Meme coins and tokens are famously volatile, surging and falling based on things like social media sentiment—as seen in many past occasions with Elon Musk and Dogecoin. Now BONK, a Solana-based, dog-themed token, is experiencing that same kind of turbulent momentum, falling by over half today after ascending to an all-time high price overnight.

BONK has surged over the past week, fueled by Solana developers and aficionados that are embracing the jokey vibe and memey nature after months of declining value for SOL and dour vibes around the ecosystem. On Wednesday and into early Thursday, the token more than tripled in price, peaking at $0.00000487 per data from CoinGecko.

But Wednesday’s rise has given way to a sharp Thursday fall, with the token dipping as low as $0.00000223 this morning—a 54% drop in less than 11 hours.

It recalls the vast swings seen by other meme coins in the past, such as the Ethereum-based Shiba Inu (SHIB), Dogecoin, and shorter-lived phenomena like Floki Inu (FLOKI). All of them are inspired in part by the Shiba Inu dog from the classic “doge” meme, which has been embraced by the crypto world.

However, BONK is already rebounding, popping back up to $0.00000315 as of this writing. And even with the sizable drop, BONK is vastly outperforming all major cryptocurrencies this week. The token is up more than 3,300% over the last week, and still retains a 42% gain over the past 24 hours. Bitcoin, by comparison, is up just 2% this week.

The biggest beneficiaries are developers and creators that are building on Solana, as well as collectors of some popular NFT projects on the platform. BONK was launched last month and half of the 100 trillion token supply was airdropped for free to the community, including builders and collectors.

For example, some Solana app builders who joined LamportDAO—a hub for developers—each received 5 billion BONK on December 25. It was valued at less than $1,000 worth of the token on that date. But at the peak price last night, that stash would have been worth almost $122,000.

Free crypto money may have fueled the initial momentum around BONK, but traders betting on a “degen” meme coin play undoubtedly helped to push its price to the recent peak. CoinGecko showed surging trading volume for BONK last night at a significant multiple of previous levels, with 24-hour volume peaking around $230 million overnight.

Momentum around BONK is also fueling a price surge for Solana itself, which fell to a nearly two-year low of $8.17 last week. Now SOL is trading for more than $13 again, per CoinGecko, up 34% on the week.

Solana (SOL) is still down 95% from its own peak of $260 in November 2021, and the coin and ecosystem alike were especially hard hit by the impact of FTX’s collapse in November. But as silly as it may seem, BONK is pumping fresh life into the Solana space at the start of 2023.

You can tell that things have really changed in the Solana space when a price around $13 is seen by investors and supporters as a cause for celebration. But that’s the case today with SOL rebounding sharply from its recent fall to nearly $8, and the cause for this week’s buzz appears to be a new dog-themed token called BONK.

Solana is up 16% over the past 24 hours to a price of about $12.90 as of this writing, per data from CoinGecko, with a weekly gain of 19%. Earlier this morning, Solana hit $13.21, but has come down slightly since that seven-day peak.

Much of the chatter and hype in the Solana ecosystem over the last days has focused on the rise of BONK, a Solana-based token with the same kind of “doge meme” theme as Dogecoin (DOGE) and the Ethereum-based token Shiba Inu (SHIB).

BONK launched in late December with a large-scale airdrop, with free tokens sent to the wallets of a wide array of Solana developers and NFT collectors. This included developers that joined LamportDAO, a hub for Solana builders, as well as owners of NFTs from projects including DeGods and Famous Fox Federation.

Overall, 100 trillion BONK tokens have been minted. According to the BONK website, 50% of the total supply has been airdropped to developers, NFT owners, creators, and artists, with a chunk of the remaining supply also locked into vesting contracts for BONK contributors.

Following holiday airdrops that began on December 25, BONK has become the growing focus on conversation and development among Solana developers and users on Crypto Twitter. Projects are building with BONK and integrating the token, and the growing use and excitement appears to be fueling a surge in both BONK’s price and SOL’s own value.

BONK is up 58% over the past 24 hours to a current price of $0.00000105, according to CoinGecko, with nearly $20 million in trading volume over the span and a market cap of almost $58 million. Earlier this morning, BONK showed a more than 100% day-over-day rise as the coin’s price kept surging, but the momentum has softened since.

It’s arguably the brightest sign that the Solana market has seen in the last two months, since the early November collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX torpedoed SOL’s price and dampened enthusiasm in the space.

SOL traded for as much as $37 just before FTX’s liquidity crisis, and FTX’s close ties to Solana apparently crashed its price harder than other leading cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Solana fell out of CoinGecko’s top 10 coins by market cap and briefly crashed out of the top 20 last week as the price neared $8 for the first time in nearly two years.

Even amid this week’s price rise, SOL is still down 95% from its all-time high of $260 set in November 2021. Solana surged in value in late 2021, but fell sharply last year amid wider crypto market struggles, technical issues, and eventually the added impact of the FTX downfall.

Solana creators and developers are currently rallying around BONK, but meme coins and tokens are famously volatile and their surges can be short-lived.

PolyDoge (CRYPTO: POLYDOGE) — a Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE) knockoff coin — has emerged as the most traded token by the top 1,000 Polygon (CRYPTO: MATIC) whale wallets.

What Happened: PolyDoge flipped Bloktopia (CRYPTO: BLOK) to emerge as the most traded token by Polygon whales, as per data from WhaleStats.

JUST IN: #PolyDoge @PolyDoge had flipped #BLOK to be most traded token by the top 1000 #MATIC whale wallets

#PolyDoge price ups 13.9% in the last 24hrs with a current price of $0.000000029865

Whale leaderboard: https://t.co/bZRWLUMb4t pic.twitter.com/C5axGMrShQ

— WhaleStats – the top 1000 Polygon richlist (@whalestatsMATIC) February 7, 2022

The 1,000 largest Matic wallets are worth an average of $1.84 million and have an average of 50,560 MATIC and nine tokens.

Polygon is an Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) scaling platform.

PolyDoge currently ranks seventh among the top ten cryptocurrency holdings of the Polygon whales, according to WhaleStats data.

Why It Matters: PolyDoge says it aims to build the biggest community on Polygon.

The meme token says it offers a wide variety of fun interaction to its holders in the form of non fungible tokens (NFT), apps, airdrops and access to different decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms.

Price Action: PolyDoge is up 4.8% during the past 24 hours, trading at $0.00000002902 at press time.

Bloktopia is down 6.6% during the period to $0.02999.

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