Moo Deng falls more than 22% after market debut with ‘meteoric rise’

Solana-based meme coin Moo Deng, inspired by the viral Thai pygmy hippo, is down 22% in the last 24 hours of trading and almost 45% in the past week; This is a far cry from previous record high prices.

According to crypto.news data, on October 16, MOODENG fell more than 22% in the last 24 hours of trading. At the time of writing, the meme coin was trading at $0.0915 with a 24-hour trading volume of $96 million.

The Solana-based meme coin was recorded as still in circulation on October 8, surging over 40% on the day, after Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin sold 10 billion Moo Deng tokens and donated more than $640,000 worth of cryptocurrencies to biotech aid fund Kanro.

Since then, the hippo-inspired coin has fallen nearly 45% in the past week.

Web3 Thought Leader and Zenacademy Founder Zeneca commented on Moo Deng’s downfall in an X post. He noted that a meme coin that shows a “meteoric rise”, as in Moo Deng, tends to experience a 70-90% decline in the following days.

“I’m not saying Moo Deng is over – but he’s definitely[initely] “Fall into Murad’s camp and think that cult coins are the future and that cute new animals will always struggle (beyond the initial pump) unless the community becomes a cult as well,” Zeneca said in her post, referencing Murad Mahmudov, an avid meme advocate for coins.

The Moo Deng meme coin reached an all-time high of $0.338 on September 28, with a weekly gain of over 700%. Its market cap rose to over $300 million, making it the largest token in the Pump.fun ecosystem at that time. Since then, Moo Deng’s market value has fallen by 70%, reaching $90 million.

Since then, it has fallen from its top spot among Pump.fun tokens to rank 5th. In the overall meme token rankings by market cap, Moo Deng is currently ranked 473rd.

Moo Deng price chart, October 16, 2024 | Source: CoinGecko Who is Moo Deng?

Moo Deng is a two-month-old pygmy hippo at Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Thailand. Thanks to her chubby cheeks and always-wet look, she has become an internet sensation, garnering millions of views on the Zoo’s viral TikTok videos. Moo Deng has also been the subject of numerous memes distributed across the internet.

In September 2024, his online fame led to a significant increase in the number of visitors to the zoo, doubling the number of daily visitors, according to the BBC. Narongwit Chodchoy, director of Khao Kheow Open Zoo, once predicted that Moo Deng would bring more than $6.13 million in revenue to the zoo by the end of the year.