- Memecoins like Pepe, Bonk, and MEME did well in 2023.
- Most of them soared, giving them substantial market cap.
- Other traditional meme coins like Floki Inu and Dogelon Mars have struggled.
Meme coins have become popular assets in the cryptocurrency industry. Most of this success is attributed to Dogecoin, which remains a juggernaut with a market cap of over $11 billion. Shiba Inu, despite not making major headlines recently, is still a big coin with over $5.2 billion in market cap.
The rise of PEPE, BONK, MEME tokens
Shiba Inu’s growth spurred several Dogecoin wannabes as developers aimed for the next big thing. The two most popular Dogecoin wannabes of the time were Dogelon Mars (ELON) and Floki Inu (FLOKI).
Most recently, the focus among crypto investors has been on Bonk, Pepe, and Memecoin (MEME), which exploded in 2023. Today, while their prices have pulled back, the three are still giants with a market cap of $950 million, $514 million, and $230 million, respectively.
Bonk price jumped because it was the initial meme coin in the Solana ecosystem while Pepe jumped as it went viral. Memecoin, a new crypto, rose even though the developers noted that it had no value at all. Binance invested in it recently.
Read more: How to buy Shiba Inu.
Floki Inu and Dogelon Mars performance
Most meme coins that were launched in 2021 have gone under because of low volume and demand from investors. Floki Inu is still going strong although its role in the crypto industry has been a bit diminished. According to CMC, Floki has a market cap of $293 million.
Unlike other early meme coins, Floki Inu’s developers worked hard to expand the ecosystem. They launched Valhalla, a play-to-earn NFT platform, FlokiFi, a Decentralized Finance (DeFi) platform, and Floki Places, a merchandise and NFT marketplace.
Most recently, Floki Inu developers moved into the tokenization industry as they launched TokenFi, whose crypto token has a $30 million market cap. Most analysts believe that tokenization is one of the biggest potential uses of blockchain technology. In all, Floki price is about 305% above its 2023 high and 54% below its highest period during the year.
Dogelon Mars, on the other hand, has not launched its own ecosystem, which explains why it has not grown much over the years. Its market cap has dropped to $90 million and the ELON token plunged by more than 74% from its highest point in 2023.
Other memecoins that launched at the peak of the mania like Safemoon and Baby Dogecoin have not done well either. Most recently, Safemoon filed for bankruptcy after its leaders were charged by US regulators.
