David Canellis

Dogecoin has fallen out of the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap for the first time in more than a year, even as buzz surrounds newer memecoins.



The original memecoin was flipped by tron (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/trx">TRX</a>) this week, the layer-1 blockchain spearheaded by <a href="https://www.theverge.com/c/22947663/justin-sun-tron-cryptocurrency-poloniex">polarizing</a> crypto personality Justin Sun.&nbsp;



TRX has stayed on a consistent uptrend since markets bottomed around the FTX debacle in November 2022. Its price has nearly tripled since, boosting its market cap from $5 billion to $12.2 billion.&nbsp;



Dogecoin is now hovering around $12 billion but its token price has only gained 10% across the same period. Bitcoin’s price has tripled and despite a brief spike in dogecoin’s bitcoin ratio directly around FTX’s bankruptcy, DOGE’s cost basis in BTC has collapsed by more than 60%.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/musk-dogecoin-lawsuit-memes">Musk lawyers say ‘nothing wrong’ with memes in $258B Dogecoin lawsuit</a>



TRX has also seen its bitcoin ratio slide by about one-fifth, but its uptrend in terms of US dollars perhaps reflects a market seeking alternatives to Solana on account of its association with Sam Bankman-Fried.&nbsp;



Polygon (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/elon">MATIC</a>) saw a similar price rally in the months directly after FTX went bust but <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/02/21/polygons-matic-has-fallen-out-of-favour-with-crypto-investors-heres-why/">later</a> gave up most of those gains.



Sun has also worked to boost his network’s perception as a hotbed for DeFi activity. Tron-native stablecoin USDD and lending platform JustLend have helped double Tron’s total value locked (TVL) since Bankman-Fried’s arrest, now at close to $9 billion, second only to Ethereum’s $46 billion.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-flourish wp-block-embed-flourish"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe loading="lazy" class="wp-embedded-content" sandbox="allow-scripts" security="restricted" title="Interactive or visual content" src="https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/16908043/embed#?secret=Czomn0ZM1C" data-secret="Czomn0ZM1C" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" height="575" width="700"></iframe>
</div><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Click play to watch dogecoin duke it out with the other big dogs</figcaption></figure>



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/dog-coins-dogecoin-floki-shiba-bonk">Dog coins are back: BONK leads Dogecoin, Floki and Shiba with 1400% rally</a>



TRX aside, there&#8217;s an argument to be made that dogecoin no longer fits into the “memecoin” category, which is otherwise dominated by tokens like bonk (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/bonk">BONK</a>), pepe (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/pepe">PEPE</a>), dogwifhat (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/wif">WIF</a>) and dogelon mars (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/elon">ELON</a>).



The value of those tokens is mostly backed by the attention span of their individual communities, although in BONK’s case, its team has made a point to partner with popular DeFi apps, boosting its utility beyond the social layer.



Dogecoin, launched in 2013, is meanwhile a fork of a now-defunct project LuckyCoin, itself a fork of Litecoin, which forked Bitcoin’s codebase to go live in 2011 — making Dogecoin a fork of a fork of a fork of Bitcoin.



What bitcoin (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/btc">BTC</a>) the currency is to the Bitcoin network is what dogecoin is to Dogecoin: Miners use electricity to mine DOGE in much the same way as BTC, although with slightly different rigs.&nbsp;



Dogecoin users must pay miners DOGE for the right to use the network, which by all accounts is practically censorship-resistant to the same degree as Bitcoin or Ethereum.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/dogecoin-flips-ethereum-transaction-count">Dogecoin proves it’s a serious blockchain, flips Ethereum transaction count</a>



Even Dogecoin copy-cat (copy-dog?) Shiba Inu — by far the second-largest memecoin behind Dogecoin — eventually launched its own blockchain.&nbsp;



