Meme coins have been pumping hard amid a wider crypto market surge, with Bitcoin (BTC) surpassing $100,000 on Thursday and Ethereum (ETH) passing $2,500 on Saturday.
Moo Deng (MOODENG) is the biggest meme coin winner of the week, soaring 533% to a market cap of $242 million, much to the surprise of much of the crypto community. The token hit an all-time high of $614 million in November as the baby pygmy hippo reached peak virality inside and outside of crypto. Since then, mindshare for Moo Deng—and her associated meme coins—has dropped.
But, clearly, degens still like the hippo, with the MOODENG token posting gains of 812% over the past month.
Meme coins soar
Other major meme coins have seen notable gains with Dogecoin (DOGE) jumping 42% over the past seven days, with Shiba Inu (SHIB) also up 32.8%, Pepe (PEPE) 79.9%, and Dogwifhat (WIF) 123.7%.
This comes as the wider crypto market has seen gains with Bitcoin climbing 10% over the week to $104,300, and Ethereum gaining 41% to $2,540 in the same period. Much of this movement appeared to be prompted by the easing of global tensions stoked by U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade ware, after the U.S. inked deals with the UK on Thursday and China on Monday.
With markets showing more confidence, traders appear to be pivoting to risky assets like meme coins, which are notorious for their volatility.
“It’s the first market reversal and macro hopium with Trump relaxing in China for the first time in months since the market crash,” pseudonymous founder of web3 education tool Pluid and trader Loopify told Decrypt. They added that meme coins “pump harder than majors and majors like ETH have pumped significantly off the bottom.”
Goatseus Maximus (GOAT) was hit hard in the months after President Trump’s inauguration tanking 86% to a market cap low of $38.5 million following “Liberation Day,” which heightened the trade war in April. But, in the month since then, GOAT has skyrocketed 558% to a market cap of $253.4 million, according to DEX Screener.
Peanut the Squirrel (PNUT) has also climbed 287% over the past month, Fwog (FWOG) 174%, and the Pudgy Penguins meme coin PENGU 172%.
“Even before this market revival, meme coin activity was elevated and stable,” Pump.fun co-founder Alon Cohen told Decrypt, “so the current market conditions just added fuel to the fire.”
While down from all-time highs, according to Dune data, Pump.fun’s token launchpad activity has remained consistent through April and May, with between 22,000 and 43,000 tokens created every day. Weekly volume trading on the platform has been trending upwards since Liberation Day, too—up 68% to $1.4 billion.
During this period, decentralized exchange Raydium rolled out its rival meme coin launchpad LaunchLab, which has also been seeing healthy growth. According to Dune, LaunchLab has created more than 60,000 tokens since its mid-April launch and has been enabling third-party developers to utilize the technology, with the meme coin Bonk releasing Bonk.fun for example.
To Cohen’s point, these market conditions were able to foster meme coin communities like Titcoin (TITCOIN) which now sits at a market cap of $80.7 million two months after its launch. Another example is Housecoin (HOUSECOIN), which peaked at $120 million at the start of the month as traders looked to flip the housing market, before the token retraced to a market cap of $61 million.
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