Solana memes sizzle

Solana-run memecoin Dogwifhat (WIF) is sniffing $4 after scampering 33% in the past seven days, even as some major coins turned tail during that same stretch.

Take, for example, the original memecoin, Dogecoin (DOGE), which lost 1% in the past 24 hours. On a weekly basis, DOGE sits at -2.7%.

A fellow Solana-bred DOGE descendent is Bonk (BONK) which gained 25% in the past week. BONK now has a market capitalization of about $2.7 billion, placing it just outside the backdoor of CoinGecko's Top 50.

WIF, still only a puppy at six months, already has a market cap of $3.74 billion. It’s the 33rd-largest coin in terms of total cap, per CoinGecko.

Coming soon to the Solana scene is Sealana (SEAL), a coin tied to a meme celebrating a portly seal symbolizing a carefree "degen" lifestyle, and one which reportedly secured more than $2.5 million in pre-sale funding ahead of an official launch in a few weeks.

And now look what just came waddling confidently into a memedom crammed full of cartoon mascots – why it's penguin-themed Penguiana (PENGU) boasting of a gaming/NFT wrinkle so as to set itself apart from so many cute but non-functional characters. PENGU runs on the Solana network and hours ago launched on Solana's Raydium DEX where the token quickly amassed a $1 million market valuation.

In a whirlwind of its own reaping, Solana's ostensibly playful Pump.fun memecoin creation factory is under scrutiny for its role facilitating an endless supply of dubious projects pumping, dumping – and heaping mad amounts of scorn and skepticism on the crypto sector.

It's a funhouse-mirror scramble – strange and disorienting – even former Olympic gold medal winners get tripped up.

When Caitlyn Jenner came to market earlier this week with a Pump.fun-creation (on the same day that a slew of celebrity X accounts were hacked by coin-touting scammers) the Caitlyn Jenner coin, JENNER, was immediately suspected to be a rug pull; Jenner took to social media with a video vouch – and the clip was instantly decried as a deep fake (unfairly so, as it turns out).

Eventually, JENNER did find its footing, generating legitimate volume, landing on Raydium and rising from a portion of a penny to almost 3 full cents yesterday. Today, per CoinGecko, JENNER is more like 2 cents.

The tech-stock-laden Nasdaq Composite on Tuesday reached record territory, surpassing the 17,000 level for the first time ever. But most of the heavy lifting these days is being done by AI-fueled chip manufacturer Nvidia. A more discerning connoisseur of equities could point to 350 names in the S&P 500 that finished in the red yesterday.

Risk-takers remain fixated on interest rates, that most omnipotent of catalysts and which can take various forms; the rate on the 10-year treasury creeping above 4.5% did not go unnoticed yesterday. The breach of a key mark weighed on markets like a manhole cover fashioned into a necklace for a ventriloquist's dummy.

We can plainly see Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's lips moving: Inflation risks aren’t waning, not in the U.S., with its more confident consumer spenders and robust job market.

The Fed could wind up scrapping notions of rate cuts altogether in 2024; heck, it might even raise rates.

Bitcoin, having blown through its ETF and halving catalysts, seemingly awaits a macro-bred chariot that has not materialized. BTC as of Wednesday at 6:55 a.m. (EST) was $67,872, down 3% in the past week.

While the Fed usually sets the tone for the world's monetary policymakers, it appears, based on recent comments from Olli Rehn, head of Finland’s central bank, that the European Central Bank is gearing up to take the lead on easing.

In fact, an ECB interest rate cut next week is "practically a done deal," CNBC said.

In the meantime, rate cuts in the U.S. are off the table, said Claudio Irigoyen, a Bank of America economist.

“We think that ECB and Fed rate cut cycles will differ," he said. "A lot."

It's a short week and macro-mindful investors across a range of speculative assets suddenly confront mounting sell pressure. Some key inflation readings are due later this week, and could impact "growth stocks, commodities and cryptocurrencies," the Motley Fool pointed out. "Everything is tied to interest rates these days."