<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/shib">SHIB</a> was initially issued on Binance Smart Chain as a BSC-20 memecoin in August 2020, adopting its predecessor’s canine mascot as its name. The Shiba Inu team deployed an Ethereum layer-2 network, Shibarium, three years later built by forking Polygon’s codebase.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-flourish wp-block-embed-flourish"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe loading="lazy" class="wp-embedded-content" sandbox="allow-scripts" security="restricted" title="Interactive or visual content" src="https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/16906176/embed#?secret=0C5qxtCMy5" data-secret="0C5qxtCMy5" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" height="575" width="700"></iframe>
</div><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Memecoins are losing market share — unless you remove dogecoin and shiba inu, in which case they’re slowly winning</figcaption></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Like sands through the hourglass, so are the memes on our coins</h2>



Tracking the exact size of the memecoin market is tough, considering how many are made every year (CoinMarketCap now <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/view/memes/">lists</a> almost 1,700, including dogecoin and shiba inu, up from 345 one year <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20230220011602/https://coinmarketcap.com/view/memes/">ago</a>).



Taking <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/meme-coins">memecoins</a> currently with caps over $40 million (as well as a few old school examples no longer that large) and comparing them to the size of the overall crypto market, we can see they maxed out at about 3.8% dominance during the last bull market in May 2021.



Since that peak, dogecoin and shiba inu have together gone from making up almost all of the memecoin market (going by market caps alone) to 82% today.



This has dragged down memecoins’ market dominance by two-thirds, now at just over 1%. TRX currently makes up about two-thirds of a percent of the crypto market.



So, it makes some degree of sense to separate dogecoin and shiba inu from the category. Doing so shows their growth has actually decoupled from all the other memecoins.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-flourish wp-block-embed-flourish"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe loading="lazy" class="wp-embedded-content" sandbox="allow-scripts" security="restricted" title="Interactive or visual content" src="https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/16905718/embed#?secret=9e2yIYf6J3" data-secret="9e2yIYf6J3" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" height="575" width="700"></iframe>
</div><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The light green slab towards the right is newcomer BONK</figcaption></figure>



DOGE and SHIB’s dominance slipped throughout the middle of last year while the rest of the segment plodded along with bitcoin and ether.&nbsp;



The collective dominance of the memecoins on the chart above doubled, from 0.1% to 0.2%, between September and today, now altogether valued at about $4 billion (although their actual value would likely be far less if they were sold).



Crypto’s total market cap gained 85% in that period, swelling from just over $1 trillion to nearly $2 trillion.&nbsp;



Different memecoins spurred growth at different times: Elon Musk-themed memecoins baby doge coin (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/babydoge">BABYDOGE</a>) and <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/elon">ELON</a> went gangbusters when the maverick billionaire was tweeting about Dogecoin <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/musk-dogecoin-lawsuit-memes">every other day</a> back in 2021.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/elon-musk-disney-twitter-x-crypto">Hey, Elon, forget about Disney. Save X by launching your own crypto.</a>



Musk coins have since given way to newer fan favorites in PEPE, BONK and corgiAI (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/corgiai">CORGIAI</a>).&nbsp;



Whether those stick around any longer, nobody knows, but at least for now, the market seems content treating them differently than the older dogs.



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DOGE

Stop calling dogecoin a memecoin — those are actually popular

TRON

Mercado Bitcoin starts 2024 with listing of TRON network’s native token: TRX

Katherine Ross

Justin Sun, founder of <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/tron" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Tron</a>, has reportedly received a summons to respond to the SEC lawsuit filed on March 22 in the Southern District of New York. 



According to <a href="https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/us-district-court-issues-summons-to-crypto-mogul-justin-sun-in-singapore">The Straits Times</a>, Sun has 21 days to respond to the summons, which was mailed to a residential and office location in Singapore. According to the original SEC filing, Sun is believed to be living in Singapore or Hong Kong.&nbsp;



The SEC <a href="https://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2023/comp-pr2023-59.pdf">charged</a> Sun with “fraudulently manipulating the secondary market for TRX through extensive wash trading.” Meaning that trades were allegedly made without a change in “beneficial ownership.”&nbsp;



Per the SEC’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-sues-justin-sun">claim</a>, the distribution and sale of <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/btt" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">BTT</a> and <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/trx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">TRX</a> allegedly required Sun to register the sales with the agency because they were allegedly sold as securities.  



