KAS races toward record

Seems Kaspa (KAS) jumped up from the couch, flipped on the radio, heard the scintillating guitar intro to Journey's "Don't Stop Believin,'" gulped down an energy drink, threw on a sweet never-worn Adidas track suit and promptly raced out the door, speeding toward its previous record high – and damned nearly made it, too.

Now some degree of pullback could be difficult to avoid for the coin of the realm of Kaspa, the scalability-centric layer-1 protocol, considering how KAS spent the past 48 hours so bombastically rocking out. 

Since hitting its all-time high of nearly $0.19 cents this past February, KAS has slumped, drifting to about a dime as of early May. But thirteen cents came back into view around Memorial Day weekend and momentum hasn't let up.

As of today at 7:08 a.m. (EST), KAS was $0.1743 on a 24-hour gain of 16.8%, per CoinGecko. With a market capitalization of $4.1 billion, KAS is now a member of CoinGecko's Top 30 coin cadre, a spot ahead of AI-related coin Render (RNDR) which has leaned sideways for the past seven days. KAS is right on the heels of No. 29 Ethereum Classic (ETC) with its $4.2B cap, and which has lost ground of late.

Kaspa is known for its scalable (high block rates) consensus protocol, called GHOSTDAG. It’s viewed as a game changer in terms of abetting fast, secure, truly decentralized transactions, insists its loyal community of dApp developers/users convinced that the infamous blockchain trilemma has at long last been solved.

Launched about two years ago, KAS has since gained an astounding 100,000% off its all-time low price of $0.000171. KAS is up 900% since last year at this time.

On Tuesday, at 7:41 a.m. (EST), total crypto assets were around $2.7 trillion, unchanged in 24 hours.

The largest two coins, Bitcoin and Ethereum, each are flatter than hammered veal.

Memes are down. We're talking about the ones sitting in a bracket comprising the No. 20-60 slots. Pepe (PEPE), Bonk (BONK), Dogwifhat (WIF) and Floki (FLOKI) – all shed 4%-8%.

But then there is No. 89 Brett (BRETT) which breeds on Base, Coinbase's layer-2 network (atop Ethereum).

BRETT has bucked the memecoins-in-a-rut trend, reaching a market cap of $1 billion on route to an all-time high of $0.1271. That was on Sunday. BRETT has fallen 9% since then.

It still can boast being the first memecoin on Base to reach a cap of $1B (Decrypt).

DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON, or Dog (DOG), was etched and minted on top of the Bitcoin network via the Runes Protocol.

Mere minutes ago, the memey-come-lately coin touched $0.009688, a fresh ATH. While the moon is still a long way off, Dog did briefly crack the Top 100 as its market cap exceeded $1 billion. When we checked at 8:08 a.m. (EST), Dog's cap was more like $970M, enough to land it in the No. 104 spot.

"DOG has steadily climbed the ranks since its launch and airdrop to Runestone NFT holders," Bitcoin.com said. "It marks a significant achievement for a meme asset created from the Bitcoin blockchain."

Looking toward a pipeline of canine-themed coins right now coming up through the pre-sale process, there's Ethereum-run WienerAI (WAI), which is actually described as part dog, part AI trading bot. That the WAI-obsessed "Sausage Army" has already drummed up $3M in sales underscores the breathtaking cycle of hype undergirding memecoin trading at the moment, as early success kickstarts social media buzz which can trigger a virtuous cascade.

WAI at the moment goes for $0.000711 per token but the pre-sale price goes up every few days, a "stage-based structure" that has stoked its own brand of FOMO.

Meanwhile, do not count out the grand old dog, Dogecoin (DOGE), said to be in a pre-breakout process, although lately its spot price has gone down every couple of days. Being able to buy Tesla merch with DOGE moved the needle sporadically over the past few months, and the prospect of DOGE-based derivatives caused some tongues to wag for a momentary window.

But what has the DOGE community reared up and barking right now is the supposedly massive accumulation of DOGE by large investors. Crypto analyst Ali Martinez spotted a family of whales scooping up 200 million DOGE since last week.

DOGE enters today on the prowl for $0.16 after being $0.17 on May 29. In a recent X post flagged by CoinGape, popular pundit Crypto Tony said that if DOGE reclaims the $0.175 mark, that would represent a "good entry point."