Meme Coins Blast Past Bitcoin Gains as Crypto Market Gets Frothy Again

It's been a strong week for Bitcoin, with the leading cryptocurrency up nearly 11% over the past seven days to a current price above $67,000, signaling the potential arrival of the hopeful "Uptober" gains that many traders expected this month.

But Bitcoin's gains pale in comparison to some of the top meme coins, which have marked price jumps up to several times larger than BTC. As money flows back into crypto, the market may be getting frothy again, prompting traders to make bets on highly volatile meme coins.

Dogecoin (DOGE), the first ever meme coin, is up 16% this week amid fresh attention from prominent booster Elon Musk, while Solana meme coin Bonk (BONK) has climbed nearly 16%, and the Base network's Brett (BRETT) has soared by nearly 25% over the past seven days.

In fact, the entire of the top 15 meme coins by market cap are in the green—the smallest winner being Shiba Inu (SHIB) at 7%

The biggest winner on the week is Turbo Toad (TURBO), which is up a massive 71%. The token’s team has marketed it as the “first meme coin created by artificial intelligence.” Back in April 2023, a Twitter user asked ChatGPT to generate a viral meme coin name. After the AI chatbot came up with “Turbo Toad,” the user created images, a tokenomics plan, a whitepaper, and code—all with the help of AI. 

Turbo’s success comes after Goatseus Maximus (GOAT) soared to a market cap of $285 million in just a week. “Goatseus Maximus” was first used as a term by a Twitter-based AI chatbot called Truth Terminal. It’s been set up to share tweets about meme coins, NFTs, and niche internet nonsense. This created the perfect storm for the latest viral meme coin that has skyrocketed in value, with one trader turning a $5,500 investment into $1.5 million on the coin.

In turn, the trenches have started to fill with countless AI-related meme coins.

For example, degens found a post by Andressen Horowitz, the juggernaut venture capital firm, announcing investment into an AI-related company. And since the firm's partner Justine Moore used her dog for the announcement photo, it’s now been turned into a meme coin called a16z AI Dog (TILLY). Moore had a laugh about it on Twitter. 

The token peaked at a market cap of $8 million, but has since crashed to a total value of just $560,000.

Other notable meme coin winners this week include Doge-related Ethereum token Neiro (NEIRO) gaining 18%, the 4chan-spawned Mog Coin (MOG) leaping 40%, and Solana-based Cat in a Dog's World (MEW) jumping 49%. 

As for the meme coin losers, Sui chain’s Moodeng spin-off SuDeng (HIPPO) has dropped 21%, the Bitcoin-based PUPS fell 18%, and PepeCoin (PEPECOIN) tumbled 13% over the past week.

Meme coins are typically based on internet memes, celebrities, world events, and more—and they tend to be highly volatile, with thousands launched daily. Most don't gain much steam at all, and many of those that gain any traction tend to collapse just as quickly as they rise. Very few meme coins, like some of those covered above, stick around for very long at all.

Edited by Andrew Hayward