Shiba Inu lead developer Shytoshi Kusama responded to inquiries regarding the ambitious goal of burning 99% of the circulating supply of SHIB tokens. Kusama initially reached out to the community by inviting questions for his podcast, stating, “What topic or question would you like to hear on my podcast? #shy.”

Burning 99% of Shiba Inu tokens ‘can be achieved’

This call for engagement set the stage for further discussions on a potential token burning strategy. Fang Zhang, CFO of LSP Finance, directly asked about the feasibility and strategic planning behind such an extensive fire: “Schedule and action plan for burning 99% of the Shib token in circulation, please.”

In response to Zhang’s query, Kusama provided that explaining the challenges and considerations involved in burning 99% of SHIB tokens. He acknowledged that such an endeavor is historically improbable, noting, “Just a few years ago, burning 99% of Shib would have seemed impossible, but thanks to multiple projects coming together to achieve this monumental task, it is possible.”

Kusama detailed the conditions necessary to achieve this result, highlighting the adoption of the Shib technology stack in many projects, especially large-scale ones, to facilitate combustion. “More and more projects, or a few very large ones, need to adopt the Shib technology stack,” said SHIB’s lead developer.

Kusama highlighted several significant obstacles to achieving the burn target. He explained that if the combustion process starts to accelerate, it could cause the price of SHIB to raise as investors expect a pointed raise, making combustion more pricey and thus slowing down the process. “Assuming things start to rise sharply, people will buy considering the price will fall. In this case, it would be more pricey to burn the Shiba, which would tardy down the burning,” Kusama said.

Additionally, he emphasized that the strategic goal of combustion is as significant as the combustion process itself, saying: “It is not the combustion itself that counts, but [the] intention.”

Moreover, Kusama pointed out that symbolic burns are not the only path to SHIB success. He said it’s equally significant to develop memecoin’s utility, noting: “Finally, burns aren’t the only way Shib wins. If I say I’m zooming in, it would take ANY LONG TIME, it’s not short enough for fudders. So we are finding other ways to make memecoin useful and making sure that through viral distribution we get to a point where people no longer want to burn the token.”

He stressed the importance of increasing the utility of SHIB through mechanisms such as staking and developing up-to-date operate cases for related tokens such as BONE, LEASH and Treat.

The proposed burning of 99% of the total SHIB supply would cause extreme shortages. If demand remains stable or increases, the reduced supply could lead to a significant raise in the value of any remaining SHIB token. This change has the potential to elevate SHIB from its current status as a low-cost meme token to a more valuable asset.

However, Kusama clarified that such incineration would be a gradual process, driven by the adoption and integration of SHIB technology across projects, likely over several years, rather than an immediate reduction.

At press time, SHIB is trying to break the 0.5 Fibonacci retracement level at $0.00002823. This technical level was derived from the March 5 high of $0.00004567 and the local low of $0.00001067 observed on August 5. In the brief term, a successful break above the 0.5 Fib level could pave the way for the 0.618 Fib target at $0.00003235.

Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com