Better Buy: Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, or Bitcoin?

Key Points

Bitcoin has underperformed Dogecoin during the past five years. Dogecoin still has a more difficult growth path than Bitcoin. Shiba Inu should, in theory, have an easier time growing than Dogecoin. 10 stocks we like better than Dogecoin ›

Is it worth chasing meme coins like Dogecoin(CRYPTO: DOGE) and Shiba Inu (CRYPTO: SHIB), or should you keep it simple and buy Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC), the big and boring asset that large investors are actually accumulating? Considering that Dogecoin is up by 5,800% during the last five years, and Bitcoin is up by 560%, that question is not as simple as it seems at first glance.

But thinking it through will clarify the right course of action, so let's get down to it.Image source: Getty Images.

Scarcity is an edge that's hard to replicate in crypto

One very important piece of the puzzle here is supply.

There can only ever be 21 million bitcoins, and the reward for mining a block of it halves about every four years, meaning that it gets exponentially more difficult to produce over time. Although Bitcoin's issuance rate keeps trending lower, demand for it can rise with adoption among the big players in the traditional financial system, which is a classic setup for long-term price appreciation. But in the absence of demand, its price will still drop, just like any other asset.

In this case, demand for Bitcoin is not theoretical, and it doesn't appear to be just a flash in the pan either.

Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) opened a mainstream on-ramp for capital in 2024, and within a year, they've attracted tens of billions of dollars of net inflows. The success of these ETFs doesn't guarantee the coin's performance, but they do indicate that structurally persistent buyers (the asset managers issuing the ETFs) are removing supply from the open market and parking it for the long haul.

And, because Bitcoin isn't a fiat currency, it can't be printed by any one group. That independence is another important part of its investment thesis, as it opens the door to the coin's value, conferring the same amount of purchasing power in the face of monetary phenomena like inflation.

Dilution and uselessness weigh on the memes

For what it might lack in excitement, Bitcoin is established, and it won't be going to zero anytime soon. But, Dogecoin and Shiba Inu have shown over the past years that, at least for being meme coins, they're fairly persistent too.

Both Dogecoin and Shiba Inu are fun in the sense that they let investors feel like they're a part of a community, and the two can run significantly during speculative upswings. But fun is not an investment thesis, and once again, the supply part of the story is key, especially considering that neither of the pair has anything in the way of real utility.

Story Continues

Dogecoin mints a fixed 5 billion new coins every year, and it has no supply cap, which means holders face perpetual dilution. That issuance rate declines as the base grows, yet new supply never stops reaching the market. As of late 2025, Dogecoin's circulating supply was roughly 151.6 billion coins, which makes that annual 5 billion issuance a meaningful headwind for the purpose of long-term value compounding.

To its credit, Shiba Inu tries to counter dilution with coin burns that take coins out of circulation and a Layer-2 (L2) network called the Shibarium, which was its bid to tack on some utility after it became a popular meme coin.

In theory, activity on the Shibarium can burn tokens, which, on paper, makes it look better than Dogecoin. In practice, burns have been sporadic and modest relative to the supply, and the volume of traffic on the chain is extremely low, so there isn't much hope for the average pace of the coin burns to change. Similarly, Shibarium's bridging mechanics can burn tokens upon their withdrawal to another chain, but that's not the same as a binding issuance schedule like Bitcoin has.

Could Dogecoin or Shiba Inu still deliver big bursts of upside? Yes, when the market gets frothy, meme coins can outperform for a spell, but that's not to be confused with a real investment thesis or a good long-term opportunity.

The underlying tokenomics still require ever-greater waves of newcomers to overcome steady dilution or to produce sufficient burn velocity, which, in case it isn't obvious, is an impossible game to win for a decade straight.

There's no contest here

Between these three coins, the only one worth buying is Bitcoin, and it is not a close contest in any way. The other two assets are more likely to lose you money in the long run than they are to deliver on your dreams of them going to the moon.

If you want a practical plan for how to invest in Bitcoin, set a small recurring purchase via dollar-cost averaging (DCAing) that you can stick with through thick and thin.

Assuming that you can hold for a span of years and that you size your position modestly, the odds favor investors accumulating the scarce asset that more financial institutions are buying over time rather than the memes that need ever more speculative oxygen to keep the fire burning.

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Alex Carchidi has positions in Bitcoin. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Better Buy: Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, or Bitcoin? was originally published by The Motley Fool

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