The once-hyped meme coin sector continues to lose momentum, and Shiba Inu (SHIB) has not been spared — down roughly 65% over the past year. Trading near $0.000005031 with a market capitalization of around $2.93 billion, SHIB currently sits around the 35th spot among all cryptocurrencies. Yet a crucial on-chain metric is flashing a potential silver lining.
Data from CryptoQuant shows that the amount of SHIB held on centralized exchanges has tumbled to a five-year low of approximately 79.8 trillion tokens. This decline suggests that investors are increasingly moving their holdings to self-custody wallets, effectively reducing the immediate supply available for selling. Such a trend often precedes reduced sell pressure and can lay the groundwork for a price rebound. One market analyst on X, Nehal, described SHIB as “dangerously ignored” at current levels, adding that a 40–50% jump would not be surprising.
Despite this bullish divergence, several headwinds remain. The SHIB burn rate has dropped 62% in a single day, removing only a negligible amount from the enormous circulating supply of around 590 trillion tokens. Meanwhile, Shibarium — the project’s layer‑2 solution designed for faster and cheaper transactions — has seen daily volumes collapse since a damaging exploit last year, falling from millions of transactions to just hundreds or thousands.
However, a separate analysis introduces a “mean reversion” roadmap that could dramatically reshape SHIB’s market standing. With the token deeply oversold after a prolonged decline, a short squeeze could push prices back toward key historical benchmarks such as the 200‑week moving average and the Point of Control (the level of maximum trading volume). The scenario breaks down into two stages:
The $3.87 billion case (daily chart): A snap back to the 200‑day curve and daily POC would lift SHIB’s market cap to $3.87 billion, vaulting it over Avalanche, NEAR Protocol, Sui, Litecoin, and Hedera to rank 24th.
The $7.37 billion case (weekly chart): A macro move toward the 200‑week moving average and weekly POC would push the market cap to $7.37 billion, allowing SHIB to overtake Cardano, Toncoin, Monero, Chainlink, and Canton CC, landing directly behind Stellar at 14th place.
Adding fuel to the speculative fire is a filing by investment giant T. Rowe Price for a spot multi‑crypto ETF that includes an allocation to SHIB. Such an institutional inflow could create the liquidity imbalance needed to trigger the mean reversion effect. While bearish signals like the struggling burn rate and Shibarium slowdown cannot be ignored, the combination of vanishing exchange supply and a favorable technical structure has put the token in a unique position for a potential turnaround.
