While they are issued by smart contract blockchains with base layer currencies like Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL), meme coins have fetched far greater gains in a shorter period of time than the most established cryptos.
Bitcoin, for example, gained 347% from key price support at a Dec. 31, 2022 low level of $16,500 to an all-time high Bitcoin price of $73,800 on Mar. 14, 2024. Ether, meanwhile, gained 234% from a Dec. 31, 2022 low level of $1,200 to an all-time high Ethereum price of $4,000 on Mar. 11, 2024.
How about meme currencies, then?
Dogwifhat (WIF), a Solana Program Library (SPL) meme currency, sporting a dog with a knitted beanie cap on, gained 700% this year on a monthly time scale by the time it reached its all-time high price of $3.25 on Mar. 14, same day as Bitcoin reached its ATH.
Pepe (PEPE), an Ethereum ERC-20 meme coin, heralded by a cartoon frog with green skin and orange lips, gained 1,100% this year in just three months by the time it reached its all-time high price of $0.0000167 on May 27.
Bonk (BONK), a Solana Program Library (SPL) meme coin launched on Dec. 25, 2022, returned the most profits to investors out of any cryptocurrency in 2023. That was after increasing by 1,000% in one month by early Dec. 2023.
Are Meme Coins Investments?
Meme coins can periodically experience sudden rallies, during which the price of the currency against the dollar, stablecoins, and base layer tokens goes parabolic. That’s how memes post such enormous gains.
In order to capture these gains for their portfolio, a trader must follow the crypto news and social media channels closely, and be ready to sell some of their meme tokens at an opportune time.
Meme currencies are also subject to price crashes that are just as sudden.
So, they are even more volatile investments than base-layer cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Five of the top six biggest price losers among the Top 100 cryptocurrencies this week were meme coins.
1. Dog Daze: WIF Price Down 25%
For the seven days ending Aug. 17, early Saturday evening in Washington, D.C., Dogwifhat fell 21% from above the $1.80 level to below the $1.40 level. Within the week, WIF missed the ball by over 25%.
Over the 30-day window, WIF is down by 35% even after bouncing 27% daily off the Black Monday market free fall. So Dogwifhat was a dead cat this August.
2. BRETT (Based) Falls 19% In A Week
Brett-based tokens (BRETT), a meme currency issued and secured by Coinbase’s Ethereum Layer-2 Base Protocol (BASE), have fallen over 19% in the past seven days. They finished the seven-day window down 17% over their average crypto exchange price on Aug. 10.
The Coinbase friend of Pepe hopped down the price chart from ten cents per token to eight cents a token over the week. But that puts the Coinbase meme coin on sale over its prices for most of the year since May.
3. Froggy Traders Sell PEPE Down 15%
The leading PEPE token on Ethereum is currently ranked 25th among all cryptocurrencies by total market cap. That’s impressive given that the crypto launched just last year during the spring of 2023.
The PEPE price was down over 11% for the seven days preceding Saturday evening in New York City but fell more than 15% within the week. Pepe is one of those math coins with a ton of zeros behind the decimal.
4. Sorry Solana: BONK Crashes 12%
Layer-1 DeFi coin Solana is down the most this week among Top 10 cryptos, down some 8% on the 7D chart, compared to Bitcoin down 2.6% and Ethereum notching even for the week.
Meanwhile, Bonk (BONK)— Solana’s biggest doge meme coin— was one of the top five losers among all Top 100 cryptocurrencies this week. Bonk price crashed over 12% to end the week.
The $1.25 billion market cap meme coin had a blowout year last year after a sector-wide historic rally in Q4. When Solana price rallies, Bonk usually rallies even more. And when meme coins are flying off exchanges, Bonk usually does very well too.
