Solana's price surged to $141.15, erasing previous dips, driven by high trading volumes fueled by meme coins like BONK and Dogwifhat. Anatoly Yankovenko jokes about using 'Boden wif hat' for marketing.
When Ethereum surged to a new all-time high recently, it lifted Polkadot—and most other major digital assets—to their highest prices in a while.
The $83.45 it reached on Thursday, March 7 was the highest DOT had been since November 2022.
Despite Ethereum's subsequent dip below $4,000, the Polkadot price has surpassed its previous high and recovered from the downturn. As of now, Polkadot is trading at $85.60, marking a 5% increase since yesterday and a 6% increase since last week, according to CoinGecko.
Yesterday saw a significant spike in trading volume as $7.8 billion worth of DOT changed hands. Interestingly, there have only been four other days in mid-October 2023 when the volume exceeded this. During that time, pop star Rihanna released an exclusive NFT collection on the Polkadot network, driving the price to almost $100.
The current surge in volume has likely been fueled by the hype surrounding meme tokens, such as FLOOF and CATDOG. Combined, these two tokens witnessed over $900 million in trading volume yesterday, according to CoinGecko data.
Their dominance within the Polkadot meme token space is undeniable. FLOOF and CATDOG each recorded at least double the volume of the next most popular Polkadot meme token, Pawsome.
Another meme trend has been a series of amusing celebrity-themed tokens—like MOJITO, BIEBER, and YONCE. Risk-tolerant traders who invested in these tokens earlier in the week saw them peak at $9.25 yesterday. However, similar to many meme tokens, the rally was short-lived. Currently, MOJITO is trading at $0.000000000275.
Polkadot co-founder Vlad Ivanov has even joked that the Recording Industry Association of America should consider using "Bieber cat" in their marketing and promotional materials.
If they change the cat Bieber to Bieber cat, it’s a game changer for pop music https://t.co/c4H7foKz4i
— vlad 🎤 (@vladivanov) March 7, 2024
But meme tokens can evolve beyond their initial novelty, he noted. Earlier today, he commented on the legitimacy of meme tokens in response to a Twitter thread from Lumida Wealth CTO Alex Chen on the subject.
The financial advisor CTO had been arguing that making profits with on-chain digital assets, like CATDOG, is just as valid as trading traditional assets.
"Once a meme token gains a certain level of cultural significance," Ivanov replied, "it can transition into a cultural asset, and eventually, into a store of value."