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Meme coins have recently suffered through a lot of volatility, with Dogwifhat (WIF) dropping out of the top 50 cryptos by market cap after a 38% price decline, and Rizz (RIZZ) dealing with a dramatic price collapse during a livestream. Despite these setbacks, the meme coin market saw a resurgence with double-digit growth over the past 24 hours. The sector is also dealing with some controversies, like Jason Derulo's alleged token dump and 50 Cent's social media accounts being hacked to promote scam meme coins.
WIF Loses Ground
Meme coins have broken out of a week-long bearish crypto trend to record double-digit growth over the past 24 hours. However, before the current bullish boost, meme coins were among the biggest losers in the crypto market.
On Jun. 23, Solana meme coin Dogwifhat (WIF) dropped out of the top 50 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization after its price dropped by 38% in seven days. Dogwifhat’s market cap fell by 9% to around $1.60 billion in 12 hours, which allowed Fantom (FTM) to overtake its position in the top 50 cryptocurrencies by market cap.
Dogwifhat is still the fourth largest meme coin by market cap, positioned below Pepe (PEPE), which has nearly three times the market cap of Dogwifhat at $4.9 billion. Luckily, the past 24 hours of trading has been much kinder to WIF as its price was able to climb by 16.33% over this time period. This means that the meme is trading hands at $1.90, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
Top meme coins by market cap (Source: CoinMarketCap)
There are also some well known analysts that are very bullish on WIF’s future trajectory. On Mar. 14, when Dogwifhat hit the $3 mark for the first time, Arthur Hayes, the former CEO of BitMEX and current chief investment officer at Maelstrom, predicted that the Solana-based meme coin could rally to the $10 mark.
Rizz Meme Coin Crashes
WIF was not the only meme coin that got hit hard by the red market. The founder of the Rizz (RIZZ) meme coin faced a very dramatic turn of events while presenting their cryptocurrency during a livestream on X.
The value of RIZZ ended up unexpectedly plummeting by close to 90% in front of shocked viewers. Nicolas Vaiman, the CEO of Bubblemaps, was actually present in the X Space during the incident and shared a detailed account of the events on X.
RIZZ launched on the Solana platform on Jun. 18, and had an initial trading volume of $8 million. The founder of the meme coin was invited to talk about the token live on Space, but the situation quickly took a bad turn.
The Bubblemaps team pointed out some concerns about the "bubbles" on the coin's bubble map, which showed that over 80% of the supply was concentrated in a few accounts. Early transactions indicated that the sell-off primarily involved initial buyers who managed to purchase the token minutes after its launch.
During the livestream, Vaiman saw that the founder became visibly emotional as the token’s price collapsed. Vaiman even suggested that the meme coin’s founder might have been on the verge of tears.
Interestingly, a source revealed to Vaiman that the founder, who is referred to as "Rick," was not truly in control of Rizz. Instead, a group of developers from Singapore, who are notorious for creating and then abandoning meme coins, were reportedly running the show.
These developers allegedly kept a large portion of the supply by transferring tokens from the initial deployer wallets and using new wallets funded by centralized exchanges to acquire tokens early on. This strategy made it challenging to trace the wallets, although timing analysis could reveal connections as these developers quickly accumulated tokens.
Meme Coins Make Comeback
On the bright side, it seems like meme coins are putting the tough times behind them as they have broken out of a week-long bearish crypto trend by experiencing double-digit growth over the past 24 hours.
Dogecoin (DOGE) mirrored the broader market trend with a 4+% price increase. Meanwhile, Shiba Inu (SHIB) saw a smaller 1.97% gain.
Some of the newer meme coins emerged as the biggest beneficiaries of the bullish surge. Solana-based Popcat (POPCAT) recorded a 55+% surge to trade hands at $0.4015 at press time, and Mog Coin (MOG) saw its price jump by about 29%.
TOPCAT 1D price chart (Source: CoinMarketCap)
Pepe (PEPE) also posted double-digit growth over the past day, rising to a high of $0.00001198. Other meme coins also performed well, like Floki (FLOKI), which recorded a 9% gain, and Bonk (BONK), which saw a 16% surge in price.
This recent push in meme coin prices reversed the bearish market trend and brought meme coins back into the spotlight after many people predicted the end of the meme token frenzy following its recent dip.
Jason Derulo's Token Drama
Although the prices of meme coins are looking much better, there is still some drama in the meme coin space at the moment. Jason Derulo, the American singer, sold thousands of dollars worth of his newly launched crypto token JASON despite repeatedly claiming that he “WILL NEVER SELL,” according to analytics firm Bubblemaps.
However, the token’s very controversial co-creator, Sahil Arora, now claims that it was part of an “orchestrated” plan. Derulo shared a contract address for the Solana-based token on X on Jun. 23, which led to a flurry of trading activity and a rapid price pump and dump.
Hours after initial trading, Derulo claimed that serial scammer and celebrity meme coin promoter Sahil Arora deceived him, but he promised to “do everything in my power to send this shit to the moon.” Bubblemaps, however, is not convinced that Derulo was fooled, and ended up posting on X that wallets associated with Arora held half of JASON’s supply and dumped nearly all of it, making a $180,000 profit after Derulo’s post.
Bubblemaps also identified a wallet allegedly belonging to Derulo, which received tokens directly from Arora’s wallet and sold around $20,000 worth of the token despite Derulo’s promises not to sell. Bubblemaps stated that Derulo’s actions did not at all align with someone who was deceived, especially considering how he quickly organized a Space, hyped his community, and hinted at burning tokens.
Arora confirmed Bubblemaps’ claims about Derulo’s wallet and, when he was asked about Derulo selling his token, responded with a GIF of influencer Hasbulla saying “business, business.”
GUNIT Crypto Scam
Renowned rapper Curtis James Jackson III, who is better known as “50 Cent,” also recently claimed that his X account and website were hacked. He claims this led to the promotion of a meme coin pump-and-dump scam.
Fraudulent developers created a new crypto token called “GUNIT,” and exploited Jackson’s impressive X following to attract investors and inflate the token’s price before draining its value.
On Jun. 21, Jackson informed his 32.8 million Instagram followers that his X account and website were compromised. Jackson also added that Twitter acted very quickly to secure his account, but the hackers still managed to make $300,000,000 in just 30 minutes. He also made a point to mention that he has “no association with this crypto.”
Jackson posted three images showing comments from the crypto community about the GUNIT meme coin, with charts illustrating a sharp price spike followed by a rapid decline, which is a classic rug-pull pattern.
