The Musk Trade Reappears: Animal MEMEs, Tweets, and Skyrocketing Prices

Written by: Tianyi Wu, DeThings

A Solana meme token called PNUT has become popular recently, and was listed on the Binance exchange on Monday, and its market value has soared to $1.5 billion. According to CoinGecko, the token has soared 1,524% in the past seven days and is currently priced at $1.65.

PNUT is one of the few meme coins that have risen in the past 24 hours. The leader of the field, Dogecoin (DOGE), fell 6%, while its largest competitor, Shiba Inucoin (SHIB), plunged 11%.

Other memes that have been negatively affected by the ongoing market correction include POPCAT (-9%), BRETT (-11%), NEIRO (-12%), MEW (-12%), etc.

"Musk transaction" reappears

The prototype of this meme coin is similar to DOGE. As a pet in the real world, it was confiscated and euthanized by New York State authorities on the grounds of rabies earlier this month. Subsequently, Donald Trump and local candidates accused the New York Democratic Party of "overstepping its authority", making the squirrel a Republican "battle" slogan on social media for a time.

Not only that, Elon Musk has posted about this pet squirrel on Twitter many times, saying "President Donald Trump will save the squirrel" and "A squirrel and a meme coin saved the United States", and the topic has been constantly involved in the political field. Just like DOGE skyrocketed due to Musk's tweets, a similar "Musk transaction" has reappeared in PNUT.

Another catalyst is Binance’s recent listing strategy, which ignored many meme coins with larger market capitalizations and chose to list two smaller tokens, PNUT and ACT. In addition, Binance co-founder He Yi said that the listing fees for these two tokens were waived.

PNUT and ACT’s prices soared after listing on Binance, with increases of more than 1,000%, making early investors lucrative. Other Solana-based meme tokens have also seen similar surges after listing on Binance.

According to CoinGecko data, after listing on Binance on Monday, AI Prophecy (ACT)’s market value rose from $20 million to more than $650 million, and its price climbed from $0.02 to $0.6. According to Ai_9684xtpa, an on-chain analyst, Binance has launched 15 meme coin projects this year, including futures, spot, etc.

AI meme continues to gain momentum

Another Solana-based memecoin, called Act One: Artificial Intelligence Prophecy (ACT), has risen more than 1,720% after its Binance listing.

The token was initially launched on Oct. 19, with a market cap hovering around $20 million over the weekend. Trading volumes surged after the listing, with $293 million on decentralized exchange Raydium and $60 million on Binance, increasing its market cap to $422 million at press time.

According to its official website, ACT stands for AI Community Token and claims to be focused on “advancing AI research, education, and collaboration.” The meme coin's website says it was co-founded by a pseudonymous Twitter user, Amplifiedamp (also known as Amp), who decided to sell all his tokens and leave the community shortly after feeling "betrayed."

With the surge in PNUT and ACT, it is not difficult to see that Binance has begun to prefer projects with lower market capitalization and driven by the community rather than those with strong liquidity or larger market capitalization.

But some people have raised questions, such as the famous Ordinals developer Leonidas, who warned that Binance has become an engine for "pumping up stock prices", deliberately harming the interests of retail investors and creating an unhealthy meme coin market. Some cryptocurrency participants claim that whales and large investors usually buy and sell these tokens a few hours and a week after luring small investors.