After nearly three years, Bitcoin briefly reached an all-time high of over $69,000 on March 5. Kraken’s managing director Jonathon Miller called this a truly historic moment for Bitcoin and the crypto industry as a whole. The rise in Bitcoin primarily led to significant increases in memecoin projects.
What’s Happening in the Crypto Market?
Similarly, Bitcoin’s 56% gain since the beginning of the year has sparked interest in various meme coin projects. According to data compiled by Bitget Research’s lead analyst Ryan Lee, altcoin projects like Floki and Baby Doge provided returns ranging from 80% to 289% just in the past week, with their trading volume increasing by 840% during the same period. Lee commented on the matter:
“The rapid rise of assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum caused a ripple effect that pushed the entire meme sector upwards. A significant factor contributing to the rise in these memecoin projects is their deployment on Ethereum and Solana chains, typically priced in ETH and SOL on decentralized exchange platforms. The upward trend in ETH and SOL prices consequently led to an increase in the prices of memecoin projects.”
On the same day, the popular memecoin project in the Solana ecosystem, Dogwifhat (WIF), experienced a wild surge with expectations of a Binance listing, gaining 400% just in the past week. According to blockchain analytics firm Lookonchain, an investor is claimed to have made $4.3 million from WIF, spending $1,156 worth of 20 SOL just four days after WIF went online on November 24, 2023.
Noteworthy Development in the Bitcoin Ecosystem
Despite high prices, development activities in the Bitcoin ecosystem continue to heat up. According to Bitcoin venture capital fund 9.Bit, a leading Layer-1 solution in the Bitcoin ecosystem, Bitmap, has created a network-specific BRC-420 metaverse protocol. The founder of 9.Bit commented on the matter:
“After purchasing Bitmap land, users can buy avatars, pets, game assets, and background music from the BRC-420 Marketplace and use them in Bitmap applications.”
Another feature created by Bitmap, the Merlin Chain, allows for the exchange of non-fungible and fungible tokens among BRC-420 assets. The project currently has a market value of $180 million.
