Bargain vs. Blue-Chip: Memecoin Mayhem With MOG Coin and Dogwifhat

Memecoins have dominated this cycle’s discourse, so it was only a matter of time until this column tackled the topic.

Memecoins are far from a new phenomenon — in fact, they have existed for more than a decade. Created in 2013, Dogecoin ($DOGE) was the first memecoin to launch and rise to prominence. Buoyed by the support of Elon Musk, $DOGE hit a new all-time high in May 2021 of more than $0.73 with an eye-popping market cap of nearly $100 billion. While the bear market brought $DOGE back to earth, the original meme token remains one of the world’s top 10 cryptocurrencies, with a market cap of over $27 billion at the time of publication.

Last cycle’s dark horse meme was Shiba Inu ($SHIB), which rose from relative obscurity to a market cap of more than $40 billion in October 2021. Propelled by a coveted Coinbase listing in September 2021, the coin skyrocketed more than 1100% in a little over a month. As part of its memetic lore, $SHIB had allocated 50% of its supply to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who donated more than $1.2 billion of the tokens to Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal’s India Covid Relief Fund in May 2021 before burning 90% of his remaining supply (worth nearly $7 billion at the time).

However, those success stories are outliers — most memecoins go to zero. What are the best risk/reward plays in a volatile cycle marked by trends like presales and politics?

Any conversation would be incomplete without Dogwifhat ($WIF), a Solana memecoin following the rich tradition of insurgent dog coins by ascending to the ranks of the top 35 cryptocurrencies globally with a $3.5 billion market cap. As for an established but arguably undervalued token, MOG Coin ($MOG) on Ethereum and Base boasts a strong and loyal community and still has room to run as the bull market progresses.

For this week’s edition of “Bargain vs. Bluechip,” I will analyze the two tokens through a cultural and investment lens. As always, this is not financial advice — investing in memecoins is an incredibly risky proposition due to a lack of fundamentals, unvetted contracts, and the likelihood of rug pulls.

Bargain: MOG Coin

The Ticker: $MOG

Market Cap: $250 million

Price: $0.0₆5945

The Case for Bargain:

In crypto’s fast-paced attention economy, memecoins live and die on the strength of their communities and the resilience of their memes. Billed as the “internet’s first culture coin,” $MOG has shown considerable staying power since launching in July 2023.

Its most notable visual hallmarks are the ubiquitous Pit Viper sunglasses worn by holders alongside a potent combination of the laughing cat and pointing finger emojis. The memecoin’s namesake comes from the slang term “mogging,” which finds its roots in the bodybuilding community and essentially means to dominate or “flex on” someone else. However, the $MOG community’s use of the term is decidedly more playful in nature, with self-proclaimed “moggers” raiding tweets, calling each other “cousins,” and creating memes that position “getting mogged” as part of being welcomed into the community.

What’s there to like about $MOG?

The coin boasts a built-in distribution network due to the support of several influential web3 creators and figures, including Kmoney, FaZe Banks, ThreadGuy, Frank DeGods, and more. $MOG has featured prominently in the popular “probably nothing” vlog series, garnering millions of views on X. The latest episode featured an intervention with TikToker Bryce Hall over his past promotion of crypto scams, complete with his education and ultimate rehabilitation in full Pit Viper glory.

The coin garnered attention during NFT NYC last week due to a viral stunt in which a Marshmello impersonator wearing a $MOG shirt DJed in the back of a Cyber Truck in Times Square. As the footage spread on social media, the real Marshmello took to X to set the record straight that it was not him, that he was not associated with the “shitcoin,” and that his lawyers were on top of it.

While some found the stunt cringe-worthy, the $MOG community embraced the incident and continued trolling with memes as the coin’s price increased. The old adage that “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” often holds true in the memecoin attention economy — look no further than $SLERF’s rise to a billion-dollar market cap after its developer accidentally burned $10 million in presale funds.

The test of a memecoin’s mettle is typically how well it bounces back from corrections, and $MOG has survived a series of significant pumps and drawdowns in August 2023, February 2024, and now, March 2024. With a $250 million market cap at the time of publication, $MOG is currently down 50% from its peak when it flirted with a $500 million market cap on March 14.

As traders look to this month’s Bitcoin halving as a bullish catalyst with the potential to propel BTC to new all-time highs, garner media attention, and attract more retail investors, $MOG’s current price could be an advantageous entry point in this week’s market pullback ahead of crypto’s next leg up.

In a savvy move, the team launched a bridge to Base, the Ethereum Layer-2 incubated by Coinbase, last week to benefit from the liquidity in Base’s thriving memecoin ecosystem and offer traders a low-fee alternative to transacting on Ethereum. There’s speculation that the top Base memecoins could receive expedited Coinbase listings — historically, a very bullish event for the asset class due to the ease of access for retail investors.

