Memecoins are fighting for the billions

A token supply of 100 billion, increasing by 5 billion every year, “Comic Sans” as the official font, the face of the famous Shiba Inu “Doge”, which was the most famous meme on the internet in its heyday, and a development team that obviously didn’t think much of crypto: With the first meme cryptocurrency Dogecoin, created in 2013, its inventors targeted the crypto space. But this first memecoin, planned as a joke, was so successful that it was even able to establish itself in the top ten of the most valuable cryptocurrencies. Thanks to a popular TikTok trend, even the $1 mark was within reach.

But Dogecoin is no longer the only memecoin in crypto space. Many other dog tokens have tried to build on its success in recent years, including Shiba Inu, Floki and BabyDoge. Anyone who now thinks that memecoins only exist with four paws is wrong: the entire spectrum of the animal world is now represented. Recently there: Pepe, the frog.

Of course, Pepe is not just any frog, as the face of the rather clumsy amphibian has had to serve as an identification feature of the extreme right-wing alt-right movement for years. However, Pepe is also the abbreviation of a memecoin that has been extremely successful in recent weeks. But how does the young, controversial token fare compared to its big role model, Dogecoin? And what was the path towards the magic mark of one billion US dollars in market capitalization?

Dogecoin vs. Pepe: Endurance instead of Sprint

For the first time, Dogecoin reached the $1 billion milestone in late 2017 – four years after the launch of the blockchain. Within a few days, the price rose to just under two billion US dollars, before falling below the limit shortly afterwards, which DOGE was only able to break through again in January 2021. The timing marked the start of a bull rally that peaked on May 8, 2021 – Dogecoin’s market cap was nearly $89 billion on the day. While that figure is a long way off at the time of writing, with a market cap of around $9.8 billion, Dogecoin has not fallen below $1 billion since January 2021.

Pepe, who probably benefits from the well-trodden paths of his predecessors in the memecoin space, managed to rise above the market capitalization limit of one billion US dollars much faster: the milestone was reached only three weeks after the start of the blockchain. The explosive growth helped some investors to become enormously wealthy. However, the 2 billion US dollar mark then presented an insurmountable obstacle and the rapid rise was quickly followed by the downward trend. So, at the time of writing, the memecoin’s market cap is $521 million.

And yet: If you superimpose the charts of Dogecoin and Pepe from the time the USD 1 billion mark was first exceeded, you will discover parallels. Dogecoin also slipped below the limit after it first climbed, stayed there for at least three years before it (really) started again. It remains to be seen whether Pepe will face a similar fate and whether particularly patient investors will be rewarded. Especially since the memecoin is increasingly being targeted by crypto exchanges because of the hate symbol it uses.