BONK NFTs Boom—But Solana-Based Meme Token Is Down 69% Since Peak

BONK fever is still raging in the Solana community, as an NFT collection inspired by the dog-themed meme token launched, quickly sold out, and now is trading for 10 times the original sale price. However, the actual Solana-based BONK token is still shedding value after last week’s surge, now down 69% from the peak price.

BONKz, a Solana NFT collection co-created by the contributors behind the BONK token, debuted this morning on the Magic Eden marketplace and sold through all 15,000 of the tokenized profile pictures (PFPs) in a matter of hours.

The NFTs sold for 16.25 million BONK apiece—just $26 worth—but they’re commanding a significant premium on the secondary market. Currently, the floor price (or price of cheapest listed NFT) on Magic Eden is 17 SOL, or about $280. Already, the project has yielded about $913,000 worth of trading as measured in SOL.

The BONKz project artwork includes contributions from Solana creative studio OMNI (The Fracture) and artists such as John Lê and Degen Poet. All of the BONK that was spent on today’s mint—some 165 billion BONK, or about $255,000 worth—was burned, meaning permanently destroyed, by the creators in an effort to reduce the overall token supply.

Despite the buzz around the NFT project launch and its post sell-out surge, the BONK token itself is actually down almost 4% on the day after a couple of earlier up-and-down swings over the past 24 hours, according to data from CoinGecko, landing at a current price of $0.00000151.

The token, which is similar to Dogecoin and the Ethereum-based Shiba Inu (SHIB), has now fallen 69% since peaking at $0.00000487 less than a week ago, on January 5. Even so, the token’s price is up 86% over the last week, with those opposing double-digit figures suggesting just how volatile its market swings have been.

BONK launched in December as trillions of the token were airdropped to members of the Solana community, including decentralized app builders, NFT project creators and artists, and even holders of various NFT collections starting on December 25.

The token then began its rapid ascent; at one point last week, BONK was up 3,300% on the week despite having just fallen 54% in price in less than 12 hours. Meme coins like BONK, SHIB, and DOGE are heavily impacted by social media sentiment, as seen with the long history of Dogecoin price swings attributed to Elon Musk tweets.

BONK has been up and down the last few weeks, but it has apparently inspired renewed buzz around the Solana space. Amid trading momentum and growing adoption of the token from apps and services, the price of SOL has doubled since crashing to a nearly two-year low just above $8 before the end of 2022. Currently, SOL sits at $16.50, per CoinGecko.