Ethereum memecoins go viral with $6.4bn traded in February

Trading volumes for memecoins on Ethereum soared by 61% in February from January, reaching over $6.4 billion.

Memecoins are cryptocurrencies that draw their inspiration from internet memes, pop culture phenomena, and trends that have gone viral.

The coins hold no inherent value. Instead, their price appreciation is driven by the attention they garner from traders and speculators.

The prices of memecoins on the Ethereum blockchain with market capitalisations of over $1 billion exploded in February. Pepe, Shib, and Doge all soared, rising 292%, 57%, and 59%, respectively.

Smaller market caps on Ethereum, MOG and GROK, rose 920% and 172% in February from January.

MOG describes itself as “effortless cosmic domination and unadulterated success distilled into computer photons, wrapped into ERC-20 tokens, and placed directly on the Ethereum blockchain.”

The GROK memecoin was inspired by the release of GROK AI from Tesla CEO Elon Musk, but it has no official relationship with GROK AI. Rather, GROK, the memecoin, describes itself as “establishing a community of GROK AI enthusiasts who want to save the world and love making memes while doing it!”

This is all to say that memecoins are quite random and their price performance doesn’t come from utility, but rather from how well the meme behind the coin resonates with crypto traders.

In December, memecoin trading was largely dominated by Solana, but now volumes have shifted back to the Ethereum mainnet.

Volumes on Telegram trading bots, which are apps designed to simplify onchain trading by letting users trade on decentralised exchanges through the popular messaging app Telegram, have also shifted to Ethereum mainnet over the last month.

The top trading pairs on Telegram bots are generally memecoins, and so it provides insight where memecoin trading volumes might be.

Although trading volumes are dominated by Ethereum, memecoins have still been successful on other chains.

Popular Solana memecoin dogwifhat, WIF — named after an internet meme of a dog wearing a pink knit hat — hit an all-time high today of $1.10, giving it a total market cap of $1.1 billion. This is a 70,000% gain since the coin launched on December 13 at a price of $0.0015.

Base, an Ethereum layer 2 blockchain, witnessed its native memecoin, Toshi—named after the cat of Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong—reach an all-time high of $0.00018. The surge pushed its market cap to over $75 million.

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