Meme coin movements have elevated beyond a niche group of investors and toward the mainstream. In the cryptocurrency sector, the variety of animal-inspired meme tokens continues to grow. But Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE), Shiba Inu (CRYPTO: SHIB), and Pepe (CRYPTO: PEPE) are what most investors consider to be the most credible options for investing, or at least trading. And these tokens are ones that many investors a year ago may not have known about.

Today, these three tokens are up 2%, 4.3%, and 5.8%, respectively, over the past 24 hours as of 3:30 p.m. ET.

With 10- and 11-figure market capitalizations, these are significant assets that continue to garner tremendous attention from the investing community for a number of reasons. Most are well aware of the value highly volatile assets such as meme tokens can provide to traders. However, it's also true that longer-term investors find other reasons to buy these tokens when they appear cheap (or have momentum on their side).

Today's rally does appear to be based on a number of fundamental factors, as it's not demand for speculative assets driving the boat today (the Nasdaq is down more than 2% at the time of writing).

The fact that these three speculative assets are catching a bid today as risk takers appear to be pulling back on other tech-related investments isn't lost on many market watchers.

However, there do appear to be some intriguing catalysts investors are focusing on with these three tokens.

In the case of Dogecoin, a recently formed corporate arm of the Dogecoin Foundation called House of Doge appears to be driving interest in this mega-cap meme token today. A press release highlighting plans to launch "The Official Dogecoin Reserve" appears to have some investors rethinking their view of the token as a potential payment solution and/or store of value. While that may seem far-fetched, this is a widely held asset in the crypto community, with an investor base that typically follows news flow much more closely than the average investor. We'll have to see how this catalyst plays out over time, but it's certainly something to watch.

As I pointed out in a recent piece, Shiba Inu has seen some fundamental price support build thanks to the project's focus on increasing its token burn. Today brings more news on this front, with reports circulating that an anonymous user has transferred 1 billion tokens to a dead wallet, removing them from circulating supply. I'll be keeping a close eye on developments on this front, but the fewer tokens there are for this capped meme token, the better for existing investors looking for reasons to hold.

Pepe's recent rally has outpaced both Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, with some investors pointing to technical factors (and the token's relative size compared to these other two large-cap projects) as reasons why Pepe has seen an outsize move. Looking at derivatives markets, one of the interesting factors behind the scenes is the amount of long liquidations as a percentage of total (around $477,00 out of $498,000 in the past 24 hours). This suggests to me that investors are still mostly on one side of the boat, and likely ramping up bets on an even higher Pepe price moving forward.

These three meme tokens remain highly speculative investments, and the sheer derivatives volume for these projects compared to their market capitalizations suggests that the volatility may not only continue, but ramp up if some sort of shock befalls the market. I'm going to continue to monitor how these three tokens perform, but for now, I'm going to happily watch this price action from the sidelines.

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Chris MacDonald has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Why Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, and Pepe Are Among the Top Meme Coins Surging Today was originally published by The Motley Fool