Memecoins briefly took over the cryptocurrency market in 2021 after the constant attention and shilling of big-name influencers like Elon Musk and Mark Cuban helped propel coins like Dogecoin (DOGE) to 100x gains.
As you might expect, in the cryptocurrency market, rapidly rising prices tend to reverse course just as quickly and many of the tokens that were once high-flying memes now find themselves fighting for survival as the market mature and investors are looking for real-world use cases.
Let’s take a look at some of the most popular memecoins of 2021 to see if they were just a flash or if there are fundamental developments that may prove fruitful in the long run.
Dogecoin
DOGE is the original memecoin and it helped start the rally on the 21st after its price shot up over 20,000% from a low of $0.0036 on Jan 1, 2021 to an all-time high of $0.74 on May 8.
Since that time, the price has deflated along with the broader crypto market and is currently trading at $0.135.
Of all the memecoins, DOGE remains the highest profile of the pack despite not having any major developments in the works. It remains one of Elon Musk’s favorite Twitter topics and its price saw a notable spike recently when Musk started bidding to buy Twitter and make it private.
Musk’s move sparked speculation that DOGE could be added as a tip currency on the social media platform if the deal ultimately goes through, leading to a brief spike in DOGE’s price.
Details about what’s coming next for Dogecoin are scant and some talk of earlier discussions to make the network proof-of-stake is still circulating, but nothing concrete has been announced.
A project developer will hold a workshop to explore messaging services within peer-to-peer protocols like Dogecoin, indicating that other potential use cases for the longer-running meme-themed network are being explored.
Shiba Inu
While Dogecoin gets much of the attention from big influencers, Shiba Inu (SHIB) had one of the biggest hits on the meme scene in 2021 after its price surged over 5,799,999,900% from its October 2020 low. and helped a smart trader turn a $3,400 bet into a $1.5 billion payout.
The SHIB price is currently trading at $0.000024, a 73% decline from its all-time high, with the token regularly seeing daily trading volume in excess of $500 million.
SHIB holders saw a slight increase in price on April 12 when the token was listed on popular trading app Robinhood, but continued weakness in the crypto market has all but erased those gains.
On the development front, the Shiba Inu team is currently focusing its efforts on expanding SHIB’s Metaverse capabilities through the launch of a land auction event that offers members of the Shiba Inu community the opportunity to purchase land. virtual within the ecosystem.
The project roadmap also points to the continued development of Shibarium, a layer two scaling solution designed specifically for Shiba Inu that will help the protocol escape high transaction fees on the Ethereum (ETH) network.
SafeMoon
SafeMoon (SFM) was also launched early in the meme coin hype cycle and set out to reward loyal investors and discourage speculators by creating an automatic liquidity pool.
The project was originally launched on March 8, and its price quickly rose from less than $0.00000006 to an all-time high of $0.00001399 on April 20, 2021, but has been trending down ever since.
In early 2022, the Safemoon protocol was upgraded to version 2, which included a token revaluation that reduced supply by a factor of 1,000.
Since the migration to v2, the price of SFM has continued to decline and is currently trading at $0.00068 according to data from CoinGecko.
On the development front, Safemoon announced that it would be launching the Safemoon Card for community members and this would allow them to use their SFM and other cryptocurrencies to make everyday purchases. The waiting list for the card opened on April 8.
Other developments include the launch of a new version of the Safemoon wallet, the launch of Live Crypto Party, a “party to win” metaverse platform that rewards users in cryptocurrencies and NFTs for having fun online and offline.
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