Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt.
Bitcoin continued to rally this week—and pushed up meme coins while it was at it.
The biggest cryptocurrency by market cap is now trading for $44,021 per coin, according to CoinGecko. Over the past 24 hours, that’s a rise of less than 1%. But over the week, it has shot up by 13.4%.
Experts told Decrypt that the rally was mostly due to hype around the ostensibly imminent approval of the long-awaited spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) product.
Some analysts have said this could lead to a flood of capital into the crypto markets as traditional investors will be able to get exposure to digital assets.
As usual, Bitcoin’s rise led altcoins to surge. But the winners this week—just like last week—were meme coins.
Digital coins and tokens based on Internet memes and jokes continued to go up in price, before dying down again. Pepe, Dogecoin, and Shiba Inu were all the winners this week.
They have now cooled their rally: Pepe is down by about 2%—but still up over 40% this week.
And Dogecoin, the 10th biggest digital asset, is trading for $0.10, a 3% rise in 24 hours. Over seven days, it’s made over 20% in gains.
Shiba Inu is up over 2%, having jumped 21% in the past week.
One meme coin, though, is continuing to explode: Solana-based Bonk. The dog-themed meme coin is now at $0.0000128—a 7-day rise of 188%, and up 635% for the last 30 days.
Renewed hype around Solana, the blockchain behind SOL, has led to an increase in investment in projects that run on its network.
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.
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