Benzinga - Crypto started 2024 strong: Bitcoin reached all-time highs (ATHs), Ethereum exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are looking promising and altcoins are surging.
Perhaps more interesting than all of that is the rise of meme coins in 2024. Unlike anything crypto markets have seen before, meme coins have been all the rage for the past few months.
As new tokens continue to pop up, the meme coin market is evolving and new trends are popping up. Additionally, with new avenues to attract meme coin investors, such as Solana and Coinbase's layer 2 called Base, meme coins have never been bigger.
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With these new market dynamics, a handful of meme coins have risen above the rest. Some of the most popular meme coins from the last bull market, namely Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Dogecoin (DOGE) have retained their spot at the top of the meme coin market. However, a few newer projects are approaching the top dogs.
One of these projects is dogwifhat (WIF), which launched a few months ago. Based on the Solana chain, the token is based on a meme of a dog wearing a pink knitted cap. So, it makes sense that the project's headline is that it is "literally just a dog wif a hat."
Despite its simplicity and lack of innovative ideas, the token has performed far better than anyone could have imagined. The token began 2024 trading for just 7 cents but quickly gained steam. By the end of February, the price surpassed $1. By the end of March, the price broke all-time highs and reached $4.85. In percent terms, this marked a gain of nearly 7,000% in less than three months.
The market cap also exploded. The project was worth over $1 billion by mid-March and went as high as $4.75 billion when it hit ATHs. While it has retraced some, the market cap is still large enough for WIF to rank in the top 30 tokens by market capitalization.
Apart from its huge gains, some are attributing WIF's success to helping Solana as a whole recover because investors had to buy SOL and convert it into WIF. When WIF launched, SOL was worth under $75. However, SOL broke the $200 level as WIF was reaching new highs.
WIF gained traction on social media and Binance offered the token pretty early on. More interestingly, NBA star LeBron James wore a pink knitted cap in a press conference, causing WIF's price to explode. While it is unclear whether James's fashion choice was an endorsement of WIF, it undeniably sent the price of the token higher.
WIF has been one of the most fascinating stories to watch in 2024. The project was created as a joke around a small meme but has quickly become one of the largest crypto projects in the world.
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