Shiba Inu is having a rough month. The token's price sits at $0.000004078, down 17% over the past 30 days and a staggering 95% below its late-2021 all-time high. Market cap has slipped below $2.5 billion. The burn rate dropped 54% in the last week. And Shibarium, the layer-2 network meant to power the ecosystem, saw daily transactions fall from millions to just hundreds.
Yet amid the gloom, the number of SHIB wallets surged to nearly 1.7 million, with roughly 75,000 new holders piling in during a single day. The token also briefly lost its spot as the second-largest meme coin to upstart MemeCore (M) before reclaiming it after MemeCore's double-digit collapse.
Physical SHIB and the ETF snub
Rakuten Wallet, the crypto arm of the Japanese e-commerce giant, added a physical SHIB coin to its 'Real Coin' series this week. The move gives SHIB a tangible presence in Japan, a market where physical crypto collectibles have found a niche audience. But the token didn't get the same treatment from T. Rowe Price. The asset manager's newly launched crypto ETF left SHIB off the list of underlying assets, a reminder that institutional products still largely bypass the meme-coin sector.
Government moves and market pressure
The U.S. government transferred $250,000 worth of SHIB seized from FTX and Alameda Research, presumably to repay creditors. The transfer adds to the selling pressure that has weighed on the token for weeks. The burn rate decline — down 54% over the past seven days — means fewer tokens are being removed from circulation, a metric that SHIB's community has long treated as a bullish signal.
Shibarium slowdown and wallet paradox
Shibarium's daily transaction count collapsed from millions to hundreds. That's a stark drop for a network that was supposed to drive utility and reduce supply through burns. The slowdown raises questions about whether the layer-2 chain is attracting real usage or just speculative activity. Meanwhile, the wallet count tells a different story. Nearly 1.7 million addresses now hold SHIB, and the one-day influx of 75,000 new holders suggests retail interest hasn't dried up entirely. It's a paradox: more people are holding, but fewer are transacting on the ecosystem's core infrastructure.
Meme coin rankings shuffle
SHIB briefly lost its title as the second-largest meme coin by market cap to MemeCore (M). The flip didn't last long — MemeCore suffered a double-digit crash, handing the position back to SHIB. The episode underscores how volatile the meme-coin hierarchy has become. SHIB's grip on the No. 2 spot is weaker than it was a year ago, and the gap to Dogecoin at the top remains enormous.
For now, SHIB's price action and on-chain metrics tell a different story from the wallet numbers. The new holders are a bright spot, but they haven't translated into higher transaction volume on Shibarium or a reversal in the burn rate. Whether that changes depends on whether the ecosystem can turn those dormant wallets into active users.
