decrypt.co
Meme coins are rising again after the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States, with Dogecoin ($DOGE) and other meme-themed tokens jumping as Bitcoin (BTC) tests a return to $99,000 after nearly a week spent below that mark.
Dogecoin, the original and most valuable meme coin by market cap, is currently priced at $0.42, rising by 7% on the day per data from CoinGecko. $DOGE last hit this mark on November 25 and had been below it in the days since.
Like other meme coins, $DOGE is famously volatile and can see wild daily swings. But it's still up huge in recent weeks, jumping by 149% in price over the last 30 days amid famed backer Elon Musk's support of Donald Trump—and Trump's election win as a pro-crypto candidate. Dogecoin hit a three-year high price of $0.475 last Saturday.
Major meme coins are broadly up over the past day, with Popcat (POPCAT) rising 12%, Bonk (BONK) up 13%, and Brett (BRETT) and Pepe (PEPE) each up about 9%.
The surge has burned some traders betting on the price of major meme coins to go down, per data from CoinGlass, with nearly $6 million in $DOGE shorts and $3.3 million in Peanut the Squirrel (PNUT) shorts liquidated over the past 24 hours. Overall, $221 million worth of crypto futures positions have been liquidated during the span, led by Bitcoin at about $65 million.
The vast majority of those liquidated Bitcoin positions were shorts, as the price of the leading cryptocurrency is also on the rise. It's trading above $98,400 as of this writing and looked to be making a play for $99,000 earlier Friday, touching $98,685—but has cooled slightly since.
Last Friday, on November 22, Bitcoin jumped to an all-time high price of $99,645, coming closer to the $100,000 milestone price than ever before.