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Meme coin mania isn't slowing down.
Solana's dog-themed token BONK just hit a new all-time high overnight at $0.00000669. CoinGecko data shows that the cryptocurrency is now trading for just shy of that at $0.00000653—a 24-hour rise of 33%.
Even more impressive is its surge over the month: The asset has continued to boom and is now up about 762%.
The token was launched in December 2022, but experienced a renewed surge in interest—and price—last month. This is at least partly down to the piqued investor attention over Solana, the blockchain on which BONK runs.
Solana's own native token, SOL, is now the sixth-largest digital asset by market cap. Renewed enthusiasm in the Solana ecosystem has resulted in SOL exploding in value multiple times over the past several weeks.
SOL remains well off its all-time high price of nearly $260 set in late 2021—around the same time other top coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum set their respective peaks—but has rebounded substantially since falling to nearly $8 in late 2022.
Collapsed crypto exchange FTX invested in both Solana and projects built on top of it. But when the exchange went bankrupt last year, the association appeared to drag down Solana even harder than other coins.
And when disgraced ex-CEO of the exchange (and now convicted crook) Sam Bankman-Fried had his criminal trial, some investors thought the price would drop once more. But the opposite happened as a short squeeze—when price of an asset goes up unexpectedly due to short sellers exiting their positions—made SOL one of November's best-performers.
Interest from the likes of Visa and Shopify also led to money flooding in to the ecosystem. And all of this has arguably helped the price of its most prominent meme coin, BONK.
Meme coins are digital coins and tokens which are based on Internet memes and jokes. They are usually very volatile and disappear as quickly as they spring into existence.
Though some, such as Dogecoin (DOGE) and rival Shiba Inu (SHIB), have stuck around—they are the 10th and 19th biggest digital assets by market cap, respectively.
But despite BONK's boom, it still has a long way before it reaches the heights of multi-billion-dollar assets like DOGE and SHIB: With a market cap of $397 million, it is only the 133rd largest digital currency per data from CoinGecko.
Edited by Andrew Hayward