Floki, Dogwifhat, and Pepe lead memecoin rally alongside Ethereum ETF approvals

The price surges overlap with the Securities and Exchange Commission green-lighting eight spot Ether exchange-traded funds, with firms such as BlackRock, Grayscale and Fidelity, among the filers. Memecoins, considered to be the highest risk and highest reward part of the crypto industry, often witness notable price swings during a pro-crypto news cycle. By contrast, Ether has climbed a modest 2% since Thursday’s approvals, trading at $3,847 on Tuesday morning.

The ETF approvals have “people bullish on the far fringes of the coin space,” Derek Horstmeyer, a professor of finance at George Mason University, told Fortune.

Indeed, Google Trends data shows that search interest for “Ethereum” over the past 12 months is near all-time highs, and memecoins are “heavily driven” by this kind of market attention, says Pat Doyle, a blockchain researcher at Amberdata.

“The theory is that as money flows into the ecosystem through ETFs, it often trickles down to these smaller projects,” Jonathan Bixby, chairman of Phoenix Digital Assets, told Fortune. Memecoins have surged recently because of their “small caps” compared with those of other cryptocurrencies, he says.

Memecoins occupy just a fraction of the market capitalization of major currencies: Floki boasts a market cap of just $2.9 billion, compared with Ethereum’s $460 billion, according to CoinGecko data. In other words, Bixby suggests that investors of fringe coins could be anticipating a rising-tide-lifts-all-boats effect once the ETFs begin trading.

However, Matt Ballensweig, managing director at BitGo, told Fortune that he doesn’t attribute the recent growth for some memecoins to the ETF approvals or a single event, but it is “a sign that momentum across other layer-1s (such as Solana) continues to remain strong.”

He added: “Solana has basically solidified itself as the chain with the most ‘speculative fun’ as traders continue to gamble on memecoins on decentralized exchanges.”

One reason why Ether has shown minimal price movements since Thursday is likely because, so far, the SEC has only approved the 19b-4 forms. These initial filings submitted by soon-to-be issuers allow the securities to be listed on exchanges. But for trading of the financial instruments to begin, the SEC must next approve the issuers’ S-1 filings. These forms outline to potential investors and the SEC the structure of the asset, how it will be managed, and, in this case, how it plans to mirror the performance of the underlying asset—Ether tokens. 

“We can’t recall anytime there would be S-1s not approved after a 19b-4 approval. I don’t think a precedent exists,” Eric Balchunas, Bloomberg’s senior ETF analyst, previously told Fortune. He estimated the forms would take about two weeks to be approved.