Why Memecoins are Exploding

Welcome to Today in Markets where we dig into the hottest trends and assets in crypto, highlighting investable opportunities for our paying Bankless Citizens.

📊 March Memecoin Madness. Bitcoin price held steady at $62k throughout Saturday but resumed its ascension towards all-time highs on Sunday, gaining nearly 10% before topping out at $67.5k and leaving BTC within inches of uncharted price territory… 

As the Risk Rally continues across broader crypto markets, signs of heavy retail participation are making themselves abundantly evident, with popular memecoins surging to life and posting triple-digit gains on the week! 

The Alpha 🧐

Memecoins dominate CoinGecko’s top gainers board on a weekly and daily basis, with the winners spanning a broad range of ecosystems, featuring Ethereum-based ERC20s such as PEPE, FLOKI, and SHIB, Solana-based SPLs like WIF and BONK, and the token of meme-centric blockchain DOGE.

In spite of the eye-popping gains made by select alts (i.e., the small group of memecoins above), the total crypto market cap (TOTAL) continues to lag behind Bitcoin, with TOTAL/BTC falling by 4.5% over the past week to pressure cycle lows.

While declines in this ratio traditionally signal alt weakness, those who expect the bull market to continue can conversely take it as an indicator that we are only in the early innings of alt season and memecoin-pumping!

Further signaling the elevated levels of froth and euphoria surrounding crypto assets and the immense desire for retail to participate in the rally is yet another Coinbase outage, the second such occurrence within the calendar week!

While COIN price tanked on news of last week’s outage, this one had the inverse effect and sent share climbing by nearly 6%.

As degens gamble on memecoins, there are hopes that NFTs may soon come back into vogue among investors as instruments to capture heighten upside on ETH beta after a CryptoPunk was sold for 4.5k ETH ($16M), the second-highest sale of the collection ever.

📈 Chart of The Day

Tether’s USDT approaches 100B in circulating supply while the aggregate stablecoin supply posts its 9th consecutive week of growth, the longest uninterrupted period of stablecoin supply expansion since the 2021 bull run!

 🗣️ Post of the Day

After breaching all-time highs against practically every major currency in existence, Bitcoin eyes battle with its final boss: the US dollar!