Bitcoin Moves Past Silver, Saudi Aramco as World’s 7th Largest Asset while PEPE, DOGE Lead Meme Coin Surge

With Bitcoin rallying over the past weeks and the bull run kicking into gear, you might be surprised that it’s already memecoin season – though, to be honest, 2024 has been a year dominated by memecoins anyway. But that’s what the latest report by Kaiko analysts with the fitting title ‘Attention Shifts to Meme Tokens’, suggests.

DOGE Remains King of Memecoins

While there are always new memecoins flooding the market – thanks to the emergence of things like pump.fun, which has made it super cheap and easy for every man and their…dog to launch new tokens – it’s the old guard leading the pack.

Related: US Spot Crypto ETFs Record Massive Inflows, Followed by Profit-Taking Outflows 

Peanut the Squirrel (PNUT), Mr Miggles (MIGGLES) and AI agent-launched Dasha (VVAIFU) are some of the biggest gainers in the past week, up several hundred percent, but Dogecoin (DOGE) and friends clearly dominate.

Although small-cap memecoins can offer dramatic short-term gains due to their low market caps (meaning a small amount of capital can lead to large percentage increases), they are also subject to extreme volatility and can be easily manipulated.

In contrast, the large capital inflow/outflow needed to affect similar percentage changes in large-cap cryptos makes them somewhat less susceptible to manipulation and sharp, unfounded price swings.

Despite that, comments by public figures like Elon Musk caused Dogecoin to explode. The recent ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ (D.O.G.E.) news was one of the major catalysts for Dogecoin.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin

Unfazed by memecoins, Bitcoin has just recently climbed the ladder of leading world assets. Following new all-time highs, BTC has just moved to seventh spot on the global asset ranking, leaving Saudi Aramco and silver in the dust.

With a market cap of US$1.799 trillion (AU$2.767 trillion), the top crypto is now eyeing Amazon with its US$2.12 trillion (AU$3.26 trillion) market cap on the sixth spot.

Bitfinex analysts wrote in a note to investors that the recent rally in Bitcoin is the “largest volume of capital flowing into Bitcoin over such a short time”. In fact, it “might be one of the largest inflows into any asset in history”, they added.

Which is in large parts due to the US Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) which are now challenging gold ETFs status.

Given the current average daily inflows into Bitcoin ETFs, they are now on track to surpass the AUM of gold ETFs within the next two months. It is notable that, BlackRockʼs iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) has now exceeded the AUM of the firm’s gold ETF, iShares Gold ETF (IAU).

Bitfinex

Related: Trump-Ripple CEO Meeting Rumour Sends XRP Past $1 in Weekend Trading

And they beat the forecasts by miles, with estimates saying it “would take four to five years for Bitcoin ETFs to eclipse gold ETFs”.

Remarkably, it took BlackRockʼs gold ETF, which is the second-largest gold ETF in the world, 20 years to reach this milestone, while the Bitcoin ETF achieved it in less than 10 months.

Bitfinex