Large-cap memecoins are leading the new year crypto rally, with Pepe (PEPE) posting the strongest gains among the top-100 tokens on Friday, Jan. 2.
PEPE jumped more than 38% over the past 24 hours on nearly $1.8 billion in trading volume, sharply outperforming the broader crypto market, which is up about 3% today. Shiba Inu (SHIB) rose about 15%, while Dogecoin (DOGE) climbed 12%, making it the only token among the top-10 by market capitalization to post double-digit gains.
The rally came as Ether (ETH) — the native token of the Ethereum network, which both PEPE and SHIB are built on — traded higher this morning. Ether is changing hands around $3,122 after weeks of failing to break over the $3,000 mark, up about 5% on the day.
The move highlights a familiar pattern in crypto markets, where memecoins often lead during short bursts of risk-on trading as investors rotate into higher-volatility assets.
“This early-year rotation into large cap memes may suggest traders are positioning for upside after months of consolidation and memes have been some of the hardest hit post the [Oct. 10, 2025] liquidation in terms of downside volatility,” Jake Kennis, senior research analyst at Nansen told The Defiant. “Markets may have been extremely bearish on memes based on price action and the risk appetite not being there.”
The total memecoin market cap today is $47.4 billion, up over 16% in the last 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. Still, Kennis cautioned that despite the uptick, memecoins as a sector have been trending down relative to Bitcoin (BTC).
He also noted that these upward trends “would have to be confirmed on higher timeframes as both PEPE and DOGE are still down 79.8% and 81% from their [all-time highs], respectively.”
Neil Staunton, CEO and co-founder of Superset, pointed to growing speculation around the launch of memecoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in 2026 as one of the driving factors of today’s rally. “The mere speculation of institutional wrappers for memecoins creates a ‘if it might be an ETF, maybe it’s investable’ narrative,” Staunton told The Defiant.
Meanwhile, Jordan Jefferson, Founder of DogeOS, called part of today’s move mechanical, attributing PEPE’s rally to millions in short liquidations. For DOGE, however, he believes that sentiment may finally be shifting.
“We have seen strong accumulation from large DOGE holders as the year closes out,” Jefferson said. “Large holders have accumulated over a billion DOGE in the past month alone, and as the Dogecoin ecosystem expands into DeFi, gaming, and real applications in 2026, holders have more reasons than ever to accumulate more and move their coins off exchanges.”
