If You'd Invested $100 In Shiba Inu (SHIB) 5 Years Ago, Here's How Much You'd Have Today

Key Points

• Five years ago, Shiba Inu was a small meme coin that hardly anybody knew about.

• A $100 investment would now be worth a fortune.

• But very few people get rich investing in meme coins.

• 10 stocks we like better than Shiba Inu ›

Meme coins don't take themselves too seriously, but that doesn't stop people from buying them. Shiba Inu (CRYPTO: SHIB) is worth $7.3 billion (as of Aug. 21), enough to make it one of the 25 largest cryptocurrencies.

For investors who do their homework on everything in their portfolio, the continued success of meme coins is perplexing. Once you see the kind of returns meme coins can offer, it's easier to understand.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Learn More »

Image source: Getty Images.

From $100 to over $10 million

Shiba Inu has always traded at a fraction of $0.01, because it started with a massive supply of 1 quadrillion tokens. On Aug. 21, 2020, it closed at a price of $0.000000000117. If you'd bought $100 worth, you would've gotten about 855 billion SHIB tokens.

The price at the time of this writing is $0.000012. Your 855 billion tokens would now be worth about $10.3 million. You'd be in the two-comma club, just from putting $100 into a meme coin five years ago.

Therein lies the appeal of meme coins. They're long shots, to put it lightly, and the vast majority go nowhere. But a select few take off and deliver life-changing profits to early investors.

The odds are stacked against you when buying meme coins

It's easy to fall victim to survivorship bias when looking at meme coins. You hear about Shiba Inu, Dogecoin, and a few others that have had success, but not the thousands of meme coins that nobody buys.

Even with successful meme coins, you need to get in very early. Five years ago, Shiba Inu had less than $10,000 in daily trading volume, and there was no reason to expect it would take off.

While the entire crypto market is risky, there are legitimate investment opportunities. Meme coins, on the other hand, are a roll of the dice.

Should you invest $1,000 in Shiba Inu right now?

Before you buy stock in Shiba Inu, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Shiba Inu wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $649,657!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,090,993!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,057% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 185% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of August 18, 2025

Lyle Daly 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.