Solana Ignites Bonk Meme Frenzy as Crypto Cools, DOGE, BTC, WOO, Dec. 18

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SOL

Solana was down 1% this week, which was less than the 3% fall in Bitcoin as the recent market surge cooled off. However, the price gains in Solana have reignited the appetite for its Bonk meme coin.

Bonk surged 65% again this week, moving the project to number 55 in the list of coins by market cap.

The move higher in the coin has also sparked demand for Solana’s Saga phone, which developers previously admitted was a failure. The phones come with an airdrop of 30 million Bonk coins and some of the phones have been selling on eBay for up to $5,000.

The coin airdrop was worth over $700 at its peak last week, while the phone went for $599. The handsets had gone on sale at $1,000 last year before the price was cut on lower demand. Bonk first rose to fame back in November when it surged 700% after its release. The release of the phones was met with a subdued response from Solana’s developers.

“We haven’t seen a ton of signal whether that’s a compelling enough thing to sell 50,000 units,” Solana founder Anatoly Yakovenko said at the time. “I think 25,000 to 50,000 units to feel like there is a hardcore user base for developers to be compelled to ship applications.”

SOL was trading at $68.00 on Monday and the price gains are also helping the bankruptcy claims of the FTX exchange. Sam Bankman-Fried’s failed crypto firm holds 55 million SOL tokens, worth around $4 billion, with the majority still in lock-up.

DOGE

The rise of Bonk looks to upend other meme coins with Pepe and Dogecoin among the week’s biggest losers, down 14% and 10% respectively.

Dogecoin was boosted in late November with news that it was among four coins being given a perpetual futures contract by the Coinbase exchange. The DOGE-PERP contract started trading on November 30.

DOGE recently hit a $2 billion trading volume over 24 hours at its peak. That has since slipped to $520 billion and we may see further selling if other meme coins begin to take center stage.

Dogecoin founder Billy Markus, poked the market bears in a post on X this week saying, "Oh no crypto died everything is dead blah blah blah.” The tweet was applauded by X owner and DOGE supporter Elon Musk, but the market crashed only hours later as BTC whales dumped around $670 million in tokens.

The price of DOGE dipped to $0.088 this week and has some uptrend support below at around $0.085. A breach of that level would likely take the market to $0.0700.

BTC

Bitcoin’s dip to $41,000 over the last week was driven by long liquidations.

Data from Coinglass have been $103.5 million in liquidations of token-tracked futures in the past 12 hours, and $95 million of them have been longs, or bets on higher prices. Of the $103.5 million in total liquidations, $33 million in bitcoin positions were liquidated, with $29 million of those being long bitcoin positions.

The latest meme coin frenzy is clogging up many other blockchains with gas fees spiking on Ethereum and other layer-1 chains, such as Avalanche. That is a worry for the current rally as it may run out of steam on higher fees.

Another setback for the crypto market was a hack of the ledger hardware wallet system. Ledger’s USB-style cold storage wallet was seen to be bullt-proof and that may shake confidence in the technology.

Multiple Ethereum-based applications including Zapper, SushiSwap, Phantom, and Balancer were compromised on Thursday. It was unknown how much money had been lost but reports on social media suggest the exploit is widespread. Blockaid suggested upwards of $150,000 in crypto had been lost due to the “supply chain attack” on Ledger’s Connect Kit, which is used in the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem.

Lucy Hu at digital asset management firm Metalpha told CoinDesk that the market has handled the Ledger hack well.

“The massive Ledger hack did swing some sentiment in the DeFi space and raises important questions on wallet security," she said. “Besides, the stellar rise of Bitcoin Ordinals continues to fuel enthusiasm for Bitcoin miners, who have been heavily rewarded. We expect the long-term growth momentum of Bitcoin to remain on track."

In in an outlook for 2024, Bitwise believes the Bitcoin spot ETF will be approved and drive the price of BTC to $80,000 with increased support from institutions and Wall Street.

BTC needs to hold the $40,000 level or it could pull back as far as $36-38,000.

WOO

Woo Network was another gainer this week, with the trading platform up around 45%.

Woo Network is a zero-fee deep liquidity network that seeks to connect traders, exchanges, institutions, and DeFi platforms.

WOO X, the crypto exchange powered by the WOO token, announced a partnership with Wintermute this week to boost its liquidity. Wintermute is an algorithmic trading firm and liquidity provider with around $3.6 trillion in cumulative trading volume, and its collaboration with WOO X sees it become the exchange’s key liquidity provider. Selini Capital was another market maker signing up to WOO X which expanded its designated market maker (DMM) program with access to more than 135 perpetual markets.

The Woo Network project currently has a market cap of roughly $600 million and trades at number 85 in the list of coins by market value.