Memecoins stir back to life as PEPE, BONK lead high-risk revival
Meme coins are clawing back attention after weeks in the shadows, with tokens like Pepe, Bonk and Floki outpacing even Dogecoin and Shiba Inu as speculative appetite returns to crypto markets.
- While DOGE and SHIB still logged gains of around 20% over the past week, smaller meme tokens delivered sharper moves.
- PEPE, BONK helped lift the sector’s total market value by 7% on Monday to $52.4 billion.
- The surge marks a notable rotation into higher-risk assets, as traders pile into meme coins that lagged for much of late 2025 but are now staging aggressive rebounds.
Pepe (PEPE), Floki (FLOKI), Bonk (BONK) and Pudgy Penguins (PENGU) all outperformed their larger peers over the past week, with several meme tokens posting gains of more than 65% since the start of the year. The move has pushed meme coins to the top of crypto’s leaderboard, with roughly six of the top 10 gainers in the top 100 by market cap coming from the sector.
A crypto trader known as Unipcs on X expects Floki to follow Pepe and Bonk with similar upside. See below.
Unipcs also highlighted Pudgy Penguins as a standout, pointing to its real revenue streams and expanding global brand as strengths the market has yet to fully price in.
Current, PENGU is up over 48% over the last seven days.
According to CryptoQuant, meme-coin dominance within the altcoin market slid to a record low in December after peaking during the November 2024 frenzy. The meme-to-altcoin market cap ratio fell from 11% in November 2024 to just 3.2% a month later—levels that have historically preceded sharp meme-coin rebounds.
Bitcoin investor Lark Davis noted that meme coin valuations have already expanded by more than $10 billion since Jan. 1, arguing that even a mild return of risk appetite in the first quarter could extend the rally across the sector.
