The popularity of Meme coins seems to be coming again?

PEPE – A new Ethereum-based token named after the anime character Pepe the Frog has become a hot topic sweeping the crypto community. Its market cap soared to $110 million in less than five days, making it the sixth-highest meme token by market cap on the CoinGeckoMeme rankings. Data shows that as of press time, PEPE’s 24-hour increase reached 48%, with trading volume hovering around US$153 million. The coin’s price has increased by more than 5,200% since April 17, from $0.00000005361 to $0.0000002865.

Data tracked by Lookonchain shows that an early investor in PEPE coin turned $250 into $1.14 million in four days, a profit of more than 4,500 times. It's important to note that PEPE is in no way affiliated with the Pepe the Frog meme itself or its creator, Matt Furie.

Inspired by the rise of PEPE, another similar project, WOJAK, was also born. This token was named after the popular bald man emoticon Wojak (also known as Feels Guy). After its launch on April 17, it took less than two days to Within a short period of time, the market value soared to US$10 million.

History is always surprisingly similar. Speculators who caught these meme tokens early made a lot of money. It is reminiscent of the surge of various "animal" coins in 2021, with DOGE and SHIB rising to record highs.

Like most users who invest in meme projects, crypto traders were initially attracted by the impact of the PEPE meme and the high returns that came with high volatility.

Compared to relatively low-volatility blue-chip cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, memecoins experience large price swings and are generally viewed as high-risk, high-reward assets.

Most meme coins are particularly sensitive to news or external events, so they often trend for a short period of time and then cool off quickly. The sudden spike in PEPE prices was explained by blockchain intelligence firm Arkham, which tweeted that an Ethereum account purchased 1.82 trillion PEPE for $20, accounting for a large portion of the token’s net circulating supply . After Whale purchased, other investors jumped on board, making the position worth over $150,000. Although the whales sold their tokens early, the rally continued for a long time.

At the time of writing, PEPE tokens are only available in four Uniswap pools: PEPE/ETH, PEPE/PEPES, WOJAK/PEPE, and PEPE/USDC, with a total value locked in these four pools of over $1.5 million.

What other meme coins are likely to rise?

In addition to the originators of meme coins, Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, some new meme coins may also have hype potential and have unique use cases. For example, Tamadoge powers an ongoing Shiba Inu-themed web3 game ecosystem called Tamaverse. The Tamadoge team is currently working on expanding the already launched Tamadoge Arcade, which allows users to play and compete in a variety of games using Tamadoge NFTs while earning TAMA tokens. TAMA is available for purchase on various cryptocurrency exchanges and will soon be available on several top cryptocurrency exchanges, which may fuel its rise.

Another meme project, Love Hate Inu, aims to propose a stake-to-vote, vote-to-ear social media voting platform. Users will be able to debate, discuss and vote on the world’s most controversial cultural, artistic, political, scientific or any issues, all through an innovative decentralized on-chain voting system.

Investors need to be reminded that they should do their due diligence before making any related investments.

double edged sword

The Pepe Coin hype has had a significant impact on the booming crypto meme economy, proving once again how viral memes can evolve into digital assets with real-world value and thriving communities. Pepe captures the essence of Internet culture. In addition to providing public entertainment and emotional output, it can also penetrate into the financial field.

Ryan Watkins, co-founder of crypto hedge fund Synracy Capital, believes that the success of Meme tokens has had a complex impact on the digital asset field. He said on Telegram: “This is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, memes make cryptocurrencies more interesting and accessible. On the other hand, they reiterate the criticism of many skeptics that the crypto industry’s only Example".

Anonymous crypto expert Altcoin Sherpa told investors in his recent tweet that meme coins are the best investment if you want to make exponential gains quickly.

According to Sherpa, meme tokens can do something that “regular” tokens like Bitcoin can’t, which is rise 500x in a matter of days, which also comes as a massive warning to investors.

Sherpa said: “Meme coins are mostly rug pull, have no productivity, zero effort to create, and are mainly prepared for the biggest gambler in the crypto market, DEGEN. The probability of you being rug in these meme games is very high. , I really don’t recommend it to many people”.

"DEGEN" are defined as investors who like/want to take huge risks with their money by investing in highly speculative projects, and this group of people usually do not do much (or any) due diligence on the projects they invest in.

Can the value of Meme coins stand the test?

Meme coins’ real-world use cases and true value may not stand the test.

Anonymous encryption KOLPunk6529 developed an NFT project, claiming that Internet memes are "the most potential thing in the world" and that popular memes will rise in the NFT world. According to data provider NFTGo, the project’s Memes has now fallen nearly 75% to about 15,000 ETH after reaching a peak market value of 59,000 ETH in mid-January.

Ryan Watkins, co-founder of Syncracy Capital, believes that the meme currency phenomenon will not cause much harm to the industry in the long run. "It does get tiring after a while, but speculation attracts money into the industry to fund new interesting projects, and I don't think meme coins are stealing resources from 'real' projects," Watkins wrote.

Perhaps, for some avid traders, memecoins are a balm to survive the bear market, or perhaps it offers a glimmer of hope that the bear market may actually be over.

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