The agency also claimed that Sun orchestrated “a scheme to pay celebrities to tout TRX and BTT without disclosing their compensation.”&nbsp;



It also named eight celebrities in its probe, but said that it had settled with those parties — including Lindsay Lohan and Aliaune Thiam, also known as Akon.



Sun initially responded to the claims in March, saying that it’s “just the latest example of actions it has taken against well-known players in the blockchain and crypto space. We believe the complaint lacks merit, and in the meantime will continue building the most decentralized financial system.”



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">The SEC’s civil complaint earlier today is just the latest example of actions it has taken against well known players in the blockchain and crypto space. We believe the complaint lacks merit, and in the meantime will continue building the most decentralized financial system.&mdash; H.E. Justin Sun 孙宇晨 (@justinsuntron) <a href="https://twitter.com/justinsuntron/status/1638742625003130881?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 23, 2023</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



But also noted that he is “eager” to collaborate with regulators and governments “dedicated to establishing transparent guidelines for regulating” the cryptocurrency industry.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">We are eager to collaborate with governments and regulatory bodies globally that are dedicated to establishing transparent guidelines for regulating and working with the cryptocurrency industry given the important role it can play.&mdash; H.E. Justin Sun 孙宇晨 (@justinsuntron) <a href="https://twitter.com/justinsuntron/status/1638742879165370368?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 23, 2023</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Justin Sun did not immediately respond to a request for comment.



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Justin Sun

Justin Sun Reportedly Issued Summons in SEC Lawsuit

Shalini Nagarajan

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance’s US arm will soon delist <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/trx">TRX</a>, the native token of Justin Sun’s crypto platform Tron.



Spell, which has a comparatively smaller cap of $81 million, will also be delisted on April 18.



Binance <a href="https://support.binance.us/hc/en-us/articles/13772424892567">said</a> its decision was part of a periodic review, and that a number of factors influence its consideration, such as changes in a token’s risk profile, trading volume and liquidity, regulatory standing in the US and evidence of fraudulent conduct.



The exchange didn’t specify which exact reasons led to the delisting of both tokens. Deposits for both Spell and TRX will close on April 17 at 10 pm ET, however, withdrawals will remain open.



“We operate in a rapidly evolving industry and our digital asset monitoring process is designed to be responsive to market and regulatory developments,” Binance said in a statement.&nbsp;



“When a digital asset no longer meets our high standards, or industry circumstances change, we conduct a more in-depth review of the affected asset and assess whether further action is necessary (i.e. delisting).”



TRX fell more than 5% to trade around $0.06 following the news, but recovered about half that by 7:15 am ET on Wednesday, data from Blockworks Research showed. Spell was down around 4%.



Tron founder Sun didn’t appear to be fazed by the move, telling <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/binanceus-delist-digital-asset-tokens-tron-spell-2023-04-12/">Reuters</a> that the impact from Binance.US’s delisting would be “relatively small.”



He added that TRX trading volume on Binance.US is less than $1 million a day, while the token’s total trading volume is $400 million.



The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Sun and three of his companies — Tron Foundation, BitTorrent and Rainberry — for the “unregistered offer and sale of crypto asset securities” Tronix and BitTorrent.&nbsp;



The agency also accused Sun for manipulation of the secondary market for TRX through wash trading, a process involving simultaneous buying and selling of a security in order to unnaturally increase trading volume and provide misleading information.



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Binance.US

Binance’s US Exchange Says Bye-Bye to TRON’s TRX Token

Casey Wagner

Ben Strack

The SEC is going after the Tron network’s founder for allegedly selling unregistered securities in the latest action taken by US regulators against crypto industry players.



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/justin-sun" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Justin Sun</a> orchestrated the “unregistered offer and sale, manipulative trading, and unlawful touting of crypto asset securities,” according to an SEC <a href="https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-59" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">press release</a> and legal documents filed Wednesday in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.



