Benzinga - So far, 2024 has undeniably been the year for memecoins. Countless new tokens have been released, and a handful of them have touted gains to the magnitude of thousands of percent. Additionally, the hype does not seem to be dying down. The tokens continue to go up and, in this case, some are outpacing the broader cryptocurrency market.
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Shiba Inu (SHIB), Pepe (PEPE), and MAGA Coin (TRUMP) have all performed better than bitcoin this past week. These memecoins do very little to add actual value to investors and instead focus on leaning into their memes. Surprisingly, this has resulted in enormous amounts of attention and buying activity.
Shiba Inu is one of the older memecoins still afloat in 2024. Started in August 2020, the token quickly soared as it received attention from Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin. This week, the price is up more than 7%, bringing its market cap to over $14 billion.
Started on the ethereum blockchain a little over a year ago, PEPE is a memecoin based on the infamous Pepe meme from the early 2000s, which features a crudely drawn frog. The token has climbed the crypto charts, and currently sits in the top 25 tokens by market cap, boasting a total of more than $4 billion. This week, PEPE's price is up by more than 17%.
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A somewhat lesser known, but equally as interesting memecoin is MAGA Coin (TRUMP). This token, created in August 2023, combines the community and low-utility aspects of memecoins with the avid supporters of former President Donald Trump. The token has performed extremely well in 2024 and is up nearly 70% this week.
Bitcoin also moved up this week on the heels of soft inflation data on Tuesday and comments from Trump himself about wanting to help the adoption of crypto.
The CPI report came in better than expected, with inflation showing a 0.3% month-on-month increase in April, below the 0.4% expected.
Additionally, Trump spoke at an NFT event, saying, If you like crypto in any form, and it comes in a lot of different forms, you better vote for Trump."
Combined, these events helped propel bitcoin from $60,000 to over $66,000 this week. Overall, bitcoin is up just over 6% this week. This means that each of the memecoins noted above has outperformed bitcoin, which has also performed exceptionally well.
For comparison, the S&P 500 is up around 2% this week, and the Nasdaq 100 is up just over 2.5%.
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