A Solana-based dog-themed memecoin called Bonk (BONK) has now become the third-largest memecoin by market capitalization, surging past that of fellow memecoin Pepe (PEPE) on Dec. 8.
Bonk’s recent price growth — 370% in the last month — has seen its market cap grow to $762 million, compared with Pepe’s current $675 million market cap, according to CoinGecko data.
In the past 30 days, BONK has grown from $0.0000028 to $0.000012 as traders rushed to capitalize on a new wave of interest in the Solana ecosystem.
Bonk’s rapid uptick in price also outpaced the growth of other more well-established dog memecoins such as Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Dogecoin (DOGE), which posted respective gains of 20% and 35% in the same time frame.
At the time of publication, Bonk has become the third-largest memecoin, coming in behind DOGE and SHIB — the largest and second-largest — which command market caps of $6 billion and $14.4 billion, respectively.
Bonk’s gains can be attributed to several factors, including being listed on centralized exchanges such as Binance and KuCoin. Additionally, futures data shows a sizeable increase in open interest over the past month, meaning that traders are buying and selling high volumes of Bonk derivatives, which only add to the volatility of the token’s price.
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First launched on Dec. 29, 2022, BONK witnessed a sizeable 3,766% uptick within the first week of trading despite the depressed price conditions of the bear market. From Jan. 5, Bonk began to decline, and its price hovered at levels close to its all-time lows for the better part of a year.
However, on Oct. 21, 2023, Bonk began to show signs of improvement and began to gain dramatically in value. From that date, Bonk has gained 6215%, rendering it the most high-performing mid-cap memecoin of the last three months.
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