BONK falls 7% despite BURNmas taking $51M in tokens out of circulation

Dog-themed memecoin Bonk failed to wade its way out of a wider crypto slump, despite a token burning event which took 1.69 trillion BONK tokens, worth over $51 million out of circulation. 

In late November, the team behind the Solana-based memecoin Bonk (BONK) proposed to burn 1 trillion tokens under a scheme called “BURNmas” which would burn 1,000 BONK for every X post with the hashtag #LetsBONK and 10,000 BONK per new follower on Instagram and TikTok — initially slated for Dec. 25.

It eventually exceeded the target and BonkDAO members voted in favor of an updated burn proposal to burn 1.69 trillion BONK tokens on Dec. 26 at 5:40 pm UTC.

Hey BONKers, a quick BURNmas Update:

During the campaign, the BONK community exceeded The Dog’s (and the DAO’s) expectations and REALLY showed up❗️❗️❗️

The final number of $BONK gathered by these incentives is over 1,690,000,000,000🔥

All that remains now is a DAO multisig… pic.twitter.com/GtZ16u3FK7

— BONK!!! (@bonk_inu) December 25, 2024

This would account for 1.85% of the 90.97 trillion BONK tokens currently in circulation, down from 100 trillion, CoinGecko data shows.

BONK price goes backwards

Token burns are a common strategy to increase token prices with a more favorable supply and demand dynamic.

But the token has so far failed to recreate the same success it saw from an earlier 100 billion BONK token burn on Nov. 13, which saw its token price increasing 56% to reach a new all-time high market cap of $4.38 billion a week later. 

Since the Dec. 26 burn event, the token is down 7.2% with a market cap of $2.3 billion amid a broader market downfall.

Related: Memecoins take top spot for crypto investor interest in 2024: CoinGecko

While it isn’t clear what caused the selloff, several Bonk enthusiasts had earlier expressed frustration at the Bonk team for failing to execute the Christmas Day — as promised.

“Price is continuing to drop due to you guys not keeping your word and not having good communication,” X user “BestBets” said to Bonk core contributor “Nom” on Dec. 26, hours before the burn event took place. 

“You will lose so much progress and coin holders by lying to the community,” BestBet added.

“I’m losing trust,” X user PootieCoin added. 

Because of this teams failure to execute as promised …. ON XMAS. $Bonk will tank severely today while the other meme coins pump

— Pax (@HumanRights232) December 26, 2024

Despite the price fall, BONK remains the fourth-largest memecoin in what has grown into a $105 billion market, trailing only Dogecoin (DOGE), Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Pepe (PEPE), CoinGecko data shows.

Magazine: Memecoins: Betrayal of crypto’s ideals… or its true purpose?