Why BONK is No Ordinary Meme Coin – Brave New Coin

As at March 21st 2024, dog-themed meme coin and social media darling BONK is up over 3000% year-on-year. So what’s driving its phenomenal growth – and how is BONK different to other dog-based meme tokens?

Updated June 9th 2024. The BONK meme coin is up over 7000% year-on-year. In this blog post, we will explain what BONK is, how it was launched, what makes it unique, and where you can buy it.

What’s Driving The BONK price?

BONK’s price momentum began surging in October 2023, after the introduction of single-sided staking BONK pools. This feature allowed BONK holders to earn a yield on BONK without having to deposit a second asset that BONK would trade against.

At that time users, transaction fees, and the number of BONK transactions surged. Factors in BONK’s price momentum this year have included a listing on the Revolut app in April, making it accessible to a broader audience in the European Union, the UK and other eligible countries. The addition of Revolut means BONK now has impressive exchange and app availability and is tradable on Coinbase, Kraken, ByBit, Crypto.com, OKX and around 25 other dexes and exchanges.

Other meme coins that have a longer history and similar large market caps, like PEPE, have been ignored by major exchances, but with BONK the ‘Listing Effect’ is clearly evident. These listings have boosted the mainstream legitimacy of the BONK token and introduced it to a much larger user base. In addition, BONK perpetual swap derivatives can be traded on the popular trading platform, Bitmex, with up to 10x leverage.

Also in April, the Bonk DAO approved a historic proposal to burn over 278 billion BONK tokens, representing almost 5% of the total supply. This move was aimed at creating scarcity and potentially increasing the token’s value. The BONK community overwhelmingly supported the proposal, with 99.9% voting in favor. Following the burn announcement, BONK experienced a significant price surge, increasing by 40% in less than 24 hours​.

In 2024, most major meme coins have ridden the wave of Bitcoin’s momentum, but their gains have been significantly greater – for reasons explained here. For example, while Bitcoin is up 62% between the first of January and June 9th price of $69,404 BONK is around 110% over the same period.

What is BONK?

Like PEPE and DOGE, BONK is a meme coin inspired by internet memes, jokes, and satire. Meme coins are not designed with a specific use case in mind, but rather as a way to express humor, creativity, and social commentary through cryptocurrency.

While BONK is similar to DOGE and SHIB in that it features a cute dog as its mascot and logo, it differs from them in several ways.

1.  BONK is built on Solana. Referred to as the ‘Ethereum killer’ when it launched, Solana is a fast, scalable, and low-cost blockchain platform that supports smart contracts and decentralized applications with over 400 dApps currently running on its network (Solana is also home to 2024’s other stellar performer Dogwifhat).

2. BONK was launched with a massive airdrop on December 25, 2022, as a Christmas gift to the Solana community. 50% of the total supply of 100 trillion coins was distributed to Solana users who contributed to the development and growth of the network in some way. This included artists, creators, developers, NFT collectors, and active community members. The airdrop was done randomly and anonymously, without any pre-announcement or marketing.

3. BONK’s integration with the Solana ecosystem. BONK’s whitepaper outlines its ambition to become the “community coin of Solana,” used across numerous decentralized applications. The project aims to challenge the dominance of “predatory VC tokens” by empowering the wider Solana community. This is evident in its approach to airdropping 50% of its total supply.

The 1-year correlation between SOL and BONK currently sits at 0.76. The coin is accepted as a payment option for NFTs on several platforms, such as OpenBook and Orca. It is also used as an incentive for staking NFTs on platforms like SolFarm and BonkStake. Moreover, BONK is listed on several popular crypto exchanges that support Solana-based tokens, such as Coinbase, Binance and Serum.

Tokenomics of BONK

• Market Position: As of March June 9th 2024, BONK is the sixth-largest meme coin by market cap (at $1,891,124,036), following DOGE, Shiba Inu, PEPE, WIF and FLOKI and the 54th largest crypto overall.
• Impressive Growth: BONK has seen an extraordinary increase of over 7000% year-on-year.
• Supply Details: The coin has a maximum supply of 100 trillion, with 65 trillion in circulation as of mid-March 2024.

What makes BONK unique?

BONK has several features that make it stand out from other meme coins. One of them is its community-driven nature. The team behind BONK does not have any control over the coin’s supply or direction. Instead, they have delegated 15% of the total supply to a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) called Bonk DAO. The Bonk DAO is responsible for making decisions regarding the future development and governance of BONK. Anyone who holds BONK tokens can participate in the Bonk DAO by voting on proposals or submitting their own ideas. The recent burn vote is good example of the Bonk community working together to increase BONK’s value.

How and Where to Buy BONK

BONK can be purchased on centralized exchanges (CEX) like Coinbase, Crypto.com, Kraken, KuCoin, Binance, OKX and decentralized exchanges (DEX) such as Raydium, Orca, and BonkSwap. Ethereum users can also gain exposure to BONK through Wrapped BONK tokens.