Meme coin of the moment Bonk (BONK) and the blockchain it runs on continue to attract substantial investor interest. Right now, Solana-based BONK is the best-performing cryptocurrency and has soared 101% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.
The dog-themed token is trading hands for $0.00002913. In the past seven days, it has risen by over 130%.
And over the past month, the token has shot up in value by 988%. The meme coin—a volatile coin or token that is based on an Internet joke or meme—has continued to soar and is constantly setting new all-time highs. Earlier Friday, BONK spiked to a new all-time high price of $0.00003416 before dipping.
As BONK has surged in price, it has fueled surprising new demand for the Solana Saga smartphone, which launched in April but appeared to have middling demand. The phone dropped to a price of $599 in August—but sales just spiked this week as Solana fans realized that Saga owners could claim an airdrop of 30 million BONK, which was quickly rising to match the price of the phone itself.
Now, that much BONK is worth approximately $865, more than the price of the smartphone itself. Solana founder Raj Gokal said Thursday that sales had jumped by 10x over the previous 48 hours, and Solana Labs announced early Friday that the phone had fully sold out in the United States. Some units are still available in Europe, but apparently going fast.
BONK's recent boom is at least partially down to renewed interest in Solana and its native coin, SOL. Since November, investors have been snapping up the sixth largest cryptocurrency—and as a result, it has boomed in price.
Projects that run on Solana, like BONK, have similarly shot up in value and posted even larger gains. The token launched last December and was widely airdropped to fellow Solana developers, project creators, and collectors—and it has spiked substantially since then.
The token is now the 47th largest cryptocurrency by market cap, meaning those who held on to their BONK tokens will now have made massive gains. In fact, developers who received 25 billion BONK coins last Christmas, which was only worth about $300 at the time, would now have about $715,000 worth of the token if they held onto all of it.
SOL right now is the one of the only top 20 cryptocurrencies currently on the upswing: the asset has jumped by over 6% in the past day and is trading for more than $76. It rose above $79 earlier Friday, setting a 2023 high.
The rest of the crypto market is largely down by a little bit: Bitcoin has dropped by more than 1% in 24 hours and is priced at $42,121.
Ethereum, the second-biggest cryptocurrency, has dropped even further—by nearly 2%—and is trading for $2,241.
Other major coins and tokens are also down, except for Avalanche (AVAX), which is up by nearly 6% in 24 hours. The asset received attention last month after investment banking giant JP Morgan announced it would use its blockchain to tokenize assets.
Edited by Andrew Hayward