Dog-meme coins unleashed

Ethereum (ETH) earlier this morning hit yet another new all-time high of $4,346, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

As of 7 a.m. (EST) on Wednesday, ETH was about $4,275, per CoinGecko.  For the first time, ETH's total market cap reached above $500 billion.

Yearn Finance (YFI), meanwhile, soared by as much as 45% earlier today on chatter related to supposed plans for the release of a YFI-pegged dog token, WOOFY. YFI, also earlier this morning, hit an ATH, going above $90K.

In recent days, dog-themed crypto assets have proliferated and it’s not just DOGE and SHIB. One new dog-related coin, Baby Shiba Inu (BHIBA), surged from $0.00000735 to as high as $0.0000794, representing an increase of nearly 1,000% in 48 hours (DailyHodl).

Over the past few weeks, NFT activity has been on the decline with weekly trading volumes falling from their peak in February. Weekly users and transactions of NFT platforms have also declined, according to The Block. On Tuesday, a collection of nine CryptoPunk NFTs sold for $16.9 million at auction house Christie's. Earlier this year, a single CryptoPunk sold for $7.6 million.

YFI shot up to as high as $90,800 earlier today after a tweet from a developer about a coming new meme coin, WOOFY, said to offer a bridge function to re-denominate YFI holdings into another token at a 1:1 ratio. Which could make sense, as there's been some concern that the high price of YFI (due to the low supply) is far from ideal, unit-bias-wise, for more speculative traders, industry members pointed out in a discussion on Twitter, as reported by BeInCrypto.

One observer said: “At first glance, this looks like an unsavory attempt to milk value out of the new suckers in the market. However, this is really just a brilliantly timed and themed ‘unit bias a/b test’.”

Fallout from the dog-meme coin explosion has descended on the crypto community which remains split on whether it's harmless or potentially toxic, according to The DailyHodl, noting the 167% rise of Shiba Inu (SHIB) after it was listed on Binance. Michael Saylor, CEO of Microstrategy, for example, said recently that DOGE was good for the industry while Cardano creator Charles Hoskinson has labeled DOGE as an “existential threat.”

Said CoinCape, "the rise of meme currencies is purely based on speculation and heavy shilling on social media platforms."

History, indeed, has shown currencies with near-infinite supply can potentially cause problems.

Programmer Laszlo Hanyecz legendarily traded 10,000 BTCs for a couple of Papa John's pizzas. That was May 22, 2010.

The date has lived on in crypto circles with an annually commemorated "Bitcoin Pizza Day." And (mamma mia!) have these circles ever widened. Papa John’s just announced that in the UK it is giving away BTC with pizza purchases (Bitcoin.com).

Crypto Exchange Executives Will Get Their Day In Court, Just Not For Another 11 Months: A trial for four BitMEX executives accused of money laundering precaution-taking failures has been set for next March. The U.S. Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have accused the BitMEX leaders of violating the Bank Secrecy Act. They face up to five years in prison. The BitMEX derivatives platform, once dominant, has lost market share (Coinnounce).

When Worlds Collide: The explosion of DeFi has put centralized finance on notice – that lunch of yours, yeah, we’re coming for it – but need these two worlds necessarily clash, or might there be some harmony to be had? Netherland’s ING Bank recently released a white paper that analyzed the opportunities and risks associated with DeFi (AMBCrypto).

This purported divide could in theory lead to the discrimination of either type of service, the authors said. However, based on their analysis, "if centralized and decentralized financial services cooperate ... the best of both worlds is achieved."