According to Coinmarketcap data, the total market capitalization of meme tokens has surpassed $44.6 billion, marking a staggering 40% increase in just one day. Trading volume on March 2 reached nearly $16 billion, up 111% from the previous day. This clearly indicates a significant pump, a phenomenon the community typically anticipates during an uptrend.
DOGE saw a rise of over 22% in a day and more than 70% over the past week.
PEPE also hit a new all-time high today, approaching $0.00000500. PEPE is the first meme coin to kickstart this price surge trend.
SHIB, with a trading volume of over $5.2 billion, has seen a more than 70% increase in a day.
Additionally, most meme tokens have recorded impressive gains. It appears that following the surge of AI-based tokens, it’s now the turn of meme tokens to rise. Many investors expect that other Altcoin ecosystems will also experience price increases in the current scenario.
Social Dominance data from Santiment, which tracks the proportion of discussions about meme tokens in community forums, shows a significant increase in discussions about tokens like Dogecoin, Pepe, Floki, Bonk, and Shiba Inu from the last week of February to now.
Here are some reasons for the surge in meme coins:
- Meme token ecosystems have their own unique identity. Investors are drawn to meme coins not necessarily because of the technological aspects or underlying applications, but mainly due to community preferences and viral trends. With newcomers seeing Bitcoin’s price rise, they desire profits but are wary of buying at its peak, so they shift their attention to Altcoins.
- When shifting to Altcoins, most new investors have limited capital, so they tend to choose “cheap” Altcoins (for example, those with many decimal places), expecting them to increase in value significantly (for example, x10). This is something that Bitcoin and large-cap Altcoins find hard to achieve.
- This mindset may have driven cheaper tokens to rise earlier and more aggressively than others.