Meme coins are rallying again, mirroring the broader uptrend in the crypto market. Nevertheless, their reputation of offering little or no real-world utility and an abundant supply makes them incredibly volatile and unattractive for serious investors. Besides, with the market ticking in the green again, it’s prudent to ditch meme coins to avoid while focusing on higher-quality digital assets with real use cases.
A few news items may have caught the eyes of meme coin enthusiasts recently. Solana’s (SOL-USD) new BOME token shot up 20 times in value in just three hours. Moreover, Avalanche (AVAX-USD) revealed the first batch of meme coins, which fulfilled its treasury requirements. Despite these developments, it is imperative to remain coy, given the abundance of high-quality projects for investors to wager on.
Shiba Inu (SHIB)
Shiba Inu (SHIB-USD) is one of the more popular meme coins out there, but like most of its counterparts, it lacks intrinsic value. It’s often termed as a cousin to the original meme coin in Dogecoin (DOGE-USD), but unlike DOGE, it offers minimal utility in the blockchain space. Perhaps the last major event for SHIB came when Elon Musk temporarily changed the Twitter logo to the Shiba Inu image.
To be fair, Shiba Inu effectively garnered a relatively impressive online community during hype cycles. However, just like other meme coins, it quickly lost those gains once the enthusiasm faded. In gauging SHIB’s volatility, its 50-day relative strength index is roughly 69%, which points to an overbought condition. Moreover, its historic volatility for the same period stands at an eye-watering 184.50%, indicative of the roller-coaster ride that is investing in SHIB.
ApeCoin (APE)
ApeCoin (APE-USD) is a non-fungible tokens (NFT) cryptocurrency that’s best known for its popular Bored Ape Yacht Club collection. APE coin became incredibly popular during the crypto boom and when the interest in NFTs was at its peak. Moreover, the popularity of the Bored Ape collection propelled the meme coin to join the ranks of the top 100 cryptos by market cap. However, similar to other meme coins, there’s nothing utilitarian about it.
Furthermore, the NFT market is experiencing a sell-off of late, with price floors of some of the leading collections plummeting in value. Sales of Bored Ape NFTs are down 31.44% to just 4247, suggesting a considerable drop in demand. Additionally, its price floor, the lowest asking price for an NFT in its collection, has dropped almost 41% to 14.3ETH over the past three months. Besides, at 14.3ETH, the lowest Bored Ape NFT costs a whopping $49,232, which is good enough to buy a ton of more valuable digital assets.
Pepe (PEPE)
Pepe (PEPE-USD) is another speculative crypto that brought spectacular profits for its investors during the meme frenzy wave in the spring of last year. However, since then, it has had to grapple with multiple controversies that have weighed down investor sentiment. Allegations of insider trading and internal theft surfaced last summer, along with the discovery of unusual transactions involving the project’s wallets.
These revelations significantly hampered confidence in PEPE, with it shedding more than 65% of its value, from April to December last year. From its launch to the end of the first half of 2023, PEPE attracted several billion dollars in trading volumes over 24 hours. However, it stands $160 million at this time, a far cry from its heyday. Hence, PEPE may provide short-term opportunities for investors, but offers little to no long-term value.
On the date of publication, Muslim Farooque did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines
