DOGE v. SHIB – Before you invest, know where their liquidity ranks

• Dogecoin outperformed Bitcoin and Ethereum as per the liquidity metrics while SHIB beat its counterpart in volume.
• Despite DOGE’s excellence in market depth and spread, it provides no ground for a meme rally.

Although a large part of the crypto community considers memes to have little to no utility, Dogecoin [DOGE] and Shiba Inu [SHIB] have proven to be of service in other areas. One space where these dog-themed cryptocurrencies have continued to excel in is ‘liquidity.’

Read Dogecoin’s [DOGE] price predictions 2023-2024

Surprising right? Well, that’s because there is a general misconception about how to weigh the liquidity level of an asset. Generally, investors believe that market capitalization is the best metric to gauge the liquidity of an asset. However, that doesn’t give us a real picture. 

DOGE: BTC and ETH wear no crown in…

On 8 December 2022, Conor Ryder, cleared the air on the subject matter via his Medium page. According to the Kaiko research analyst, the volume, market depth, and spread contribute more to the liquidity than the adopted market cap.

Overall, the Kaiko data shared by Ryder placed DOGE above BTC and ETH in the liquidity ranks. This conclusion shows how the market cap alone is not the only estimate of an asset’s working capital. 

But how did DOGE edge out the crypto kings? While DOGE could not boast of a monumental volume impact, it was in third place per the market depth and spread.

The spread of an asset is determined by calculating the difference between the best bid and best ask in an order book within an interval.

Hence, an open wide spread indicates weak liquidity and vice versa. Interestingly, DOGE only lagged behind Bitcoin [BTC] and Ethereum [ETH] in terms of spread. 

The meme’s tightened spread helped it thrash the fourth-ranked cryptocurrency in market value Binance Coin [BNB]. Well, Ripple [XRP], and Cardano [ADA] also ranked below DOGE.

Source: Kaiko

In terms of the market depth, Kaiko data showed that DOGE ranked fourth, with only BTC, ETH, and XRP ahead being one of the best indicators of liquidity, the market depth considers the entire volume of open orders on the bid or ask side.  

So, with DOGE at the aforementioned position, it implied how easy it was to reveal the coin’s intrinsic value. On the other hand, SHIB did not shine in market depth. 

Its spread was also wide, making it weakling there. Regardless of the condition, excellent liquidity does not transcend to a price increase. That said, the question is- In what aspect has Shiba Inu outperformed Dogecoin and others?

SHIB: Thriving in the volume zone

Volume-wise, SHIB  was the standout token as it beat its closest competitor DOGE in the race. Of course, the widespread belief is that volume correlates to the order books. 

But several occurrences have shown that there are cases of manipulation and wash trading. So, considering the market cap and volume alone is not the best yardstick to ascertain liquidity.

Source: Kaiko

Realistic or not, here’s SHIB’s market cap in DOGE’s terms

However, data from Santiment showed that DOGE thumped SHIB as per on-chain volume at press time. While SHIB was 434.36 million, DOGE’s volume was 594.71 million. But an evaluation of the last six months confirmed that SHIB beat its counterpart in that regard.

Source: Santiment