The SEC’s probe extended beyond Sun, however, considering the regulator said it reached a settlement with eight celebrities, ranging from&nbsp;Lindsay Lohan to “Soulja Boy,” for allegedly promoting the tokens in question.&nbsp;



Sun founded the Tron network in 2017. The network launched its mainnet the following year and became a <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/daos" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">DAO</a> in 2021.



The SEC alleges that starting in about August 2017, Sun distributed billions of <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/trx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">TRX</a> and <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/btt" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">BTT</a> tokens to the public while creating secondary markets on which these assets could be traded.&nbsp;



Because Sun sold these as securities, the commission alleges, he was obligated to register these sales with the SEC, but never did.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The agency is also accusing Sun of “fraudulently manipulating the secondary market for TRX through extensive wash trading,” according to the press release. He allegedly accomplished this through the Tron network, as well as the BitTorrent Foundation, which owned accounts used in the trading, and Rainberry — whose employees transferred funds to facilitate the trading, the lawsuit claims.



The <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/tron" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Tron</a> network did not immediately comment on the charges. Sun did not immediately return multiple requests for comment, but <a href="https://twitter.com/justinsuntron/status/1638742625003130881" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeted</a> Thursday that the &#8220;complaint lacks merit.&#8221; 



“While we’re neutral about the technologies at issue, we’re anything but neutral when it comes to investor protection,” Gurbir Grewal, director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, said in a statement. “As alleged in the complaint, Sun and others used an age-old playbook to mislead and harm investors by first offering securities without complying with registration and disclosure requirements and then manipulating the market for those very securities.”



An SEC spokesperson did not immediately return a request for further comment.&nbsp;



Including Soulja Boy (DeAndre Cortez Way) and Lindsay Lohan, a total of eight celebrities have found themselves in the crosshairs of regulators. The SEC additionally charged the following for allegedly illegally promoting TRX and/or BTT without disclosing a paid partnership: Jake Paul, Austin Mahone, Michele Mason (Kendra Lust), Miles Parks McCollum (Lil Yachty), Shaffer Smith (Ne-Yo), and Aliaune Thiam (Akon).



Each of the above individuals, with the exceptions of Cortez Way and Mahone, has settled with the SEC for $400,000, the agency said.&nbsp;



It’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ripple-counsel-crypto-usa">not the first time the SEC has targeted a crypto company</a> for issuing a token it deems a security. Ripple has been battling with the agency in court for more than two years over its XRP token, which the vast majority of exchanges delisted when the lawsuit began in 2020.&nbsp;



Sun’s charges may be settled before going to trial.&nbsp;



Updated March 22, 2023 at 7:26 PM ET with additional context and quotes throughout, and March 23, 2023 at 9:25 am ET with Justin Sun&#8217;s comment.



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SEC Sues Tron Network Founder for Allegedly Selling Securities

Around $775,000 of stablecoin USDT was allegedly stolen in a phishing scheme on the Tron network, according to an investigation by risk assessment firm Global Ledger.



Global Ledger claims the funds were laundered via the TRX staking mechanism. Staking on Tron involves delegating TRX tokens to one of 27 Super Representatives, the network’s version of a validator node.



Global Ledger said the fraudsters used the SunSwap exchange to get <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/usdt" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">USDT</a> for Tron in a certain wallet. They then used <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/trx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">TRX</a> for staking to verify their transactions and cover transaction fees, Global Ledger said.&nbsp;



The staking volume enabled the thieves to elect a specific Tron validator called “metaverse home,” a representative from Global Ledger told Blockworks. “Together with the wallet that collects the profit, approximately 100 phishing wallets participate in voting to help ‘metaverse home’ be chosen as a validator.”



With “metaverse home” selected, the validator receives the opportunity to create transaction blocks and receive a reward of 16 TRX for each block, the representative added.



“Proceeds were not cashed out through exchanges, in which case they can be traced and seized by law enforcement,” a representative from Global Ledger told Blockworks. “They were used to vote for the validator, [to] earn the cleanest money possible, [freshly] mined coins.”



The use of USDT is incidental and “metaverse home” is not linked to <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/tether" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Tether</a>, Global Ledger said, but its status and ability to earn money validating the blocks is certainly based on funds received from phishing USDT.



