This week, the meme coin market once again seized the spotlight, with some gigantic price moves and several noteworthy events enthusing the market.
The meme coin market cap now is up considerably since last week and is heading back toward all-time highs. Overall, the meme coin market seems to be back with a vengeance, with some impressive price action. Whether this durably marks the meme coin market’s resurgence remains to be seen, but analysts this week have taken the meme coin space seriously enough to credibly discuss its potential again.
One of the most astonishing developments this week has been the phenomenal growth of PumpSwap, which has reached a gigantic $1.52 billion in trading volume in just its first week of operations. PumpSwap, a decentralized exchange (DEX) built on the Solana blockchain, has rapidly caught attention by seizing 19% of the market share, despite Raydium’s commanding 45%.
PumpSwap is emerging as a significant contender in the Solana ecosystem, having garnered 441,000 active wallets. Its rapid rise can be attributed to the small-scale trading of retail investors. This surge has been principally driven by trades under $10, of which 65% can be classified as happening under this threshold. The platform’s user-friendly interface, coupled with the Solana network’s solid reputation for providing fast and low-cost transactions, makes it a fairly accessible platform for retail investors to jump into the meme coin frenzy.
In an unforeseen development, the TRUMP coin, which has been a staple in the meme coin scene, saw a big price bump after former President Donald Trump endorsed it on his Truth Social platform. He called the token the “greatest,” and the price and trading volume surged with that pronouncement. The coin’s price jumped to $12.25, up 10%; and its volume swelled up 375%. Coin price: $12.25 Price change: 10% up Trading volume: $13 million
TRUMP’s market cap reached a high of $2.37 billion during the peak of the rally, making it one of the meme coins with the largest market cap. But what goes up must come down, and shortly after that high, the price of the token started fading. This sharp increase and subsequent decline give you a good sense of how wildly meme coins can swing. Their price action seems much more influenced by sentiment and social media endorsement than anything else.
If we consider the larger market, meme coins on Solana, Ethereum, and Binance Smart Chain have done exceedingly well. Of those on Solana, the tokens FART and MEW performed best, bursting forth with gains of 50% and 44%, respectively. Interest has been growing in not just Solana itself but also the meme-based assets that are springing up on the layer-one blockchain. Another Solana-based meme token, BONK, is continuing its push upward and has shown solid growth the past couple of weeks.
Meme tokens built on Ethereum weren’t left behind, either. SPX, which had been facing some recent challenges, skyrocketed by 47%—in spite of a locked X account creating some uncertainties. Meanwhile, Binance Smart Chain (BSC) token MUBARAK and AIC continued their upward trajectory, increasing by 20% and 7% respectively, signaling continued growth within the BSC meme coin market.
This week brought some interesting advancements in decentralized finance (DeFi) and elsewhere. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) executed a test of Miner Extractable Value (MEV) with a 24.7x leveraged MUBARAK trade. The net result was a 26% bump in the APX token and a 5.5% increase in MUBARAK, drawing some attention back to the ongoing challenges and opportunities in the DeFi space.
In other news, GameStop—the video game retailer that gained notoriety during the GameStop short squeeze of 2021—secured $1.3 billion in a convertible debt offering. The money is meant to buy Bitcoin, which further underscores the company’s not-so-secret pivot into the world of digital currencies. This development is indicative of a broader trend of retail companies in the traditional financial sector moving toward digital assets. Despite a tanking crypto market, Bitcoin’s ascendance to mainstream acceptance appears to be a driver for that trend.
Certainly, this week, the meme coin market has been a rollercoaster with a lot of ups and downs. We witnessed the meteoric rise of PumpSwap, for example, and the completely random surge of TRUMP token that seems to have happened because Donald Trump endorsed it. Yet, it seems that the sector can take these wild moves in stride. For one, there are new meme coins popping up all the time, and even if they don’t live up to whatever promise they parade around, they at least seem to serve as good vibes to keep the whole meme coin thing going.
The meme coin market is still volatile, but it’s apparent that meme coins are no longer a trend of the moment. Their rising adoption—along with several developments in DeFi and on blockchain platforms like Solana, Ethereum, and Binance Smart Chain—suggests that meme coins are around for the foreseeable future. Investors and enthusiasts will continue to stay close to this space as more platforms emerge and the next developments in the future of meme coins take shape.
Disclosure: This is not trading or investment advice. Always do your research before buying any cryptocurrency or investing in any services.
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