The eccentricity of meme tokens has not prevented them from making waves in the crypto markets over the past few years. So far, one of the hottest meme coins of 2024 has been Floki Inu (FLOKI), one of the several dog-themed coins, which had an impressive price rally of 530% in March.
Much like other coins on the blockchain, however, even Floki saw a price dip in June. In the several days before the release of May’s CPI report and the Fed’s interest rate decision, Bitcoin fell to $65,996.30, dragging a plethora of smaller coins down with it. The year has been mostly successful for meme coins, though, some of which have attracted a lot of attention due to their quirkiness and promised potential. But which are the hottest tokens right now among both crypto investors and enthusiasts? In an attempt to answer this question, the team at BestBrokers compared the search volume on Google for the ten meme coins with the largest market capitalization.
Data shows that Dogecoin remains not only the largest meme coin in terms of market cap but it is also the most commonly searched on Google. Searches for a much smaller coin, namely Floki, however, increased the most between January and June of this year, showcasing its huge potential in the coming months.
Methodology
To measure the popularity of meme coins on the Internet, the team at BestBrokers utilised the Keywords Explorer by the leading SEO platform Ahrefs. This instrument displays the Google search volume for keywords searched within the past 12 months in various countries or globally. With it, we checked how many times per month people around the world have searched for the ten meme coins with the largest market capitalization at the time of writing. The figures displayed on the graphics are for the average number of searches every month.
We also looked at data from Google Trends, a free tool that analyses search queries entered into Google’s search engine over a certain period of time. It uses a sample of searches to show “search interest”, as the folks at Google call it, measured on a 1-100 scale. Even more interestingly, it allows comparing the search interest for up to five search terms or keywords. These can be broader topics and users can make the analysis localised or more specific by choosing from a number of categories.
For our analysis, we compared the worldwide searches during the first week of January 2024, and the first week of June 2024. We looked for search terms in any category, choosing the ten meme coins with the largest market capitalisation according to CoinMarketCap. It should be noted that the search interest for these coins was measured against the search interest for the most popular one, Dogecoin.
Which Meme Tokens Are Crypto Enthusiasts Interested In?
While not considered a serious investment by many traditionalists (even by some crypto holders, as well), meme coins have become widely popular due to their humorous and satirical nature and connection to a particular Internet meme. They have been endorsed by celebrities, including Snoop Dogg, Gene Simmons, and most notably Elon Musk. Not to mention the many meme tokens created by celebrities themselves.
But meme coins aren’t just hype. Currently, the meme market capitalization is over $45 billion and thousands of people are using them to trade, buy things on the Internet, or even donate to different charities. Some even see meme coins as an investment. But which meme tokens are popular right now? According to Google search volume data covering global searches over the past 12 months, the dog-inspired Dogecoin is the most searched meme coin in the world.
Dogecoin
Launched more than a decade ago, Dogecoin is considered the original meme coin and is the eighth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap right now ($18.14 million). Its price peaked in May 2021 reaching $0.726288 when Elon Musk, a huge DOGE supporter, appeared on Saturday Night Live. Since then, its price has moved much less impressively. On April 1, 2024, its price was roughly 22 cents, the highest this year, but as of June 19, DOGE lost roughly 45% of its value. Over the past 12 months, people googled Dogecoin an average of 1.1 million times per month.
Shiba Inu
With an average of 773,000 searches each month on Google, the Shiba Inu coin ranks second on our list. Released back in 2020, the dog-themed coin has become one of the most beloved meme coins. The Ethereum-based cryptocurrency is now accepted by a large number of places either directly or through third parties. It is the second largest meme coin by market capitalization after Dogecoin and fourth in terms of trading volume as of June 19. Many crypto enthusiasts now expect Shiba Inu to increase in value following a staggering 863.58% surge in its burn rate, which occurred on June 14. In this process, a number of coins are burned and removed from circulation, thus limiting the supply and potentially causing more people to buy.
PEPE
Pepe coin is an ERC-20 token issued on the Ethereum blockchain and it is inspired by the Pepe the Frog meme created by Matt Furie. The cryptocurrency was first launched in April 2023 and by May 5 of the same year, it reached a $1 billion market cap. On May 23, 2024, PEPE passed a $6 billion market cap, hitting a price of $0.00001535. It is currently the third-largest meme coin and the third-most searched one on Google.
Bonk Coin
First minted in December of 2022, Bonk is a dog-themed meme token issued on the Solana blockchain. The coin did not gain much popularity at first but currently, it has a market cap of $1.5 billion. On March 4, 2024, Bonk reached an all-time high of $0.00004547 but has since then lost a little over half of its value. Over the past year, Internet users have searched for Bonk coin on Google an average of 166,000 times each month.
Floki
Floki is a dog-themed meme cryptocurrency inspired by Elon Musk’s Shiba Inu dog called Floki. Like most meme coins, it started as a fun joke but over time, it became one of the most popular meme tokens. It is now a full web3 ecosystem that encompasses decentralized finance, NFTs, and the metaverse. It is also the fifth-most searched meme coin on Google for the past year with 93,000 average monthly searches.
The Hottest Meme Coins of 2024
The popularity of meme coins can be attributed to social media, celebrity support, games, and overall, online communities. It is no wonder why you would often hear more talk about a specific meme token than some of the largest cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum or Tether. Meme coins were meant to be viral and if we look at the detailed Google Trends data since January, we can see that certain tokens have gained a lot of traction.
For the ten meme coins with the largest market cap, we compared search interest figures from the first week of January 2024 (Jan 1-7) to the first week of June 2024 (June 3-9). Data shows that Floki has exploded in popularity at least in terms of Google searches during this period, having a 300% increase in search interest.
The Pepe coin is the second-hottest meme coin, with Google searches for it going 200% up between January and June. Ranking third with an increase of 133.33% for the period is the so-called DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON (Runes) or simply DOG. The meme coin is a part of the Runes protocol on the Bitcoin blockchain and despite being launched on April 24, 2024, there were searches about it before that.
The search interest for Dogecoin has not changed between January and June, while for Brett Coin, Book of Meme, and Dogwifhat, there weren’t sufficient queries on the search engine in January. Note that some of the coins were first minted in 2024 so appearing among the top 10 by market cap is in itself a feat.