Bonk Rockets 30% to Lead Dog Meme Rebound; Floki Termed 'Utility Token' by CFTC

Solana-based BONK$0.0₅8174 led growth among dog-themed memes Saturday as bitcoin staged a recovery rally to above $98,000, a day after Friday’s bloodbath that pushed it near $93,000.

BONK surged 30%, CoinGecko data shows, with DOGE$0.1311, SHIB$0.0₅7387, dogwifhat (WIF) and FLOKI$0.0₄4101 surging as much as 20%. The dog-themed token category gained 8% on average in the past 24 hours, beating a market-wide jump of 4.5% as tracked by the broad-based CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index.

Memecoins are known for their high volatility and tend to outperform major tokens during price rallies, serving as a leveraged bet on the overall crypto market sentiment.

However, in this case, fundamentals are helping back gains and sentiment among some memecoins. FLOKI was named alongside ether ETH$2,974.54 and Avalanche’s AVAX as a utility token in a Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) meeting last month.

The derivatives regulator proposed in a Global Markets Advisory Committee (GMAC) a new class of assets termed utility tokens, which fulfill six criteria that include providing their holder “immediately available, non-incidental consumptive use” in a crypto platform without including “governance and voting abilities.”

"FLOKI was recently highlighted by the CFTC's Global Markets Advisory Committee as a case study of a utility token, which is a big deal and validates Floki's utility-first approach,” Floki lead developer B told CoinDesk in a Telegram message. “Floki's Valhalla metaverse game will go live in early Q1 2024, and the recently released Floki Trading Bot has generated over a million dollars in fees.

“This puts Floki on an entirely different level from other memecoins, especially when the market turns and people start to pay attention to fundamentals again,” B added.

Elsewhere, interest in BONK comes as a host of activities intend to deflate token supply gain traction among users — a move that has historically contributed to higher prices.

BonkDAO, a decentralized group of bonk believers that maintain the token, burned 100 billion tokens from the circulating supply in November and targeted a trillion token burn in December. This could increase the token's value due to scarcity.

The feat could meet its target in the weeks ahead, observers say.