Popcat Crosses $1B, Mog Rallies as Solana, Ethereum Beta Bets Gain Favor

Meme coins popcat (POPCAT) and mog (MOG) surged over the weekend, driven by the cat-themed narrative and their usage as beta bets by some traders. Popcat briefly topped $1 billion in market capitalization to emerge as the winner in a highly traded Polymarket bet.

Ether (ETH) has gained over 5% in the past week as ETH exchange-traded funds (ETF) are expected to start trading on July 23. Solana's SOL rose 15% in the same period, buoyed by increased transactional volumes.

Since earlier this year, the cat-themed popcat and mog tokens have tended to rally as prices of Solana’s SOL and ether increase. These have jumped alongside dog-themed bonk (BONK) and dogecoin (DOGE), which also function as beta bets.

Meme tokens have been increasingly seen as a leveraged way to bet on the growth of their underlying blockchains, and crypto traders refer to them as beta bets.

POPCAT, based on Solana, spiked higher after a single $630,000 purchase of the tokens late Sunday pushed its capitalization over the $1 billion mark.

Meanwhile, the Ethereum-based MOG rose 8% to a $960 million capitalization to set a new lifetime peak, extending a two-week run to over 70% as its cult following on social application X grew.

A Polymarket bet on market capitalization for cat-themed tokens, which some expect to overtake their dog-themed counterparts in the next bull cycle, has racked up $4.6 million in trading volumes since going live in March.

The market was resolved on Monday as the crossed the $1 billion level before paring gains. It had odds of as low as 2% in early April, and was the third-highest bet behind keycat and hobbes, two other cat-themed tokens.

However, some Polymarket users argued possible market manipulation may have swayed the bet in favor of Popcat’s odds on the marketplace.

“Okay so this is interesting because that's clearly market manipulation, but technically it did cross $1 billion on 1 website. Someone here with a vested interest in Popcat has manipulated the market and pushed it over,” wrote Polymarket user @The_Guru55. “Literally a 1 second pump with 1 order on 1 website is pretty questionable,” they added.

Polymarket’s resolution remains in place and has not been disputed as of European morning hours Monday.