CoinGecko: How long will it take for animal-themed meme coins to reach a market value of $1 billion?

Author: Thamaraj Rajandran, CoinGecko; Translator: Baishui, Golden Finance

The Rise of Animal-Inspired Cryptocurrencies

Over the past decade, Internet Memes have firmly established themselves in the culture of Web3 and cryptocurrencies. Thriving on hype, community, and a sense of fun and “depravity,” Memecoins have become a unique innovation in the industry. In recent years, a slew of animal-inspired Memecoins, notably DOGE, SHIB, and PEPE, have captured the cryptocurrency market. Driven by social sentiment and online trends, these tokens have soared from obscure launches to multi-billion dollar market caps in record time.

How quickly can animal Memecoins reach $1 billion?

Squirrel Peanut (PNUT): 11 days. Inspired by the playful and quirky mascot Peanut the Squirrel, depicted as a squirrel wearing a cowboy hat, PNUT is a meme coin built on the Solana blockchain. In fact, PNUT is built on the tragic backstory of Peanut, a real-life squirrel who was allegedly taken away from his caretaker, Mark Longo, by the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). Elon Musk subsequently criticized the DEC’s actions and held a makeshift rally for PNUT on X. A relatively new entrant into the meme coin space, PNUT’s meteoric rise has been fueled by the hype surrounding it and its listing on Binance on November 11, 2024, pushing the token’s market cap to over $1 billion within the same month of its launch.

Pepe (PEPE): 19 days. While Pepe may not be an animal at first glance, the popular internet meme created by cartoonist Matt Furie is designed as a green anthropomorphic frog. PEPE, an Ethereum-based memecoin based on the popular internet meme character, experienced a rapid rise in popularity in early 2023. Within just a few weeks of its launch, PEPE reached the $1 billion mark, quickly attracting attention on social media and climbing to the top of the exchange. PEPE has maintained its popularity, with significant growth in daily trading volume and continued solid social media engagement.

Brett (BRETT): 28 days. Like Pepe, Brett is inspired by Matt Fury’s Boys Club comic strip. Launched on the Base blockchain in May 2024, Brett took 28 days to reach the $1 billion milestone. Base’s popularity during that period contributed significantly to its rise. It has since become the leading meme coin on the Coinbase-supported network, with its value hovering around the $2 billion mark.

GOAT (GOAT): 37 days. The Goatseus Maximus memecoin was created on Pump.fun by an AI chatbot named Terminal of Truths. It quickly gained a following and reached a market cap of $1 billion in 37 days. Notably, it was also the first Pump.fun token to reach the coveted $1 billion mark.

DOGWIFHAT (WIF): 81 days. WIF took the memecoin space by storm with a whimsical take on the brand of a dog wearing a funny hat. Launched within the Solana ecosystem, WIF quickly gained traction, resonating with meme enthusiasts and the crypto community. WIF demonstrated exceptional market activity and community engagement, achieving the $1 billion market cap milestone within a few months of launch.

Neiro (NEIRO): 104 days. Neiro was launched after the death of Kabosu, the iconic Shiba Inu and inspiration for Dogecoin. Neiro was a dog adopted by Kabosu’s owner. Multiple Neiro tokens were launched around the same time, but the first one deployed on Ethereum has managed to become the leading token. However, what really sent Neiro soaring to $1 billion was its listing on Binance in September, which caused the token’s market cap to surge from $16 million to $400 million in a single day.

Cat in a dogs world (MEW): 214 days. Inspired by the beloved Simon Cat comic book series, MEW has seen real rapid growth. Another cat-themed memecoin, the Solana-based token’s strong brand and community engagement have been critical to its rise. MEW has reached a $1 billion market cap in just seven months, helped by a string of successful exchange listings that solidified its place in the wider meme token ecosystem.

Popcat (POPCAT): 284 days. Popcat gained popularity due to its internet meme origins, while the proliferation of user-generated content on social media, using the Popcat meme to humorous effect, has skyrocketed its popularity. Riding this wave of social sentiment, the Solana-based cat-themed token has attracted a passionate community. Powered by its strong community engagement and continued growth, POPCAT has reached the $1 billion mark within a year of its launch. The surge in interest in cat-themed tokens reflects a new trend in memecoin culture that capitalizes on the appeal of cats as viral internet symbols.

