Original | Odaily Planet Daily
Author | Nan Zhi
At the beginning of 2021, DOGE sparked the first wave of “animal market” meme craze, and DOGE itself reached a peak market value of 88.79 billion US dollars. At that time, DOGE successfully broke into various social media platforms and introduced a large number of new investors to related cryptocurrencies.
On May 8th of that year, DOGE reached its highest point of 0.74 USDT. The overheated market accumulated a large number of leveraged positions. On May 12th, Bitcoin fell by 12.5%, followed by the well-known 519 crash, with Bitcoin’s daily volatility reaching 34.8% and a decline of 14.44%.
The two rounds of SHIB, the “second generation meme leader,” occurred in May and the end of October 2021, which were close to the two peak times in May and November. However, the breaking effect was not as significant as DOGE.
Recently, meme tokens led by PEPE have dominated the exchange’s price increase rankings, and WIF has also been listed on Robinhood and Binance. Does this indicate the start of a new round of breaking and reaching the peak? Odaily Planet Daily will review social media data and meme token trends, including DOGE, SHIB, PEPE, and WIF, to explore whether there is any correlation and indication between them.
Breaking and spreading? Not yet started
Let’s start with the social media platforms in China.
Weibo: In 2021, a large number of official accounts and individuals on Weibo promoted Web3 industry content. Although many users have migrated to X platform, the content related to meme coins can still be updated in real-time and have a certain degree of dissemination. The search results for PEPE are closely related to cryptocurrencies, while there is less associated content for WIF, with most of the content related to “WiFi.”
Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book): The situation on this platform is similar to Weibo. PEPE is highly associated, but most of the posts are not recent and have low likes, indicating that it has not triggered FOMO and widespread attention from users outside the circle. WIF also has scattered related content, with uneven distribution of time, and most of it is related to the term “WiFi.”
Jike: The Web3 concentration on this platform is comparable to Weibo and Xiaohongshu, but it is mainly used for official project promotion and professional communication among practitioners. Currently, there are only a few posts discussing the price increase of PEPE, and no one mentions WIF.
Review of social media search data
Based on “Baidu Index” and “Google Trends,” let’s review the trends of DOGE and SHIB. “Baidu Index” is an absolute index that shows the search volume within a specific time period, while “Google Trends” is an absolute value with a maximum value of 100, showing the relative trend within a specific time period.
The price of DOGE and social media search data are as follows. As seen from the Google data, the global attention to DOGE from January to May is approximately the same, but more attention is paid to the last two rounds of trends in China. It can also be clearly seen that once there is a significantly higher-than-average hot search on a certain day, it means that the short-term trend has peaked.
The price of SHIB and social media search data are as follows. The pattern is similar to DOGE, and extreme hot searches indicate the peak of the trend. However, it can be seen that the attention in China is mainly driven by the “animal market” trend triggered by DOGE in May, and the second round of attention in China has significantly decreased.
The price of PEPE in the past month and social media search data are as follows. Due to official settings, Google Trends cannot be queried across months, but a search on the 7th day shows that the popularity has not changed significantly compared to the end of February. However, there has been a significant deviation from the average in China, but the degree is far less than the more than 100-fold fluctuations seen in DOGE and SHIB.
The price of WIF in the past month and social media search data are as follows. There is no significant change in attention in China, but it is worth noting that after Binance announced the listing of WIF spot on March 5th at 18:00, the popularity began to soar, similar to the deviation seen in PEPE.
Conclusion
In summary, the extreme popularity of meme tokens often indicates the peak of a trend. Currently, both PEPE and WIF have shown significant deviations, indicating the accumulation of risks, but the degree is far less than that of DOGE and SHIB in previous years. There is no clear breaking effect occurring, which may still leave some potential for growth.
