Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB) are lighting up crypto forums again, but fresh valuation analysis reveals a harsh truth: one of these meme coins could theoretically hit $10 in some wild future scenario, while the other faces a supply wall that makes the target completely impossible.

Dogecoin's Mountain Is Steep But Climbable

Let's start with the numbers. Dogecoin has a circulating supply sitting around 161.6 billion tokens. Simple multiplication puts a $10 price tag at roughly $1.62 trillion in market capitalization.

That's enormous. We're talking about a valuation in the neighborhood of Bitcoin's (BTC) current market cap, and well above most global equity markets. Add in DOGE's permanent inflation rate of about 5 billion new coins annually, and that bar keeps climbing year after year.

Analysts point out that getting there would demand serious real-world adoption, institutional money flowing through vehicles like a DOGE ETF, and a massive expansion of the entire digital asset ecosystem. Even in the most optimistic scenarios, DOGE at $10 is an extreme tail-risk case, not something anyone should bank on. But here's the thing: it's not mathematically insane.

Shiba Inu Hits a Supply Wall Made of Concrete

Now let's talk about Shiba Inu, where the math gets truly absurd.

With a circulating supply hovering around 589 trillion tokens, a $10 price would create a market value of nearly $5.89 quadrillion. Yes, quadrillion with a Q.

For context, global stock markets combined are valued at roughly $126 trillion. Bond markets add several hundred trillion more on top of that. SHIB's hypothetical $10 valuation would be more than 40 times larger than the entire world's equity system. It's not just unlikely—it's functionally impossible under any reasonable economic framework.

Even the most bullish research projections for SHIB estimate future prices in fractions of a cent. Token burns do exist, but they're nowhere near large enough to offset the massive supply overhang. To make $10 mathematically viable, SHIB would need to burn more than 99.999% of its supply. No current roadmap or governance proposal comes close to suggesting that kind of transformation.

The Unit Price Trap That Snares Retail Traders

Here's where things get interesting for everyday investors. Low per-coin prices look appealing on the surface, creating the illusion that a token has "room to run" simply because it trades for fractions of a dollar. But supply matters more than unit price when you're calculating realistic upside.

Dogecoin, with its relatively lower supply and cultural staying power, has demonstrated the ability to revisit prior highs and potentially reach multi-dollar price levels during extreme bull runs. Shiba Inu, by contrast, would need an unprecedented supply overhaul to escape the constraints imposed by its trillion-level token count.

Both assets still offer speculative upside linked to meme coin liquidity, exchange listings, and shifting investor sentiment. But when you look at current supply dynamics, adoption levels, and valuation structures, only one has a path to dramatically higher prices that doesn't require rewriting the laws of economics.

If Bitcoin expands the overall crypto market and retail money rotates back into legacy meme assets, Dogecoin could still post significant percentage gains. The same can't be said for reaching $10 on SHIB without a supply miracle that simply isn't coming.