A sudden surge in yet another dog-themed cryptocurrency has turned the meme coin into the hottest topic in the digital-asset world. Bonk Inu, created by anonymous developers as a joke after the collapse of the FTX exchange and its sister trading firm Alameda Research, has soared by nearly 1000 per cent in the past month, giving it a $US1.7 billion ($2.5 billion) market capitalisation, according to data from CoinGecko. The token, which reached an all-time high a week ago, still trades at just a fraction of a cent. The token was launched last December on the Solana blockchain that FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried had been a big supporter, with a goal of becoming “the dog coin of the people”, according to its website. Dogecoin, which features a Shiba Inu, has long been championed by Elon Musk. Solana itself has emerged from under the cloud Bankman-Fried’s downfall cast over crypto, with its SOL token rallying more than 600 per cent this year. “It’s the dog coin of Solana and Solana has been the darling of 2023,” said Zaheer Ebtikar, founder of crypto fund Split Capital. “We’re watching a very similar reality to that of [Ethereum] in 2018 and 2019.”
BONK, ‘dog coin of the people’, rides high post-FTX collapse
