DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON (DOG): The Runes Meme Coin Woofing up the Charts
Bitcoin's latest halving event, on Apr 19, 2024, was accompanied by another pivotal development for its blockchain — the launch of the Runes protocol. It allows the efficient issuance and management of fungible cryptocurrencies on Bitcoin and has been used to launch thousands of cryptos, mostly meme coins, within the first few days of its operation. The universe of Runes tokens is less than ten days old, but the competition within it is as fierce as it gets.
One token, however, has already confidently captured the top positions in the rankings within this fascinating new niche: the DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON Runes meme coin, which has amassed an impressive $368 million market cap (as of Apr 29, 2024) in the seven days since its launch. This figure might look modest as compared to the market caps of the established meme coin giants: Dogecoin (DOGE), at nearly $21 billion, and Shiba Inu (SHIB), at around $14 billion. However, let's not forget that DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON, or simply DOG, is in the very early stages of its market presence and may indeed shoot to the moon, at least if its impressive early run is sustained.
Key Takeaways:
DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON (DOG) is a dog-themed meme coin that currently dominates the rankings of Runes tokens by market cap and trading volume.
DOG has achieved its dominant position thanks largely to a massive airdrop, which distributed 100 billion of these tokens to more than 75,000 holders of Runestone Ordinal NFTs on Apr 24, 2024.
What Is DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON?
DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON (DOG) is a meme coin based on Bitcoin's newly launched Runes protocol. Similar to other Runes tokens, DOG is a fungible crypto asset. It's one of the thousands of Runes-based assets launched on Bitcoin within the first day of the halving event on Apr 19, 2024. As of Apr 29, 2024, DOG is the dominant Runes cryptocurrency by market cap and total trading volume, far ahead of other tokens in this category.
The rather unusual name for the token is due to the Runes protocol's naming standards, which currently require such lengthy descriptions to discourage name squatting at this early stage of the protocol's existence.
The DOG token was launched by Runestone, one of the largest projects dedicated to Runes technology and Ordinal Inscriptions.
DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON's Ascent Following Its Airdrop
Until Wednesday, Apr 24, 2024, DOG had been a relatively unremarkable Runes token, similar to the thousands of others recently launched on Bitcoin. On that day, the Runestone Ordinals project announced a monumental airdrop of 100 billion DOG tokens to the holders of its Ordinals inscriptions collection.
Runestone, one of the highest-capped and most popular Ordinals inscription projects, boasts more than 75,000 distinct wallets that hold at least one of its inscription NFTs. Thanks to the collection's popularity and expansive reach, the DOG airdrop immediately led to the token's meteoric rise in both price and market cap rankings.
Upon the airdrop's conclusion, the DOG token had become the most widely held Runes token on Bitcoin. It now confidently dominates the category rankings on all major indicators. As of Apr 27, 2024, DOG boasts the highest market cap among all Runes cryptos, around $384 million. The closest contender and category runner-up, the SATOSHI•NAKAMOTO token, is far behind, with a market cap of $42.7 million.
DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON and the Runestone Project
The DOG token was issued by the Runestone project, a leading Bitcoin Ordinals NFT collection and the brainchild of the popular pseudonymous NFT enthusiast Leonidas. The collection was launched in early 2024 and comprises 112,400 Bitcoin NFTs, each depicting a black stone with an ancient rune symbol.
Soon after its launch, the Runestone collection quickly rose to the top of the Ordinals Inscription rankings. Until late April 2024, it also occupied the second spot by market cap, behind CryptoPunks, among all the NFT collections in the industry. By the time of this writing, the collection has dropped off the top spot in the Ordinals Inscription rankings but remains enormously popular, currently in fifth place.
By airdropping 100 billion DOG tokens — the crypto's total supply — to Runestone holders, Leonidas cleverly used the collection's great popularity and its over 75,000–strong owner base to propel the token to stardom. It's probably no exaggeration to say that DOG owes its current dominant position to both the Runestone collection and the smartly-thought-out airdrop.
How to Buy DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON
Due to the novelty of Runes technology and tokens, DOG is currently available only on select marketplaces. Currently, the Runes marketplace Magic Eden is the primary platform for trading the DOG token. Magic Eden is a popular multichain marketplace that originally included Solana-based assets, but now offers a wide variety of items from different platforms, including Bitcoin Ordinals NFTs, Runes tokens, rare sats and more.
Closing Thoughts
As of late April 2024, the DOG token continues to dominate the Runes rankings. The token's dominant position and $368 million market cap has sparked the discussion of many Runes enthusiasts and analysts regarding its potential to take on DOGE and SHIB, the meme coin behemoths, in the future.
These two "mega meme coins" currently boast market caps of $21 billion and $15 billion, respectively. Compared to these figures, DOG's cap of less than $400 million does look exceedingly modest.
That said, it had taken DOGE years, and SHIB many months, after their launches to even start getting noticed. DOG has accomplished this within less than a week. This feat suggests the possibility of DOG becoming a prominent player in the meme coin space in the future, making it an interesting crypto to watch.
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