A number of meme coins managed to build momentum in the wake of the approval by the SEC of spot Ethereum ETFs recently. This includes Floki, one of the more popular meme coins on the block at the moment, which has been phenomenally rewarding for crypto traders who were long the coin this year.
But a lot of the momentum was being driven by social chatter rather than fundamentals, and post the ETH green light from the SEC, the market is casting around for further news that could boost Floki and its close competitors.
- How many crypto millionaires are there?
- Retail traders turning bullish on cryptocurrencies
- Solana and Bitcoin down on market fears: can they recover?
Floki and a number of other meme coins based on the Solana network have been surfing the Ethereum approval news. These meme coins are considered to be the highest risk corner of the cryptocurrency market and tend to be driven heavily by news flow around the market.
Floki saw a massive jump in February on the back of the Bitcoin ETF approval, from under 0.00005 dollars per coin to hit 0.0002964 in a matter of days. It then gave up some of those gains as the crypto market cooled off again. The more unexpected decisions around the ETH ETF filing process have seen the coin hit new highs in June. But again, with that news now in the rear view window, the question is whether these gains can be sustained?
What is Floki?
Floki has over 470,000 members in its network. Its ecosystem is used to power a 3D NFT metaverse as well as having adjacent DeFi utilities. Its central core is the Valhalla NFT metaverse game, which is being developed to include a broad range of features, including a gardening system and an in-game ship system.
The hope among meme coin addicts is that the SEC approvals will have a ‘trickle down’ effect with some of the institutional money inflows – and wider acceptance – among the more mature coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum also leading to further cash in the system for the likes of Floki.
Further positive news came with the decision by Coinbase to add Floki to its cryptocurrency trading platform, providing wider access to the meme coin for crypto traders. The coin was previously only available in post-only mode, but now Floki can be traded using limit, market, stop and stop-limit orders. There is also now talk that Coinbase is looking at creating a futures market for meme coins, including the likes of Floki and Shiba Inu.
What is the Solana network?
Solana is still considered the network for the speculators in the market who enjoy a high risk / high return environment. It is a blockchain platform that uses proof of stake mechanisms to provide smart contract functionality. Launched in 2020 by Solana Labs, it has its own native cryptocurrency called SOL.
The hot money still prefers Solana and its related projects to ETH. Developers looking for alternatives to ETH are also helping to drive Solana’s growth. Some developers feel Ethereum’s network is too heavily congested and that transactions are becoming too expensive, hence Solana.
Solana uses a time stamp, proof of history validation system for its network, unlike Bitcoin, for example, which uses proof of work validation. Solana is valued for its ability to support a diverse ecosystem of NFT and DeFi applications.
How big is the Floki meme coin?
Bear in mind that meme coins are just a tiny part of the crypto universe. Floki’s market cap, just by way of example, is a mere USD 2.9bn versus USD 460bn for Ethereum.
