As at March 21st 2024, dog-themed meme coin and social media darling BONK is up over 3000% year-on-year. So what’s driving its phenomenal growth – and how is BONK different to other dog-based meme tokens?
Updated March 22nd 2024. The BONK meme coin is up over 3000% year-on-year. In this blog post, we will explain what BONK is, how it was launched, what makes it unique, and where you can buy it.
What’s Driving The BONK price?
BONK’s price momentum began surging in October 2023, after the introduction of single-sided staking BONK pools. This feature allowed BONK holders to earn a yield on BONK without having to deposit a second asset that BONK would trade against.
Click Image For the Latest BONK Price
At that time users, transaction fees, and the number of BONK transactions surged.Other factors in BONK’s price momentum have been the recent announcement on December 14th, that blue-chip publicly listed exchangeCoinbase would be listing the token.
Other meme coins that have a longer history and similar large market caps, like PEPE, have been ignored by Coinbase, but with BONK the ‘Coinbase Effect’ is clearly evident. The listing has boosted the mainstream legitimacy of the BONK token and introduced it to Coinbase’s large user base. In addition, BONK perpetual swap derivatives can be traded on the popular trading platform, Bitmex, with up to 10x leverage. In addition to Coinbase, today BONK trading pairs are available on most major platforms including Binance, OKX, Gate.io, ByBit, HTX and KuCoin.
BONK-mania is also benefiting the wider Solana ecosystem. BONK has boosted the sales of Solana’s Saga crypto-phone. New owners of the phone have been able to claim airdrops of BONK. Saga holders can claim up to 30 million BONK. At current market rates, this is ~US$695. This is more than the price of the Saga phone, (US$599). That makes it one of the most unique arbitrage opportunities in crypto today.
In 2024, most major meme coins have ridden the wave of Bitcoin’s momentum, but their gains have been significantly greater – for reasons explained here. For example, while Bitcoin was up 71% between the first of February and its new all-time-high of $73,589 on March 14th, BONK was up 254% between February 1st and March 5th.
What is BONK?
Like PEPE and DOGE, BONK is a meme coin inspired by internet memes, jokes, and satire. Meme coins are not designed with a specific use case in mind, but rather as a way to express humor, creativity, and social commentary through cryptocurrency.
While BONK is similar to DOGE and SHIB in that it features a cute dog as its mascot and logo, it differs from them in several ways.
1. BONK is built on Solana. Referred to as the ‘Ethereum killer’ when it launched, Solana is a fast, scalable, and low-cost blockchain platform that supports smart contracts and decentralized applications with over 400 dApps currently running on its network (Solana is also home to 2024’s other stellar performer Dogwifhat).
2. BONK was launched with a massive airdrop on December 25, 2022, as a Christmas gift to the Solana community. 50% of the total supply of 100 trillion coins was distributed to Solana users who contributed to the development and growth of the network in some way. This included artists, creators, developers, NFT collectors, and active community members. The airdrop was done randomly and anonymously, without any pre-announcement or marketing.
3. BONK’s integration with the Solana ecosystem. BONK’s whitepaper outlines its ambition to become the “community coin of Solana,” used across numerous decentralized applications. The project aims to challenge the dominance of “predatory VC tokens” by empowering the wider Solana community. This is evident in its approach to airdropping 50% of its total supply.
The 1-year correlation between SOL and BONK currently sits at 0.76. The coin is accepted as a payment option for NFTs on several platforms, such as OpenBook and Orca. It is also used as an incentive for staking NFTs on platforms like SolFarm and BonkStake. Moreover, BONK is listed on several popular crypto exchanges that support Solana-based tokens, such as Coinbase, Binance and Serum.
Tokenomics of BONK
- Market Position: As of March 22nd 2024, BONK is the sixth-largest meme coin by market cap, following DOGE, Shiba Inu, PEPE, WIF and FLOKI and the 70th largest crypto overall.
- Impressive Growth: BONK has seen an extraordinary increase of over 3000% year-on-year.
- Supply Details: The coin has a maximum supply of 100 trillion, with 65 trillion in circulation as of mid-March 2024.
What makes BONK unique?
BONK has several features that make it stand out from other meme coins. One of them is its community-driven nature. The team behind BONK does not have any control over the coin’s supply or direction. Instead, they have delegated 15% of the total supply to a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) called Bonk DAO. The Bonk DAO is responsible for making decisions regarding the future development and governance of BONK. Anyone who holds BONK tokens can participate in the Bonk DAO by voting on proposals or submitting their own ideas.
How and Where to Buy BONK
BONK can be purchased on centralized exchanges (CEX) like Coinbase, KuCoin, Binance, and decentralized exchanges (DEX) such as Raydium, Orca, and BonkSwap. Ethereum users can also gain exposure to BONK through Wrapped BONK tokens.
