PEPE rose 23 percent as the market cap hit a two-week high.

Memecoins such as Pepe (PEPE), Bonk (BONK) and Dogecoin (DOGE) were among the best performing cryptocurrencies on Friday, posting huge gains as the market prepares for 2026.

Main Receptors:

Memecoin's market cap rose 8% to $39.45 billion, a two-week high, showing strong demand.

PEPE leads with 23.6%, BONK + 10%, DOGE + 8%. Fueled by influencer hype and bold 2026 predictions.

Memecoin's open interest over the past 24 hours reflects growing bullish bets.

Memecoin market value increases to 3 billion dollars

The recent surge in the price of memecoin saw its total market capitalization reach a two-week high of $39.45 billion on Friday, when Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin changed his profile picture to meme NFT.

🚨 Latest: Vitalik Buterin reportedly sent his collection's floor price around 50 percent when he changed his profile picture to Milady NFT. pic.twitter.com/o2jLYlSDPW

— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) January 2, 2026

The last time memecoin's market cap was over $39 billion was on December 20th. The total market value of cryptocurrencies in this sector has increased by 8% in the last 24 hours.

PEPE, an Ethereum-based memecoin, led the gains, rising 23.6% in the last 24 hours. On Solana, BONK, Pepe's rival, recorded a daily gain of 10%, DOGE, the largest memecoin in the market, jumped 8% in the same period.

While not a full rally, this performance hints at the buzz surrounding MemeMax_Fi, including the perp DEX for memecoins, which will allow users to trade at 100x capacity.

“What I love about @MemeMax_Fi is how it supports focus as capital,” trader @ken_w3b3 said in a recent X post.

“Memes aren't just culture here, they're fluidity, energy, and community energy rolled into one system.

Memecoins OI and trading volume will increase significantly

With memecoins increasing open interest (OI) on Friday, PEPE has gained 77% in OI to $441 million in the last 24 hours.

Open interest refers to the total amount of pending derivative contracts that have not yet been completed. In a futures contract, for each seller, the buyer is required to settle the contract.

Related: Can Solana Release the Memecoin Image in 2026?

Pengu jumped more than 27 percent on the day to $90.73 million, while Doge's OIA rose 4.5 percent to $1.71 billion.

The chart above also shows a significant increase in the daily trading volume of memecoins in the initial market, with PEPE leading the jump by 402%. Overall, MemCoins' daily trading volume has risen 35% to $4.75 billion in the past 24 hours.

The increase in OI and the trading volume of memecoins usually indicates high momentum in the market as traders open more contracts in anticipation of a price increase.

Technical chart for memecoins

The current bullishness in the price of memecoin TOTAL3 in a strong technical structure, or the total market cap of all cryptocurrencies excluding Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), experienced a significant increase in the last two days.

The chart below shows that TOTAL3 is up 22 percent since Wednesday, reaching an intraday high of $848 billion on Friday. This breakout occurred in an ascending parallel channel on the four-hour chart as shown below.

Traders bought the dips as the Relative Strength Index (RSI) dropped to the 25 sell-off level in mid-December. The RSI reading is currently 65, indicating that traders' interest in altcoins is increasing rapidly.

If TOTAL3 is able to overcome the strong resistance at $848 billion surrounded by the upper trend of the triangle and the 200 SMA, it will advance to the measured triangle target at $900 billion. If this happens, altcoins, including mainstream memecoins, may continue to rally over the next few weeks.

As reported by Cointelegraph, crypto sentiment has finally moved out of the “high fear” territory, which the market is poised to recover from.