Why are Shiba Inu investors so pumped about Shibarium? Should you consider buying SHIB in this bearish market?

Shiba Inu is the second-largest meme-coin in the US$1.6 trillion crypto industry. SHIB has a market cap of US$11.7 billion dollars, placing it behind rival Dogecoin's US$14.7 billion market cap. Both are coins based on memes of Shiba Inu dogs and have made it clear that meme coins are no laughing matter. Both coins have a loyal following pushing for greater merchant adoption, more media attention, and even fundraising for causes. Just this week as well the cryptocurrency asset platform Binance Custody added SHIB to its platform. This allows more coin holders to have insurance against SHIB.

According to FX Street: ""An addition to Binance Custody is a key milestone for cryptocurrency projects […] the exchange offers investors the opportunity to be their bank and safeguard holdings against theft and hack."

According to Fool, Shiba Inu's only chance of hitting a US$1 valuation is if major coin burns take place. Currently, there are 549,000,000,000,000 SHIB tokens circulating in the market. A US$549 trillion valuation however would make Shiba Inu more valuable than Apple (US$2.7 trillion) and Amazon (US$1.5 trillion) put together – plus a lot more. Bigger Entertainment announced a burn of 370 million SHIB on Valentine's Day, but this hasn't done enough for SHIB's price.

Furthermore, Shiba Inu is built on Ethereum and cannot host decentralized applications or further shape the future of the cryptocurrency industry. The Shibarium metaverse is expected to see a rollout in 2022 – but again, other cryptos like Decentraland and The Sandbox are already in this space and it's not clear what difference the Shibarium will make.

Why are Shiba Inu investors so pumped about Shibarium?

The layer-2 solution will bring several benefits to the table. Most importantly, the launch of Shibarium will usher in lower transaction fees. SHIB is built on top of the Ethereum (ETH 3.98%) blockchain. As a result, its gas fees have been much higher than anyone would like. The developers behind Ethereum are working to address the issue with a major upgrade. However, Shibarium could solve the problem for Shiba Inu even more quickly.

Another thing that Shiba Inu investors eagerly await with Shibarium is a burning mechanism. There are currently over 549 trillion SHIB tokens in circulation. The only way to reduce this number is to burn existing tokens.

What are Shiba Inu Price Prediction 2022

It's time to answer the most important question – what are Shiba Inu price predictions for 2022? Before we answer, it's important to note the volatility of the market, and its inevitable risk. No one can, with 100% certainty guarantee the trends of certain assets.

However, some experts can accurately predict how Shiba Inu will perform in the following months. Market Realist, a financial media outlet, expects that the price of SHIB will go up by 620% by 2026. Coin Price Forecast has a prediction for 2022, saying that there's an expectation for Shiba Inu to reach an increase of just under 350%, bringing its value to US$0.00003174.

As you can see, there are numerous predictions that the price of SHIB will only go up, and history has shown a similar bullish trend. Slow and steady wins the race, and Shiba Inu has continuously been increasing in value.