The crypto market kicked off the new year quietly, but meme coins wasted no time grabbing attention. Pepe $PEPE ( ▲ 28.73% ) jumped 34% in the last 24 hours, making it the fastest mover to start 2026 and putting meme tokens back on traders’ radar after a brutal 2025.
That surge came with real positioning pain. Nearly $9.9 million in short positions were liquidated over the past day, according to CoinGlass, as traders betting against the frog got steamrolled by the move higher.
Pepe isn’t alone
Pepe may be leading the pack, but it is not running solo. Dogecoin $DOGE ( ▲ 12.74% ) is up roughly 9%, Shiba Inu $SHIB ( ▲ 9.12% ) has climbed close to 9%, and PUMP is also posting high single digit gains over the same window.
Pepe’s 24 hour trading volume is pushing $1.6 billion, signaling this is more than a sleepy holiday bounce. As a group, meme coins lost more than half their value last year, so even modest inflows can create outsized moves early in the year.
Why this matters early in the year
There is no big catalyst here. No protocol upgrades. No major announcements. Just fresh calendars, clean P&Ls, and traders showing a renewed appetite for speculation.
Early year strength in meme coins often acts as a sentiment tell. When capital starts flowing back into the most speculative corners of crypto, it suggests risk tolerance is creeping higher again. Whether this turns into a sustained trend or fizzles fast will say a lot about how aggressive traders plan to be in 2026.