The total market capitalizations of memecoins on Solana and Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 Base have seen a significant drop in the last 24 hours, plunging 12% and 19% respectively across the two networks. The memecoin sell-off coincided with a sharp decline in the price of Bitcoin.
Factors Behind the Decline
Crypto analysts Mati Greenspan and Charles Edwards weigh in on what’s driving the memecoin sell-off. Greenspan suggests the joke is over and hype is dying down, while Edwards points to memecoins typically seeing outsized losses compared to Bitcoin during market downturns.
Specific Token Price Actions
Solana’s memecoin market cap stands at $829 million after a 12% decrease over 24 hours according to CoinGecko. The top Solana meme token dogwifhat (WIF) saw a 9% market cap decline, amounting to a $39 million loss. WIF still accounts for nearly half of the total memecoin market share on Solana.
Across major crypto exchanges, WIF has $484 million in open interest (OI). However, $276 million in leveraged positions have been liquidated over 24 hours. Coinbase’s total memecoin market cap dropped 19% over 24 hours to $147 billion. The token ‘Degen’ on Base suffered a 26% drop in market cap.
Bitcoin vs Memecoins
While Bitcoin’s retracement has been minor, memecoins are seeing more drastic fluctuations beyond key support levels according to Greenspan. Bitcoin dropped 4.9% while WIF plunged 10.3%. Edwards notes memecoins like these typically see 2x the losses of Bitcoin’s downturns.
Conclusion
The memecoin frenzy appears to be losing steam as market caps plunge across Solana and Base’s ecosystems. Analysts cite oversaturation in the market, waning hype and Bitcoin’s gravitational pull on altcoins as reasons for the sell-off. It remains to be seen whether meme mania will pick back up or if the joke is over for good.
