Overnight $178m memecoin revival sends Solana trading volume above Ethereum

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Overnight $178m memecoin revival sends Solana trading volume above Ethereum
Overnight $178m memecoin revival sends Solana trading volume above Ethereum
DeFi
By
Ryan Celaj
March 5, 2024 at 4:17 AM
Solana's trading volume exceeded Ethereum's, hitting $2 billion in 24 hours.
Despite a decline in new token creations, established memecoins on Solana are seeing significant price rallies.
The rivalry between Solana and Ethereum intensifies as memecoins become a key factor in onchain trading preferences.
A memecoin frenzy has once again pushed Solana trading volumes higher than those on Ethereum.

Solana generated $2 billion in volume while Ethereum generated $1.8 billion in the last 24 hours. The blockchain with the next highest volume generated was BNB Chain with $789 million.

Dexscreener, an analytics platform monitoring trading on decentralised exchanges, reports that within the top 20 trading pairs, Solana’s memecoin volume reached $178 million, surpassing Ethereum’s $138 million over the past 24 hours.

The top memecoins by volume in the last 24 hours on Solana are WIF, POPCAT, BONK, TRUMP and WEN. All of these memecoins, besides TRUMP, were launched over a month ago.

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Price history for memecoin BONK
Memecoins are cryptocurrencies that draw their inspiration from internet memes, pop culture phenomena, and trends that have gone viral.

This ongoing competition underscores a significant shift in onchain trading, highlighting Solana and Ethereum’s rivalry in becoming the dominant platform for memecoin trading.

This tug of war not only reflects the dynamic nature of cryptocurrency markets but also points to the growing influence of memecoins in shaping trading volumes and platform preferences.

The first time Solana surpassed Ethereum in trading volume was on December 14, and since then it has passed Ethereum’s volume on 11 different days.

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The usual suspects
While trading volumes during Solana’s boom in December were dominated by an influx of newly launched coins, mostly memecoins, this is no longer the case.

Newly created tokens on Solana in December peaked at 7,900, while today, only 2,500 new tokens were created on Solana. This shows that trading volumes on Solana are concentrated in already existing coins.

One memecoin that has made a dramatic comeback is dogwifhat, WIF, a memecoin created referencing a popular internet meme of a dog in a pink knitted hat.

WIF reached an all-time high on February 14 of $0.46 before falling 39% to $0.28 on February 23. Since then, WIF rallied 571% to reach $1.88 earlier today.

Another Solana darling memecoin, BONK, experienced similar price gains. BONK is up 51% on the day, reaching an all-time high of $0.000045, giving it a fully diluted valuation of over $3.6 billion.

Similar gains were seen with Ethereum memecoins last week, with some of those memecoins, like PEPE and DOGE, continuing their gains into this week.

Got a tip about DeFi? Reach out at ryan@dlnews.com.

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Bitcoin tops $68,000 as it nears 2021 all-time high
PUBLISHED MON, MAR 4 20247:36 AM ESTUPDATED 3 HOURS AGO
Tanaya Macheel
@TANAYAMACHEEL
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BTC.CM=
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Bitcoin
jumped to start the week, edging even closer to its all-time high after the rally took a breather over the weekend.

The flagship cryptocurrency was last higher by 9% at $68,635.20, according to Coin Metrics. At one point, it rose to as much as $68,848.62, its highest level since November 2021 — the last time it reached a record. Ether
advanced more than 5% to $3,650.59.

Both coins are coming off their best week in almost a year — bitcoin gained about 21% and ether 16% — but paused their run over the weekend as the market digested two days of steep outflows from the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) that were offset by inflows into other “newborn” bitcoin exchange-traded funds.

“With the birth of these nine new ETFs the big moves now tend to take place during the normal trading week rather than the weekends,” said Antoni Trenchev, co-founder of crypto exchange Nexo.

“What we’re seeing today … might well be a rerun of early last week when bitcoin surged $10,000 in the space of a couple of days,” he added. “We’re in that sort of environment when a day or two of sideways consolidation can precede explosive price action thanks to the voracious demand of these new spot ETFs.”


Bitcoin lifted other crypto tokens, especially meme coins. Dogecoin
surged 32%, while Shiba Inu coin rocketed 95%. Analysts point to them as evidence that retail investors, who have been absent for much of the recent crypto rally, are starting to return to the crypto market. Last week, meme tokens’ weekly trade volume surged to their highest level since late 2021, according to crypto data provider Kaiko.

Some crypto equities rode the bitcoin wave, such as Coinbase
and Microstrategy
, which rose 11% and 23.6%, respectively. Miners sat the rally out, however, giving back earlier gains as the short-term effect of the upcoming halving in April — when mining companies’ revenue will be slashed — weighed on investors. CleanSpark
and Cipher Mining
dropped more than 7% each, while Iris Energy
and Marathon Digital
each dipped nearly 5% and Riot Platforms
slid almost 7%.

Some analysts have suggested that while bitcoin could keep rising in the short term, it may cool in the next few weeks, as unrealized profit margins approach extreme levels. Bitcoin’s realized price is sitting at just about $42,700, according to CryptoQuant.

Nevertheless, long-term investors are confident that the combination of increasing demand for bitcoin through the new U.S. ETFs and a tighter supply expected after the April halving event will push the price of bitcoin to a new all-time high.

Crypto has also been getting a bid from the stock market, where the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite reached an all-time high on Friday, becoming the last of the major stock indexes to hit a record close this year.

David Duong, head of institutional research at Coinbase, said that although March could be a month of sideways grinding for bitcoin, the cryptocurrency is benefiting from an AI- and blockchain technology-driven productivity boom he expects is here to stay.


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