From decrypt by André Beganski

Dogecoin isn’t the only dog in town when it comes to red-hot crypto coins.

While the meme coin fetched its highest price in more than three years this week, rising to about $0.43 as tech CEO Elon Musk defended the asset’s tokenomics, a cadre of canine-themed contemporaries have meanwhile jockeyed for pack position.

Resembling Dogecoin’s 100% leap over the past week to a current price of nearly $0.40, as of this writing, dog-themed meme coins on Solana and Ethereum have jumped as animal spirits run relatively rampant, following President-elect Donald Trump’s White House victory and Musk-led embrace.

As the 12th largest cryptocurrency by market cap, the Ethereum-based token Shiba Inu (SHIB) has climbed 32% to $0.000025 over the past week. However, it’s far from a pack leader, with meme coins on Solana like Dogwifhat (WIF) notching greater gains.

Launched last November, the once-obscure token hit an all-time high price of $4.83 in March amid an industry-wide bout of meme coin mania. The token, which trades on little more than vibes, has jumped 71% over the past week to $4.04 after crypto exchange Coinbase listed the token.

Not long before, the meme coin Bonk (BONK) got its own listing bump as Binance.US said traders could access the token on its platform for American users. Billed as the “social layer” of Solana, the token’s price has similarly increased 71% in price over the past week to $0.000038.

Another Ethereum-based dog coin has posted nearly as sizable gains, however, as Floki (FLOKI)—inspired by Musk's own pup of the same name—is up 64% on the week to a current price of $0.00023.

Appointing Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a so-called Department of Government Efficiency, also known as D.O.G.E., earlier this week, the president-elect has featured DOGE in press releases and t-shirts available for sale. The exposure has benefited an unaffiliated project that leans heavily into Musk’s pitch, alongside a dash of crypto lingo.

“Our mission is to decentralize the narrative around government spending,” a website for a meme coin called the Department of Government Efficiency claims. Among memes as well as merch that’s “coming soon,” the project also features pages tracking government debt and spending.

The project’s tokens, launched on Ethereum and Solana days after Musk said he was “willing to serve” in Trump’s name, have respectively climbed 334% and 326% over the past week. With current market caps well below Dogcoin’s $58 billion, however, they could perhaps be considered mere puppies in the meme coin world.