Cat-themed and Solana meme cryptocurrencies were the best price-performing categories in the last 24 hours, following the recent global selloff that resulted in over $1 billion in liquidations on centralized exchanges and roughly $306.9 in liquidations on Ethereum’s top lending protocols.
According to data from CoinGecko, the value of cat-themed tokens as a category increased 26.6% on a 24-hour basis, giving it a market cap of $2.2 billion, while Solana-based memecoins saw a 23.7% rise in their market cap of $6.7 billion.
POPCAT, based on two images of a cat, one of which shows its mouth closed and the other showing it open in an “O” shape, leads the pack among cat-inspired tokens, growing 15.6% to 52.6 cents. The Solana memecoin is the most valuable feline token with a market cap of over $519.8 million, ahead of MEW’s $492.7 million and MOG’s roughly $445.8 million.
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While cat-inspired tokens are the best performers, memecoins based on the dog breed Shiba Inu remain popular. Dogwifhat (WIF), based on a picture of a Shiba Inu puppy wearing a knit cap, helped the category of Solana-based memecoins perform second best by 24-hour price change, jumping 11.2% to $1.60 at presstime. WIF is Solana’s biggest memecoin with a market cap of $1.6 billion as well as its most-traded memecoin with a 24-hour trading volume of $1.2 billion. Respectively, BONK, POPCAT, and MEW trail WIF by market cap.
“Solana memecoins and ecosystem tokens have shown remarkable resilience since the August 5th crash. POPCAT and WIF have led the rebound among the top 100 crypto tokens,” wrote Cindy Leow, the co-founder of Drift Labs, a core contributor of Solana-based perpetual futures exchange Drift Protocol.
“The recent launch of POPCAT perpetuals on Drift has already generated $11 million in volume, highlighting the significant demand for leveraged memecoin trading,” Leow told Unchained. “We’re observing a volume trajectory for POPCAT that’s reminiscent of WIF’s performance on Drift, which has become one of our largest markets to date.” According to Leow, “this trend underscores the accelerating interest in Solana’s memecoin ecosystem.”
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Move Over Dogs
Even though DOGE AND SHIB, the two original memecoins based on dogs, have the largest market caps of about $14.2 billion and nearly $7.8 billion, respectively, their price movement dwindled in comparison to cat tokens. In the past 24 hours, DOGE increased less than 1%, while SHIB slumped 2.5%.
One reason cat tokens have outpaced dog tokens stems from the prospect of higher returns in cat tokens.
“People usually look at beta plays in crypto as opportunities to potentially make more multiple because they [beta plays] have less supply, but have potentially more upside,” said white-hat hacker and early memecoin bagholder Ogle in a conversation with Unchained. The new cat tokens have little liquidity and a short history compared to dog tokens. For example, DOGE launched in 2013, while SHIB rolled out in 2020.
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“Because of that, people say, ‘Oh, maybe that’s the one that I get rich on. I’ve already missed the boat on the billion-dollar dog coin [or] I’ve already missed the boat on the $5 billion dog coin, but here’s a cat coin that doesn’t have so much competition,’” Ogle said. As a result, people are attracted to the speculation of possibly holding and profiting from the best cat coin out there. At the time of writing, each of the cat coins have a sub-$1 billion market cap.
Coinbase Eyeing Cats
Ogle, who is also the founder of blockchain network Glue, indicated that some institutions have demonstrated interest in cat-themed memecoins, pointing to Mister Miggles from the Base ecosystem, which was incubated by leading centralized exchange Coinbase.
MIGGLES, a memecoin on layer 2 network Base with a market cap of nearly $15.7 million, has been a highlight of Coinbase’s “Onchain Summer,” an annual campaign to increase the number of crypto users.
“Creators–musicians, artists, even cats– are what make the internet great because they make the content we all enjoy,” stated Coinbase on its Onchain Summer webpage.
“Base has decided they’re doing their onchain summer stuff and they’re, as the big company Coinbase, are putting this cat front and center as the big promo thing there,” Ogle said. “I think you do see some institutions leaning into the cat narrative.” However, Miggles has dropped 26.5% in the past 24 hours and 79.8% in the last 14 days to trade at 1.6 cents, per CoinGecko.
