Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, Pepe Erupt For 60%, 130%, 290% Weekly Gains: Benzinga's Memecoin Mashup

The past week saw the top memecoins with proverbially "face-melting gains," with Dogecoin, Shiba Inu and Pepe exploding for triple-digit percentage surges.

What Happened: In the past 24 hours, the memecoin market cap exploded 39% to $44 billion, with a 24-hour trading volume of $17.6 billion per CoinGecko data. 

Trading activity in Bitget's Meme Zone surged, with daily trading volume on Feb. 29 up by more than 480% compared to Feb. 26. The number of daily trading users in the meme zone increased by 147% during the same period.

The gains of leading memecoins last week:

• Dogecoin DOGE/USD: +68.5%
• Shiba Inu SHIB/USD: +128%

• Pepe PEPE/USD: +292%

• Bonk BONK/USD: 130%

• Dogwifhat WIF/USD: +335%

• Floki Inu FLOKI/USD: +232%

• MAGA Memecoin TRUMP/USD: +57%

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Why It Matters: Former President Donald Trump benefited from the memecoin mania, with his crypto portfolio surging thanks to his MAGA Memecoin holdings.

The week also saw fundamental developments in several memecoins.

1. Shiba Inu not only erased a zero but also started a petition for a Shiba Inu ETF. The community further announced a major partnership with open-source cryptography company Zama to enable a new privacy-focused network on the Shibarium blockchain. Shiba Inu also saw significant whale transactions and skyrocketing burn rates.
2. Dogecoin crossed the $0.10 mark with social sentiment rocketing 600% higher, driving its market cap to $18 billion, ahead of MicroStrategy and Robinhood.
3. Dogecoin's open interest spiked to $1 billion during the week, with almost 70% traders going long on the memecoin. Analysts see "crazy" gains ahead for Dogecoin.
4. Dogwifhat has managed to become the first memecoin to taste the $1 mark. It achieved this psychological mark in record time, fueling calls for exchange listings of spot trading on Coinbase and Binance.
5. Pepe saw rising numbers of social creators, which sent the token to levels close to its all-time high of May 2023. 
6. Floki saw total value locked of $105 million, making it the only memecoin with such huge portion of supply staked. Floki also emerged as the top trending asset on the world's largest investment social network, Stocktwits, ahead of other memecoins and giants like Apple.
7. Moreover, DWF Labs announced its plans to purchase $10 million in FLOKI tokens from the community treasury over the next two years. The community is looking to burn $11 million tokens from its total circulating supply.
8. Bonk announced token burns during the week, with some significant whale movements leading to the price surge.

What’s Next: Memecoins have been the benefactors of an impressive Bitcoin rally, with the king of crypto trading above the $60,000 mark. 

Bitget Research Chief Analyst Ryan Lee sees the meme sector’s upward trajectory as a “spill-over effect” from the rise of assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum. He notes the deployment of these memecoins on ETH and Solana chains and thus, “the upward trend in ETH and SOL prices consequently drives the price appreciation of said tokens."

Another interesting take was provided on X (formerly Twitter):

The world is changing rapidly#Bitcoin went from being associated with drug money to having an ad on the Wall Street building, the heart of world finance, with the BTC ETF doing more daily volume than any other ETF

Bitcoin is probably the first-ever meme coin that people memed… pic.twitter.com/DLNuqjBsqv

— Kibshi — AI Meme Coin — meme/acc (@KiboShib) March 1, 2024

While some investors see memecoins as an invaluable investment, other traders look at them as crucial components to understanding the crypto sector.

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