Around 25,000 percent plus in just under 4 months: Dogwifhat is the new star in the memecoin sky. Since it started at the end of November 2023, it has almost only known one direction: upwards. And at a breathtaking pace. Last weekend, the Dog in the Hat overtook Pepe for the second time and, after a run to over $4.8 billion, now sits at a market capitalization of just under $3.8 billion, directly in second place among memecoins, behind Shiba Inu. No memecoin has ever marched so quickly into the top 25 cryptocurrencies immediately after its launch. What makes the coin so popular and why it could even become the Dogecoin of this bull run.
Dogwifhat emerged as a meme in the gamer scene back in 2019. It shows a photo of a Shiba Inu with a wool hat. The Wif refers to With, but in dog language. Prominent gamers and eSports organizations first made the meme a trend, first around the game “Fortnite”. They quickly called themselves the “dog wif hat gang”. Identifying mark: the dog with a (always different) hat as a profile picture.
The memecoin Dogwifhat then launched on December 13, 2023 on Raydium, a decentralized exchange on Solana. The original developer left the project shortly after launch. He cashed out his 350 million WIF after just two days for around 511 Solana, then around $29,000. That would make him a billionaire today.
The coin was listed on Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, on March 5, 2024. Currently the trading volume is around $800 million per day, on par with the not far more valuable Shiba Inu, which has a market capitalization of $16 billion, four times that of Dogwifhat. Around 111,000 people currently use Dogwifhat. For comparison: With DOGE there are an estimated 5 million (as of 2023).
In the bull run of 2021, Dogecoin and then Shiba Inu established themselves as the memecoins of the cycle. Both became the most quoted memes on social media. They thrive on new variations and sensational headlines, stories and PR stunts and the size and creativity of their communities. Dogecoin rose in the bull run from around $500 million to a market capitalization of $80 billion. Today it sits at $25 billion and is one of the most popular cryptocurrencies in the world.
“Memecoins are becoming a way for people to express their thoughts or affiliation with a cause,” said journalist and founder of The Defiant, Camilla Russo, on Twitter. “When others buy these tokens, it’s like buying a ticket to a club of people who have the same worldview or just want to be in on the same joke.”
Memes often generate their power by giving expression to a certain culture, in the form of catchphrases, ideas or a certain behavior. An old but particularly understandable example is the now legendary Budweiser ad from 1999, in which three guys shout “Whassup” at each other on the phone. Strangers or friends calling each other “Whassup” became a trend back then. A meme was born.
Memecoins are essentially a form of speculation that turns speculation itself into a meme and thereby further fuels its own speculation. Investors speculate on memecoins that they make memes about, and then make memes about them speculating. Most of the thousands of new memecoins die after a few days and investors go bankrupt. That’s part of the deal. And it also becomes a meme again: There are tons of coins like “Rug”, which deals with its fraudulent intentions with a wink. The picture: a carpet pulled away. A reference to the rug pull, the most common form of scam. Description: “The developer has already left.”
Memecoins are driving up the activity of blockchains, especially those with low fees. Solana is currently almost just a memecoin chain; a similar development can be seen at Base. The success of coins like Dogwifhat inspires the search for new overperformers. At the same time, it also attracts media attention, which further drives up the price. Forbes, Bloomberg and Die Zeit have all mentioned Dogwifhat because of its incredible story.
Dogwifhat replaced Bonk as the favorite memecoin on Solana in just two months. He received early support from prominent influencers such as Ansem (around 300,000 followers) and Hsaka (600,000 followers), one of the oldest and most popular traders on Solana.
From a tokenomics perspective, Dogwifhat is fair. There are no additional tokens or inflation. There are whales, but… largest wallet holds around $134,000 million in WIF, or around three percent of the total – and has not sold for three months. Similar to Bonk, the coin is integrated into the ecosystem, for example through airdrops. Anyone who held Bonk or a small amount of Dogwifhat in their virtual wallet got another memecoin airdropped last week, MEW (cat in a dogs world) worth around $200.
The meme in all its variations is, above all, the big trend in the Solana community to express its enthusiasm about the bull market. It is playfully quoted by major projects and influencers, even the founders. Dogwifhat is everywhere. It is the expression of a vibe, the representation of a certain zeitgeist. Here: playful humor, emphatically weird. On the website you read:
WIF IS NOT ONLY LITERALLY A DOG WITH A HAT, BUT ALSO A SYMBOL OF PROGRESS, FOR FUTURISTIC TRANSACTIONS, A LIGHTHOUSE FOR THOSE WHO THINK FORWARD. IT IS CLEAR THAT THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO ADOPT INNOVATIONS LIKE WIF, BREAK BOUNDARIES AND USAGE A NEW ERA IN FINANCIAL AND TECHNOLOGY.
Dogwifhat
Except as you read this, everything gets crossed out until all that’s left is: “It’s literally just a dog in a hat.” Popular influencers like Raoul Pal (he has two percent of his portfolio in WIF) and traders post photos of their dogs or cats or themselves – wearing a hat. Or put it on Gary Gensler, the hated head of the US financial regulator.
The movement has its own slang: Get Wif It. The Hat Stays On. Or the catchphrase: “But does it have a hat?” There are now successors like Dogswifpants. Or Catswifbags. Or yes, even Catswifdogs.
As blogger TPan notes, the meme is so successful because it can be combined and reassembled almost infinitely. Even outside of Solana, Layer2 of Ethereum is establishing itself, here for example as an April Fool’s joke on Arbitrum.
And the WIF community is extremely committed to spreading the meme and its culture and getting it into the headlines. $750,000 was raised to project the Dogwifhat onto the Sphere in Las Vegas. Someone knitted a giant hat a few weeks ago and put it on the Wall Street bull.
Both PR stunts in highly symbolic places with a great signal effect, America’s financial stronghold and its gambling paradise. This tweet from Hasaka, one of the biggest influencers, probably shows how skillfully and charmingly Dogwifhat captures and at the same time parodies the current vibe of the crypto space.
Some supporters are already predicting a market capitalization of at least $40 billion this bull run (that would be a tenfold increase in the current price), even the prominent developer Arthur Hayes is assuming on Twitter that the current price will at least double.
That’s not unrealistic: Dogecoin’s market capitalization rose from around $500 million to $80 billion in the last bull market in 2021. There is room for improvement: the memecoin is particularly popular among crypto insiders. Although it dominates Twitter hashtags and influencer conversations, it currently only reaches a tenth of Dogecoin’s search queries, as an analysis by Google Trends shows.
Can Dogwifhat stay at the top?
Currently, the hype surrounding Dogwifhat in the crypto space seems unstoppable. But the stars in the memecoin sky sometimes burn out as quickly as they rise. Last year it was Bonk that dominated the headlines and the memecoin market on Solana, currently he still sits at a market cap of over $1 billion. But thousands of memecoins launch on Solana every day and push their way into the upper ranks.
What is emerging here: allied memes. Some influencers are trying – quite successfully – to establish memes as common teams, for example Sharkcat (“Sharkcat is the WIF of cats”), alongside Dogwifhat. The influencers and teams quote their slangs (“Jeets out, Chads in”) and repost each other, including collages of shared memes. Thanks to this hype, Sharkcat has now risen to half a billion US dollars.
With Base from Coinbase, Solana has faced very strong competition as the main playground for memecoins. Memecoins based there such as Degen, Brett and Co. regularly scratch the billion mark and could attract attention and capital from Solana. Ultimately, there is always the risk that the crypto market will develop negatively, which will hit memecoin prices the hardest.
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