Blockchain
Bitcoin-Based Meme Coin DOG Rockets to $1 Billion Market Cap on Runes Protocol
A meme coin issued on Bitcoin’s Runes protocol is approaching a $1 billion market cap after surging 200% in the past 30 days.
The aptly named DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON (DOG) token was generated on April 20 during the bitcoin halving event. It became “Rune number 3” and has since become the largest meme coin on Bitcoin and the seventh largest meme coin in the cryptocurrency market. The largest, dogecoin (DOGE)It has a market capitalization of $23 billion.
DOG’s rise comes on the heels of a flurry of meme coin activity with the likes of SHIB, PEPE and FLOKI adding billions of dollars to their market capitalizations since the start of the year.
While most other meme coins are issued on superfast blockchains like Solana and Base, DOG is helping establish Runes as legitimate Bitcoin level 2 network despite the cumbersome nature of the Bitcoin blockchain.
Runes are essentially a way to make transactions cheaper and faster than the Ordinals protocol, which embeds data into the Bitcoin blockchain by writing information into small Bitcoin-based transactions.
DOG has amassed nearly $100 million in trading volume in the past 24 hours as traders begin to bet on whether a Bitcoin-based meme coin could emulate the success of established equivalents on other chains.
It is worth noting that meme coins are highly volatile assets as they come and go based on the social media narrative and not an underlying use case. After its launch, DOG dropped more than 60% in three weeks before embarking on its recent rally.