Can Shib, Doge, Floki and Book of Meme kick-start a rally after Avalanche's meme coin program?

Avalanche (AVAX) is looking to introduce the meme coin mania into its ecosystem following the launch of its meme coin rush program. This comes on the back of Shiba Inu (SHIB), Dogecoin (DOGE), Floki Inu (FLOKI), Book of MEME (BOME) and a host of other meme coins seeing huge losses after a massive rally earlier in March.

Avalanche wants in on the meme action

Avalanche, compared to Ethereum and Solana, has yet to see much of the meme coin hype that has recently taken the crypto market by storm. 

Since the beginning of March, large-capped meme coins like Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, Pepe and Floki led the crypto market in a frenzy, recording significant highs reminiscent of the 2021 bull run. A few weeks after, Solana meme coins joined the party as tokens like dogwifhat (WIF) and Book of MEME (BOME) recorded huge gains, according to data from CoinGecko.

Top meme coins

However, coming into the fourth week of March, much of the hype is winding down following the recent price correction in the market. But Avalanche may breathe life into the dying narrative by launching phase one of its "Meme coin rush" program.

Read more: Avalanche partners with Alipay+ amid fears of meme coin scam on its network

According to an announcement on the AVAX network, meme coin rush is a $1 million liquidity mining program that will "help scale liquidity and drive momentum...for the community coin ecosystem on Avalanche." This move may help spur meme coin development in Avalanche as the platform is making specific efforts to ensure this works. "Memecoins have become a cornerstone of Web3, representing the uniqueness and interests of diverse crypto communities," said Eric Kang, Business Developer Manager at Ava Labs.

BOME, SHIB, DOGE, FLOKI may resume an upswing

Following Avalanche's ploy to grab the meme coin narrative, investors began shilling different projects on X as several meme coins saw increased activity.

BOME, for example, skyrocketed in the past 24 hours, recording almost a 31% gain.

SHIB is also seeing immense movements in holdings. On-chain activity shows that more than 2 trillion SHIB tokens have been shuffled between exchanges, trading desks and whales. For example, a transfer from the SHIB accumulator "0xdaA," totaling $11.9 million in SHIB, was directed to the wallet address "0XB22," according to data on Etherscan.

This whale activity isn't restricted to SHIB alone. On Thursday, DOGE was up nearly 20% as on-chain analyst Ali Martinez shared a Santiment chart showing that Dogecoin whales have bought 25 million DOGE tokens worth around $3.75 million since Tuesday. This action may be motivated by Coinbase Derivatives securing approval to list Dogecoin futures products. The price of DOGE later saw a correction and is down about 2% on Friday. 

Floki also saw gains on Thursday as its price posted gains close to 30% before a correction. This comes off the back of several partnerships, including serving as an official crypto partner - together with TokenFi - for the World Table Tennis Championship in South Korea and integrations with the Carbon web3 browser.

Also read: Dogecoin soars nearly 20% after Coinbase announces listing of DOGE derivatives

Bitcoin price crash may spoil the fun

A common factor among the rise of these tokens is the brief increase in the price of Bitcoin (BTC) following the Federal Reserve leaving interest rates unchanged. However, BTC's price action looks weak as it's down more than 6% in the last 24 hours. The market is also stagnating, as analysts at JP Morgan say that BTC is in overbought territory and has yet to see a major unwinding of positions. The analysts further predicted that profit-taking might continue as the Bitcoin halving event approaches.

BTC/USDT 1-hour chart

Considering Bitcoin's high correlation with altcoins, it may destabilize the entire market, including these meme coins discussed above.