If that happens, $MOG could also benefit from unit bias and its perceived low price at a fraction of a penny in contrast to lower-supply contenders like $WIF — similar to how less-sophisticated investors were drawn to the promise of $SHIB’s fractional price point compared to $DOGE last cycle.

The last cycle proved that social media creators could materially move memecoin markets. Given $MOG’s ride-or-die cadre of content creators and the upside of continued mainstream crossover, it’s not unreasonable to imagine it passing a billion-dollar market cap as the bull run progresses, representing a 4x from current prices. With catchy memetics, wide reach, and several potential bullish catalysts, the ceiling may be considerably higher for $MOG in the speculative fervor of the bull market’s peak.

Blue-Chip: Dogwifhat

The Ticker: $WIF

Market Cap: $3.5 billion

Price: $3.48

The Case for Bluechip:

Name a better meme this cycle, I’ll wait.

As Solana’s leading meme token, Dogwifhat has emerged as the unquestionable face of 2024’s memecoin spring. $WIF is now the third-biggest memecoin by market cap after $DOGE and $SHIB, passing the likes of $PEPE and $BONK to solidify its status as one of the cycle’s greatest success stories.

Based on a viral 2019 photograph of a Shiba Inu wearing a salmon knit hat that first took off in the esports community, $WIF has greatly benefited from the early and staunch support of influential crypto trader Ansem. His now-legendary early call of the coin created considerable wealth for his followers and helped elevate him to rarified air on crypto Twitter, where his posts now regularly move markets and inspire multiple new memecoin launches — from his cat’s name to ticker tattoos.

Now that Dogwifhat has minted millionaires, it boasts a highly convicted community that trumpets rallying cries of “hat stays on” during downturns and offers the point-blank insight that “the dog has a hat” as all the evidence needed to justify its continued rise. It’s not difficult to see $WIF’s appeal — it’s cute, easily memeable, and puts a fun twist on a proven mold of wildly successful dog coins.

Amid the memecoin’s dizzying rise, $WIF received coverage from mainstream media outlets like Bloomberg and CNBC, and the dog’s owners even auctioned an NFT of the original photo for $4.3 million. In a showing of strength and resilience, $WIF has bounced back from multiple drawdowns of over 80% and outlived countless copycat coins to set new all-time highs.

Now the question is: how much further can it go? If the past cycle is any indicator, quite a bit. Comparisons to Shiba Inu understandably abound, especially as $WIF rose above a $5 billion market cap without a Coinbase listing ($SHIB was listed at $3.3 billion in 2021).

As crypto trader OSF astutely observed, the amount of capital needed to move the market cap of a coin of $WIF’s size indicates that major whales are buying into the project. This could be in anticipation of an upcoming Coinbase listing for the token, which would almost certainly rally on the news and benefit from the buying power of millions of users who may not be crypto-savvy enough to set up a Phantom wallet and buy it on a decentralized exchange.

However, the $WIF faithful isn’t leaving the memecoin’s fate to Coinbase’s whims. In a crowdfunding campaign led by Ansem, the community raised over $700,000 to put the Dogwifhat meme on the Las Vegas Sphere. As a viral moment, the Sphere placement has the potential to energize the community, make headlines across the space, and attract the attention of retail traders. Basically, more fuel for the fire.

So how high could $WIF realistically go?

Between September and October 2021, $SHIB rode a Coinbase listing from a $3.3 billion market cap to $40 billion in just over a month. However, that was arguably later in that crypto cycle when more retail traders were already involved and eager to FOMO into the next big memecoin after witnessing $DOGE’s parabolic rise. There were also far fewer memecoins to trade in those days, with most of the attention and liquidity centering on Ethereum, as opposed to the current climate characterized by fragmentation across myriad L1 and L2 ecosystems. A Coinbase listing in the next couple of months would be an incredibly bullish driver for $WIF, but I don’t think we would necessarily see a 10x return in that short timeframe.

However, the peak bull market is a different beast entirely. If Solana can overcome its current congestion issues and maintain its position as the main chain for memecoin trading, the leading meme stands to benefit tremendously in euphoric conditions. One thing seems certain — the wild $WIF saga will likely continue for as long as the bull market’s memecoin meta lasts.

Bottomline

MOG Coin is a potentially undervalued memecoin play that regularly receives organic support from top-tier web3 creators. If you agree with Kmoney’s thesis that buying a memecoin is a bet on future attention, then there’s a clear case for upside here.

Simply put, Solana is crypto’s primary memecoin casino, Ansem is its main character, and $WIF is the horse he’s chosen. Bet against them at your peril. After all, the dog has a hat.

Editor’s note: At the time of publication, the author holds both $WIF and $MOG.

Verified On-Chain

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