Elon Musk Shares Dog Hat Photo, WIF Surges 20% to Reclaim $3 Mark

In a recent Twitter post celebrating St. Patrick's Day, Tesla CEO Elon Musk shared a picture featuring multiple dogs wearing green hats. This seemingly innocuous gesture sparked a significant surge in the meme coin WIF, also known as Dog Hat Coin, with a rapid 23% increase within four hours of the tweet.

Elon Musk's recent endorsement streak of meme coins, termed "shilling," has garnered attention. His unexpected announcement on the 13th regarding accepting Dogecoin payments for Tesla purchases led to a 15% surge in Dogecoin within two hours. This pattern raises speculation about his intentions towards meme coins like WIF.

WIF's price surge has attracted attention; however, concerns have been raised among investors regarding the project's operational transparency and community development

WIF, famously known for its dog-with-a-hat logo, embarked on its journey without a compelling narrative. Its meteoric rise, however, defied expectations. Initially priced at $0.00016 in November, WIF quietly surged, catching attention with a notable $3.99 spike fueled by a significant transaction loss.

The surge continued as liquidity improved, attracting attention from major exchanges like Binance and investment endorsements from figures like Arthur Hayes. Despite lacking an elaborate narrative, WIF's trajectory resembles that of DOGE, evoking memories of the latter's Robinhood-fueled surge.

While WIF's rise echoes past meme coin phenomena, concerns arise regarding its operational transparency and the absence of a robust community narrative. Unlike conventional projects, WIF's ascent precedes substantial community engagement, raising cautionary flags for investors amidst the excitement.

What sets WIF apart?

In addition to its price, the market cap of WIF has also skyrocketed to $1 billion, making it the fastest meme coin to reach a $1 billion market cap in Solana's history. With this "dog hat" craze sweeping through, WIF's 24-hour trading volume has surpassed that of USDT. On March 3rd, its total market cap reached $1.7 billion, surpassing BONK directly. In the fierce competition of Solana's meme coins, why has WIF stood out? BlockBeats summarizes the existing data as follows.

WIF can be said to be a "self-made" project. As for what story WIF really is, probably only the knitted hat on the Shiba Inu's head can be thought of. In late December 2019, images of adding various logos and images to knitted hats became popular as profile pictures on Twitter among esports organizations and celebrities.

It was in such a background without any other story that WIF achieved a thousandfold increase in less than four months.

The issuance of WIF was silent. According to BirdEye data, WIF opened at $0.00016 as early as November 20th last year. However, the first tweet released by its official Twitter account shows December 29th, and it is only a retweet rather than an original tweet. Looking at WIF's price curve, it started to rise since the late December of last year, and the official Twitter account also appeared during this period.

In fact, it can be seen that WIF has been on an upward trend since its opening, without experiencing a significant decline. However, at the end of last year, it was the meme season of Solana, with countless hundredfold and thousandfold coins appearing, especially "silly dragon" led by Solana co-founder Anatoly, which had tens of thousands of times increase. Therefore, this WIF, which only appeared briefly stretched, was not valued.

On January 11th, a whale lost 77,247 SOL ($7.7 million) due to a trade involving WIF, as at that time, WIF only had a liquidity of 2.7 million. This trade also caused WIF to instantly spike to $3.99.

Just a month later, now the liquidity of WIF has exceeded 14 million. This whale, who was "squeezed", used 86,738 SOL to buy 17.22 million WIF. Calculated at the current price of $1.75, its value exceeds $30 million, and it is still in a highly profitable state. It is worth noting that from the whale's chain id, it can be inferred that "WIF goes to Bianance". In the week after this transaction, Binance announced the launch of WIF's 1-50 times U-based perpetual contract on January 18th. Subsequently, the cryptocurrency trading platform Backpack also launched WIF spot trading on January 24th.

In addition, BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes has always been bullish on WIF. In the article "Arthur Hayes: After Bitcoin falls below $35,000, prepare to buy the bottom," he said, "Once Bitcoin falls below $35,000, I will start buying the bottom and continue to buy Solana and WIF."

In addition to the various KOLs calling for buying, the real time point for WIF to start the thousandfold journey was March 1st. At that time, Robinhood announced the launch of WIF. For a while, not only the believers of WIF, but also other cryptocurrency enthusiasts turned their attention to WIF. Smart money on the chain immediately took out millions of WIF. According to Lookonchain monitoring, a newly created wallet withdrew 16160 SOL ($215 million) from Binance and bought 2.43 million WIF at an average price of $0.8871.

Therefore, WIF also successfully broke through $1. Coinbase rated it as the first dog coin to break through $1. Subsequently, on March 2nd, Arthur Hayes once again tweeted that he was bullish on WIF and believed that it could rise above $2. Like DOGE and "rat warehouse"

Due to the Shiba Inu image of WIF and its skyrocketing development trajectory after being launched on Robinhood, many people are reminded of DOGE from years ago.

DOGE acted as a guide for many retail investors to enter cryptocurrency. During the "GameStop" and AMC stock battle in 2019, after Robinhood and many American local brokers successively announced the closure of positions in stocks such as GME and AMC, retail investors and a large amount of funds began to target DOGE.

With the introduction of DOGE, retail investors continued to create history on Robinhood, which ranked first in the free list of the entire American App Store. At that time, the highest price of DOGE once reached $0.0875, with an increase of up to 1014%.

Perhaps it was the mutual achievements of Robinhood and DOGE that made retail investors pay extra attention to memes on it, thereby driving the rise of WIF. However, unlike DOGE, there are traces of "rat warehouse" in the development trajectory of WIF.

BlockBeats roughly checked WIF's official Twitter account. As of now, the official has not launched any incentive projects. Although the frequency of tweeting is very high, the content is simply to retweet relevant topics and release Shiba Inu memes with different hats.

Not only was the first tweet later than the contract release by a month, but the account had been created since April 2023. The two blank time windows make people suspect that this account is just a second-hand product. If "casual operation" is a privilege exclusive to meme projects, then the deep spike on January 10th seems difficult to justify. At that time, the price of WIF was still hovering around the 0.1 level, which was a thousandfold increase from the opening. Who can be 100% sure that WIF will rise again by an order of magnitude? Not to mention wasting millions to bet on a possibility, which is also a rare action in the cryptocurrency industry.

Moreover, as mentioned earlier, WIF prices have been on an upward trend. The launch on Binance on January 18th and Robinhood on March 1st did indeed drive the price increase, but before that, WIF had quietly conducted a pullback.

On December 18th last year, according to Lookonchain monitoring, a trader bought 19.86 million WIF at an average price of $0.01137, making a profit of $1.47 million in 5 days. Subsequently, WIF continued to pull back until February 27th, with a 62.0% increase in 24 hours amid a general rise in meme coins.

However, for memes, when emotions rise, not doing extra research and taking a chance for participation is also a choice. But why a project that establishes a community only after the price rises can still experience such a surge, there are still many doubts. BlockBeats reminds readers to invest cautiously and pay attention to identifying risks.