When Moo Deng, an adorable baby hippopotamus in Thailand’s Khao Kheow Open Zoo, was first unveiled on Facebook, she went viral overnight. Thousands of visitors flocked to Thailand’s zoo to see her and her family in real life.
Now, a Solana-based memecoin by the same name (which means “bouncy pork” in Thai) has been soaring, and one trader managed a huge return that has made news, raised eyebrows, and perhaps awoken a fever in more than a few memecoin fanatics.
Data from Solscan shows an investor sold 9.8 $SOL to buy 38.7 million $MOODENG tokens. Over the course of two weeks, the memecoin turned his initial investment into $3.4 million, a return of over 2,500x.
Such a well-timed trade unsurprisingly raised suspicions in the crypto community, and many believe the trader must be the developer or the coin’s creator. Also, people noticed the $MOODENG pool only had a liquidity of $1.8 million, which meant at current market prices the investor couldn’t cash out the full amount.
Regardless, $MOODENG was launched on September 10th on Pump.fun and has already reached a market cap of over $146 million. It’s up nearly 600% on the week and almost 50% over the last 24 hours, as per data from CoinGecko at the time of writing.
Many Solana memecoins were in the green today. Other top coins that are up over the last seven days include $DOGWIFHAT (+26%), $BONK (+14.5%), and $POPCAT (+14.5%). These are big market cap coins compared to $MOODENG, with market caps all exceeding 1 billion.
Top Memecoins by Market Cap
Many believe there’s a crypto bull market just around the corner, and few things are as fun as watching memecoins explode during a bull market. As Bitcoin rises, memecoins tend to go even higher, and every once and a while there’s a story like $MOODENG.
At the time of writing, the top five meme coins by market cap are all in the green, as per data from CoinMarketCap. Here they are:
- Dogecoin. Market Cap: $17.2 billion. Past 7 days: +10.81%
- Shiba Inu. Market Cap: $10.88 billion. Past 7 days: +27.82%
- Pepe. Market Cap: $3.98 billion. Past 7 days: +15.35%
- Dogwifhat. Market Cap: $2.2 billion. Past 7 days: +25.81%
- FLOKI. Market Cap: $1.44 billion. Past 7 days: +10.53
Another interesting twist in the meme coin market this year has been the rise of politically themed coins. Back in March, we reported the popularity of Solana-based memecoins based off the misspellings of politician’s names. Coins with names like $BODEN, $DANOLD, and $TREMP surged — and they don’t appear to be going away.
As the U.S. readies itself for its election in November, there are Trump coins, Harris coins, and even a coin called “Tooker Kurlson” — a misspelling of the political host and pundit Tucker Carlson. It’s up 95% the past week. And now there’s also $MOODENG, a coin for all the hippopotamus lovers out there.