Shiba Inu (SHIB): 289 days.Inspired by DOGE and based on the beloved Japanese dog breed, Ethereum-based SHIB bills itself as the “Dogecoin Killer” and hit the $1 billion mark within a year of its launch in 2020. Significant growth was driven by listings on major decentralized exchanges (DEX) and later centralized exchanges (CEX) such as Binance and Coinbase. SHIB’s dramatic rise was also driven by a community-centric roadmap and sustained media hype.

Bonk (BONK): 356 days. Launched on Christmas Day 2022, Bonk has slowly climbed its way to become the largest meme coin on Solana. It was launched in the depths of the bear market, with FTX filing for bankruptcy just over a month before its launch, and the Solana network suffered multiple outages during this time. It took nearly a year to reach a market cap of $1 billion, at which point Solana began to gain traction and many meme coins were launched on the network.

MOG Coin (MOG): 486 Days. MOG Coin was launched with the goal of becoming the internet's first cultural coin. The name MOG is derived from "AMOG," which stands for Alpha Male Group. Launched in 2023, it took 486 days to briefly reach a market cap of $1 billion in November 2024 before falling back.

Floki Inu (FLOKI): 775 days. It took Floki Inu a little over two years to reach a $1 billion market cap, the second-longest time for an animal-themed meme coin. Floki originally started out as a meme coin and has transformed into a utility project with a sizable ecosystem of projects. It’s dabbling in the 3D NFT metaverse, DeFi, real world assets (RWAs), and even prepaid cards. It also sponsors sports teams and runs advertising campaigns around the world. Despite no longer being strictly a meme coin, it has still managed to maintain a market cap of over $2 billion.

Dogecoin (DOGE): 1,487 days. Initially launched on the Ethereum blockchain in 2013, mostly as a joke, DOGE’s price has skyrocketed over time, reaching a $1 billion market cap in early 2018. Key factors include Elon Musk’s infamous tweets, increased mainstream awareness, and increased retail adoption. As of November 2024, DOGE has surpassed $57 billion in market cap, with prices hovering around $0.39. DOGE has also seen a significant price increase recently, largely due to social sentiment and the announcement by U.S. President Donald Trump of plans to form a U.S. Presidential Advisory Council, the Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.). While the planned government department has no current ties to cryptocurrencies, the increased speculation and enthusiasm for its crypto namesake has sparked a new wave of interest.

Two Factors Driving Meme Coin Rise

While meme coins may not rely on the same metrics or use cases as their more mainstream counterparts (e.g. Bitcoin, USDT, Ethereum, etc.), there are a few key aspects that can influence their growth and subsequent price movement.

First,Meme coins strongly rely on social media engagement. Influencers and celebrities play a major role in influencing the price movement of such tokens. For example, Elon Musk’s tweet about DOGE, which praised its utility and teased a potential use case in the form of buying a Tesla, triggered a sudden and significant increase in price. For SHIB and PEPE, virality and organic comments on platforms such as X and Reddit generated large-scale community engagement.

Another key factor influencing the price movement of meme coins is listing on exchanges, especially on major exchanges such as Binance. For example, SHIB’s price more than doubled after listing on Binance in May 2021, while PEPE experienced a similar surge on Coinbase and Binance in May 2023. Such listings provide validation and liquidity, sparking investor interest.

Conclusion: The Future of Animal Themed Meme Coins

The success of these meme coins demonstrates the potential of strong community engagement and social sentiment to drive value. While these tokens may sometimes lack the technical innovation of other blockchain projects, they demonstrate the unique cultural power and collective enthusiasm in the cryptocurrency space.

For investors, these tokens offer both high risk and high reward, requiring a deep understanding of market dynamics and sentiment-driven investing. The rapid rise of DOGE, SHIB, WIF, PEPE, PNUT, POPCAT, and MEW valuations to billions of dollars highlights an interesting intersection between finance, internet culture, crypto culture, and decentralized networks that will continue to influence the digital asset landscape.

How long did it take for animal meme coins to break $1 billion?

Animal-themed Memecoins and the time it would take to reach a market cap of $1 billion are as follows: