Bitcoin is on the charge in 2023, dragging the crypto market off the floor and electrifying bonk, a new meme coin.
The No.1 cryptocurrency has clocked a 26% gain in January, leaping 22% in the past week alone, breaking back above the $20,000 level and putting in on course for its best month since October 2021 – just before the Big Crypto Crash.
Ether has also risen, by 29% this year, helping drive the value of the overall global cryptocurrency market above $1 trillion, according to CoinGecko.
“After a rough year last year for cryptos, we are seeing a form of mean reversion,” said Jake Gordon, analyst at Bespoke Investment Group, referring to the theory of asset prices returning to long-term averages.
Researchers said investor bets on a rosier macroeconomic picture were driving a jump in riskier assets across the board.
Read more: UK sends a gang of four for blackpool £21m cryptocurrency fraud
Few crypto tokens have benefited more than bonk, which was launched at the end of December on the Solana blockchain and had rocketed 5,000% by early January. It has since fallen back, though remains up 910% since the start of the year.
Nonetheless, some market players pointed to the relative cheapness of these tokens – doge is worth about eight cents – as a reason why speculators were willing to place bets on them.
“Meme coins belong to crypto, it s part of the culture,” said Martin Leinweber, digital assets product specialist at MarketVector Indexes. “It just takes a few lines of codes to create a meme token and if you have a community for it, people love that.”
