SNEAK PEEK
- Meme coins are in their best phase, with prices for some of them spiking unbelievably.
- Warren Buffett thinks that Bitcoin replacing the U.S. dollar as reserve currency is a joke.
- 80 countries launched the World App, and 26% of family offices invested in crypto.
The extensive world of blockchain remains active 24/7 with multiple news stories appearing every day. On that note, here’s a look at some of the key happenings of the last week.
2022 marked a year of skepticism for crypto markets; however, things are looking different in 2023. Bitcoin and Ethereum have united to gain around 60%. Recent weeks have seen a surge in meme coins and NFTs, with both of them hitting heights that were never seen after the 2021 bull market. As a result, several low market cap tokens are increasing, and transaction fees are reaching new highs on the largest blockchains.
Meme coin trading has hit a two year high, which has come as a surprise to many. They were leading in the last bull market, and some of them even yielded jaw-dropping profits in a few hours.
It looks like the era is back, as more than $2.3 billion in memecoins were traded last week. Not only was it six-times higher than the week before, but it was also the highest level recorded since May 2021.
Ever since the banking crisis began, traders have invested in crypto. This has led to the crypto market being pushed back above $1 trillion. There’s also been a revival of the appetite for risk as far as certain traders are concerned.
Talking about the most popular tokens as of now, they include names after the Pepe the Frog meme, the ill-fated Wall Street Bets subreddit, and the Giga-Chad meme.
PEPE was issued over three weeks ago with a supply of 420 trillion tokens and is the memecoin of the moment. According to the Anti-Defamation League, alt-right groups have co-opted it as a hate symbol.
PEPE has become popular on Twitter and has emerged as the fastest Ethereum token to hit the $1 billion mark. However, it crashed by more than 50% a few days later. Its rapid jump resulted in a PEPE trade worth $250 turning into more than $1 million. Also, another trader spent $263 to flip it into profits worth more than $3.8 million.
Among the 179 meme coins CoinGecko tracked, PEPE happened to be the only other besides Shiba Inu and Dogecoin to mark a spot in the top 100 cryptocurrencies in terms of market capitalization.
At the same time, founder of Gokhshtein Media David Gokhshtein, who is known for supporting PepeCoin, recently tweeted that disrespecting PEPE will make Coinbase lose multiple clients.
Thanks to a new type of token, BRC-20 tokens, memecoins are on Bitcoin as well. Developed in early March, they let individuals create NFTs or other cryptos on the blockchain of Bitcoin and have hit a market cap of over $1 billion.
Until now, more than 11,000 different tokens have been made, and at least one is listed on a few centralized exchanges. BRC-20 tokens include a BTC-native PEPE besides tokens named PIZA and MEME.
Unfortunately, the surge in trading is creating a major concern for Bitcoin in the form of higher network fees. Made for payments, Bitcoin’s other use cases include clogging block space, which resulted in the cost of transactions spiking from over $1.20 last week to $20 at the beginning of the current week.
Similar concerns were noticed on Ethereum due to the PEPE craze that doubled the gas fees.
Coming to the question of why all this matters, some traders made huge profits owing to the meme coin speculations. However, this doesn’t mean that there are no risks, as meme coin freaks have seen Bitcoin and Ethereum plummet at times.
Crypto executive Chen Arad suggests major caution when one looks forward to investing in memecoins.
Meanwhile, the creator of one of the earliest Bitcoin NFT projects, Udi Wertheimer, tweeted that he isn’t bothered about what Satoshi wanted Bitcoin to become. He added that Satoshi left the project after one year and isn’t here anymore.
Last weekend, at his company’s popular annual shareholder meeting in Omaha, Warren Buffett, shared about being the reserve currency. He continued by saying that he doesn’t see any other option for some other currency to become the reserve currency.
Defining Bitcoin as rat poison earlier, Warren Buffett has yet to change his belief and has called the idea of Bitcoin replacing the U.S. dollar as reserve currency a joke.
In another piece of blockchain news, 80 countries participated in the launch of Sam Altman’s World App, which is a cryptocurrency wallet as well as a tool to confirm online identity through the Worldcoin crypto project of Altman. The project aspires to scan the eyes of people to authenticate them.
The concept of retinal scans led to a fallout among some within the crypto community in 2021. As a result, Altman tweeted that he understands the instinctive reaction towards using biometrics.
Meanwhile, according to a new Goldman Sachs report, 26% of family offices are invested in crypto. In 2021, the percentage was only 16. Moreover, family offices with no interest in or investment in crypto have increased to 62%. In 2021, the percentage was 45%.
