In a peculiar turn of events coinciding with the historic sentencing of Sam Bankman-Fried, degenerate memecoin enthusiasts once again demonstrated their penchant for backing questionable coins. Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of FTX, was handed a hefty sentence of 25 years in prison by Judge Lewis Kaplan on March 28. This marks the first instance of a figure from FTX facing imprisonment in connection with the exchange's collapse, which was one of the largest corporate failures in American history.
Shortly before Bankman-Fried's sentencing, a developer introduced a meme coin named Sam Baseman Fraud on the second-tier network Base of the Coinbase platform. Despite its humorous reference to FTX, the memecoin experienced a rapid surge in value, gaining over 23,300% within a span of just 7 hours. At its peak, the market capitalization of the FTX memecoin reached $1.5 million.
However, typical of many memecoins, the Sam Baseman Fraud token encountered swift and severe selling pressure, resulting in a decline of over 85% in just three hours. Presently, the memecoin's price has stabilized around $0.06, although it remains 60% lower than its all-time high. Following Bankman-Fried's verdict, another memecoin themed after him, dubbed Som Bonkmon Fraud, emerged on Solana.
The market capitalization of this Solana-based memecoin initially skyrocketed to approximately $20 million, representing an increase of over 18,000% from its launch value of $30,000. Nevertheless, similar to its predecessor, the coin experienced a rapid downturn, plummeting over 95% from its peak. The proliferation of Bankman-Fried-themed memecoins adds to the trend of popular memecoins inspired by both cryptocurrencies and political figures.
The resurgence of memecoins gained momentum with the meteoric rise of Dog Wif Hat (WIF), a Solana-based memecoin that saw its market capitalization surge from around $50,000 to $3.5 billion within a span of four months. Additionally, newer meme tokens like Pepe Coq Inu on Ethereum and Coq Inu (COQ) on Avalanche have also witnessed notable increases in value. Memecoins, characterized by their speculative nature and lack of fundamental valuation, often rely solely on popular interest and hype. Notably, the native cryptocurrency of FTX, FTX Token (FTT), experienced a significant drop of over 16% following news of Bankman-Fried's sentencing.
