Under $1, or Shiba Inu Under $1?

Some price goals take on a life of their own, and in crypto, many coins have long aspired to reach the mythical $1 target. It sounds like an achievable benchmark -- even when tokenomics guarantee that it isn't.

For beloved meme coins like Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE) and Shiba Inu, (CRYPTO: SHIB) reaching $1 would imply tremendous gains for holders. But which of these is the better buy today, at prices well below that mark?

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Don't get distracted here

Let's put the odds of these two assets ever actually reaching $1 into context before analyzing their investment-worthiness. At the moment, Dogecoin's price is about $0.18. Shiba Inu's price is a microscopic $0.00001.

But those figures belie the supply situation. Dogecoin's circulating supply is roughly 151.6 billion coins today. Shiba Inu's is roughly 589.2 trillion. A $1 price would thus imply a $151.6 billion market cap for Dogecoin, and an extraordinary multi-hundred-trillion number for Shiba Inu.

The math alone should reset expectations. There is no chance of Shiba Inu ever even approaching a price of $1. For Dogecoin, it would take a gain of almost six-fold to reach $1, which, while unlikely to occur on any given day, will probably happen, at least briefly, at some point in the future, when crypto market sentiment is exuberant and liquidity is easy to come by.

Shiba Inu's path to making a dent in its gigantic supply was supposed to be the Shibarium, its Layer-2 (L2) network. In theory, 70% of the Shibarium's gas (user) fees incurred from transactions on the chain are converted to Shiba Inu coins and then burned, with the rest earmarked for network upkeep.

In practice, the rate of burning has been negligible relative to the astronomical number of coins in circulation. Network activity has also been quite anemic since the L2's launch, meaning that there probably isn't anything of value that would draw new users and new capital to the chain on an enduring basis.

Dogecoin's tokenomics are clearer, though no better from an investment perspective. It issues a fixed sum of 5 billion new coins per year, which means the rate of holder dilution declines as the base grows, though it never reaches zero. In other words, Dogecoin's path to reach $1 gets marginally more difficult over time by design.

One is preferable to the other, but don't buy it

Putting aside the issue of whether these coins can reach $1, there's still the question of which one is preferable. The truth is that there isn't really an investment thesis for either of these assets, and you shouldn't be buying them if you like to grow your money.

Nevertheless, there's still a winner in this match up.

As of mid-September, there's a Dogecoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) that investors can buy in their brokerage or retirement accounts. It's the REX-Osprey DOGE ETF, and it means that capital from the traditional financial sector now has an easy path to flow into Dogecoin, regardless of whether that's a sound thing for investors to be doing.

Shiba Inu, by contrast, has no dedicated ETF yet. It recently appeared as one of several eligible assets in an active multi-crypto ETF filing, but that is a very different proposition than a spot Shiba Inu ETF trading on the market today. That gap matters for long-term capital inflows to the coin, even in the absence of fundamentals.

Therefore, if an investor insists on choosing one of the two, Dogecoin is the better pick than Shiba Inu. It has broader recognition and easier access via ETFs and other products, which could somewhat mitigate the problems with its supply policies. Still, the sober conclusion here is that neither of these coins, as designed today, offer a robust investment thesis rooted in value creation.

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