Will BONK Meme Eclipse Shiba Inu as SHIB Whales Enter Hibernation?

Meme coin BONK is up 3.9% in the past seven days and 1,011% in the past 12 months. In recent months, the Solana-based altcoin was traded more heavily than (Shiba Inu) SHIB and (Dogecoin) DOGE.

The coin trades at $0.00001151 and has seen a dropoff in trading compared to mid-January. BONK’s Relative Strength Index is under 50, which signals relative disinterest from buyers.

How BONK Meme Can Beat SHIB

However, the token could benefit from a SHIB dropoff that has significantly diminished whale activity. On Sunday, there were only ten transactions of $100,000 or more, and SHIB inflows and outflows declined by 97.1% and 95.53%, respectively.

shib bonk meme — Number of Large Transactions | Source: IntoTheBlock

Like SHIB and DOGE, BONK is a dog-themed meme coin created on the Solana blockchain rather than Ethereum. BONK was launched in December 2022 but suffered significant declines following the FTX collapse.

However, the asset recorded a 33x surge between November and December last year. According to data from CoinGecko, BONK’s price rose from $0.000000754317 on Nov. 15, 2023, to 0.00002549000 on Dec. 15, 2023.

Read more: 7 Hot Meme Coins and Altcoins that are Trending in 2024

The surge coincided with the rapid expansion of the Solana ecosystem following the FTX collapse. Currently, the total value locked on Solana is around $1.47 billion. The price of SOL, the native token on the Solana blockchain, is around $96.

BONK and SHIB DeFi Strategies Diverge

The BONK developer community has also boosted its DeFi presence with integrations. Developers of the BONKbot trading bot ran a promotion that gave away one BONK token for every SOL deposit. The bot specializes in minimizing slippage and increases trading speeds.

bonk meme coin price — BONK/USD Price Chart | Source: BeInCrypto

In April 2023, external developers launched BonkSwap, a decentralized exchange that awards liquidity providers and stakers. The same team later released a futures betting game called BonkorBust. There are currently over 60 trillion BONK tokens in circulation.

The trajectory of the BONK ecosystem suggests it could soon attract more activity than its dog-themed cousin, SHIB. Recent on-chain data indicates that SHIB whales are buying coins to hunker ahead of SHIB’s pivot to a full-fledged Web3 community.

Read more: Shiba Inu (SHIB) Price Prediction 2024/2025/2030

Whales bought up 5% of the token’s supply in mid-January, causing a 3% decline overnight. Jan. 16, 2023, saw around 18 whales buy Shiba Inu worth $56.5 million. A further 331 billion SHIB was bought up in ten large transactions yesterday.

The moves suggest whales are apprehensive about the new Web3 direction. Public-facing SHIB developer Shytoshi Kusama said Web3 identities ending in .shib would kickstart a blockchain-based Web3 economy on the Shiba Inu network.

“We’re working with @D3inc to #InvadeTheInternet by applying for the .shib TLD. This will allow us to tap into infrastructure that is used by 5.3 BILLION people worldwide. Over the last year the Internet gained 198M new users, the entire crypto market only has 425M users. Let’s revolutionize how the world sees digital identity, and #InvadeTheInternet with .shib”