The top meme coins face pressures as new competitors enter the market, compounded by losses in Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The once-dominant meme coins, including Dogecoin (DOGE), Shiba Inu (SHIB), and PepeCoin (PEPE), have encountered a challenging week, trading in the red as a wave of new meme coins enters the sector.
The recent downturn in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) prices has further exacerbated the situation, as these top cryptocurrencies have historically influenced the broader market sentiment.
Among the leading meme coins, PEPE has experienced the most significant losses, declining by 14.9% over the past week and 5.5% within the last 24 hours. Currently valued at $0.00000144, PEPE holds a market capitalization of $619 million.
Nevertheless, PEPE has recorded a 52.5% increase over the past 30 days, following its remarkable performance during June’s meme coin rally.
The market’s attention has been diverted by the emergence of copycat projects such as PEPE 2.0 and Shib 2.0, which gained considerable traction last week. PEPE 2.0 witnessed a rapid surge in market capitalization, surpassing $50 million shortly after its launch, according to CoinGecko data.
In parallel, Wall Street Memes, a meme coin project developed by the creators of the popular Wall St Bulls NFT collection, managed to raise over $13 million in less than a week.
The introduction of these new competitors appears to have shifted traders’ focus away from PEPE, as reflected in the declining trading volumes for meme coins, falling below the levels observed during the June pump.
The negative price actions of BTC and ETH last week, driven by expectations of interest rate hikes by the U.S. Federal Reserve, further intensified the selling pressure on meme coins. BTC briefly lost support at $30,000 on Friday, settling at $30,165, while ETH dipped below $1,900 as the optimistic momentum from June failed to sustain itself, leaving the coin at $1,861.
The meme coin market is undergoing a significant reshuffling, with fresh contenders attracting traders’ attention while established players face downward pressures. As the broader cryptocurrency landscape evolves, market participants eagerly await further developments in this volatile and dynamic space.