Investor turns $800 into $7.5 million as hippo-inspired cryptocurrency skyrockets

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A fringe cryptocurrency inspired by a viral hippo has shot up in price by nearly a million per cent after the token went viral.

Moodeng, which is named after a two-month-old pygmy hippopotamus called Moo Deng, rose in value so sharply that one crypto trader was able to turn an $800 investment into $7.5 million.

The so-called memecoin was created shortly after the baby hippo gained online fame when the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Thailand posted pictures of the “bouncy pig” to Facebook.

The gains, first spotted by crypto publication Decrypt, come as investors proclaim the beginning of “meme season”, with several other so-called memecoins hitting all-time-highs in recent days.

Popcat, a crypto project inspired by a viral cat named Oatmeal, hit a record high on Monday of $1.45 – up from below 1 cent at the start of the year – as some traders called for a “memecoin supercycle”.

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After peaking in price towards the end of September, Moo Deng saw its price retreat before rallying once again on Monday.

The latest rally comes after Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin sold 10 billion Moodeng worth more than $800,000 and donated a portion to an anti-airborne-disease charity.

The crypto founder regularly receives memecoins when new projects are launched, typically donating them to charities. His specific mention of Moondeng following his latest donation saw it surge nearly 400 per cent in less than 24 hours.

“I appreciate all the memecoins that donate portions of their supply directly to charity,” Mr Buterin wrote in a post to X on Monday.

“Anything that gets sent to me gets donated to charity too (thanks moodeng! The 10B from today is going to anti-airborne-disease tech), though I truly prefer if you guys send to charity directly, maybe even make a DAO and get your community directly engaged in the decisions and process.

“I’ve said before that I think the best thing for memecoins is if they can be maximally positive-sum for the world, so it’s great to see moments when that actually happens!”

The overall crypto market is relatively steady, maintaining a market cap of between $2 trillion and $2.25 trillion over the last month. It still remains a way off the record high it reached of close to $3 trillion in 2021.

Dogecoin, which remains the world’s most valuable memecoin after more than a decade, has also remained stable, having traded around the $0.10 mark since early August.