The nature of the scam shows how automated voting for a super representative can in ways permit this type of scheme, Global Ledger said.&nbsp;



“This is the first time we see such a laundering scheme,” a representative from Global Ledger said, noting that the scheme’s scale and sophistication indicates a business-like venture.



“These guys may have Slack, Jira and daily stand-ups like any other startup,” they said.



Updated Feb. 27, 2023 at 2:56 pm ET: An earlier version of this story misstated the total amount of stolen USDT.



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Scams

Tracking a Novel Scheme to Launder Tether on Tron Blockchain

<div id="highlights-block_6290f00d3381f" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Bitcoin has dropped 4.6% over the past week, from around $30,300 to $28,900</li>
 <li>Stablecoin dominance has surged as crypto traders seek shelter from volatility</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Cryptocurrency markets have shed 7% of their collective market capitalizations over the past week, while equities are enjoying a relief rally.



Of the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization (sans stablecoins and wrapped bitcoin), Ethereum rival Avalanche has been the hardest hit. Avalanche’s native token, AVAX, is down 22% since last Friday — plunging from $29.55 to $23.01 at press time.



XRP lost 7%; Polkadot is down 3.3%; and Binance Coin dropped 2.5%, according to TradingView data compiled by Blockworks. Dogecoin is now trading even thanks to a 7% surge on Friday.



Market leader bitcoin has fallen 4.6% over the past seven days, from around $30,300 to $28,900 at 11:50 am ET.



Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL) and Ether (ETH) all sank more than 12% – the latter weighed heavily by a seven-block “<a href="https://twitter.com/koeppelmann/status/1529458000011972610" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reorganization</a>” of its experimental beacon chain earlier this week.



Ethereum’s beacon chain is meant to facilitate the network’s switch to a <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/proof-of-work-vs-proof-of-stake-whats-the-difference/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">proof-of-stake</a> protocol, dubbed “The Merge.” Some industry insiders are now concerned that more work must be done to ensure the new network is secure come The Merge, which is tipped to happen sometime in August.



While crypto has felt big losses, benchmark equity indices such as the NASDAQ 100 and the S&amp;P 500 are rising after seven straight weeks of red. The tech-heavy NASDAQ is up 6% this week, while the S&amp;P has recovered 5.5%. 



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">TRON bucks trend to become only top cryptocurrency in the green</h3>



As it turns out, TRON is the only top 10 crypto project to make gains over the past week. The blockchain’s native token TRX is up 11%, jumping from $0.073 to $0.081.



TRON founder Justin Sun at the beginning of May launched a Terra-style algorithmic stablecoin, and stablecoin giant Tether just deployed a token tied to the Mexican peso. Both projects utilize the long-serving blockchain.



In fact, TRX is the best performing top project in May by far. Every cryptocurrency in the top 10 by market capitalization (again, not counting stablecoins or wrapped bitcoin), has collapsed more than 19% in the month-to-date — TRX is up 30%.



The same goes for TRX in the year-to-date. BTC is down almost 38% in 2022; ETH is down 52%; but TRX has risen 7.5%. The entire crypto market has tanked 46% in that time, representing $1 trillion lost from its collective capitalization. Crypto is now worth about $1.18 trillion overall.



But while TRX is an outlier, altcoins across the board are still draining fast. This has caused BTC dominance (which measures how much of the crypto market is bitcoin) to almost hit 46.5% at 11:50 am ET – its highest point since October 2021, according to TradingView’s <a href="https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/CRYPTOCAP-BTC.D/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CryptoCap dominance index</a>.



Bitcoin dominance is up 16% year-to-date, while ether dominance is down almost 10%, now sitting at 18%.



But those moves pale in comparison to stablecoins Tether (USDT) and Circle’s USD Coin (USDC). USDT’s dominance has surged 78% this year, while USDC’s has exploded 128%, as traders seek shelter from more volatile cryptocurrencies.



Together, those two dollar-pegged tokens are now roughly 11% of the total crypto market, up from 5.5% at the start of the year.



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