Despite positive developments like FLOKI’s 15 billion token burn, traders used the news as exit opportunities rather than buying signals amid the broader market retreat.
Meme coins suffered heavy losses in the past 24 hours as geopolitical tensions sparked a massive exodus from risk assets, with Pepe (PEPE), Floki Inu (FLOKI), and dogwifhat (WIF) among the hardest hit.
The meme coin market cap stood at $59.2 billion, down 3% in the last 24 hours, as the sector’s $65.9 billion in assets faced continued pressure from ongoing Middle East hostilities.
Other major altcoins joined the retreat, with Solana (SOL) down 3.7% to $150.85, and HyperLiquid (HYPE) falling 9.2%, reversing yesterday’s gains when “traders rotated out of Bitcoin”, per a previous Decrypt report.
The broader crypto market tumbled as a fifth day of direct military confrontation between Iran and Israel spooked global markets.
Israel launched Operation Rising Lion on June 13, striking over 100 nuclear and military sites across Iran — the largest assault since the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s.
Iran retaliated with 350 missiles targeting Israeli cities, prompting President Trump to abruptly leave the G7 summit a day early and call for urgent American evacuation from Iran, as per The Guardian report.
Market experts have highlighted the extreme sensitivity of meme coins to global uncertainty, with the tokens bearing the brunt of risk-off sentiment.
“Memecoins tend to show the highest volatility — they’re often the biggest gainers when markets are strong and the biggest losers when sentiment turns,” Min Jung, an analyst at Presto Research, told Decrypt. “With geopolitical tensions between Iran and Israel intensifying, risk appetite has pulled back, and memecoins are underperforming as a result.”
Ray Youssef, CEO of crypto super app NoOnes, explained how the sector’s speculative nature made it particularly vulnerable.
“The meme segment is traditionally the first to react to such shocks,” Youssef told Decrypt, noting that whale activity revealed the extent of the exodus, “PEPE’s whale netflow collapsed by 97%, indicating the beginning of asset distribution.”
Even positive developments couldn’t shield tokens from the broader selloff.
FLOKI “showed negative dynamics, despite the burning of 15 billion tokens, which theoretically should have supported the price,” Youssef told Decrypt, explaining that “traders used the news as an exit point” rather than a buying opportunity.
When asked about potential recovery, Jung pointed to external factors over internal market dynamics.
Geopolitical tensions will be key, he said, adding that the upcoming “FOMC decision… could significantly influence market sentiment.”
Despite the current weakness, the pullback remains within historical norms.
Bitcoin’s 1% decline to $105,866 in the last 24 hours represents part of a broader 9% correction from recent highs — a drawdown that Bitfinex analysts told Decrypt was “well within the bounds of normal volatility for this cycle.”
