Bybit Mega-Hack Wiped Out Billions from the Meme Coin Market. Pepe (PEPE), Dogecoin (DOGE), and Shiba Inu (SHIB) Were Hit the Hardest.

The Bybit mega-hack sent a wave of panic through the crypto markets, and the most speculative assets - the meme coins - bore the cost heaviest.

The Bybit mega-hack sent a wave of panic through the crypto markets, and the most speculative assets—the meme coins—bore the cost heaviest. An army of traders fled to de-risk after the news of the hack and rushed to exchange all volatile tokens with stablecoins or cash, adding to the already evident big sell-off. Bitcoin lost about 20% from its recent high (from about $109K down to $87K), while Ether fell around 8% (around mid-$2,800s to low $2,600s).

Smaller altcoins fared worse, and an index of popular meme coins cratered 37% in the immediate aftermath. This "Meme Coin Index" crash of 36.9% reflected a sudden change of mood toward risk aversion as investors dumped high-yield, hype-driven coins. Bybit itself saw billions torn out, as over 21,000 BTC and $2.25B in USDT was withdrawn from it in a matter of days as users withdrew their funds from the exchange. Liquidity thinned between exchanges, and the market emotions swayed to be fearful, and the once king's coins started to decline along.

Meme coins, notorious for their erratic price movements right from the start, quickly lost ground following recent marks. For example, on February 21, after some news regulatory attention, Dogecoin (DOGE), the first meme coin, had peaked to approximately $0.26, before dropping almost 10 percent to around $0.235 on the very same evening after circulation. It continued its process of decay in the following day, trading for a little while near $0.20 rendering a little over a month of gradual gain null and void. Shiba Inu (SHIB), the second most important meme token, also fell considerably.

It was noted by one analysis that as holders dumped volatile cryptos for stablecoins, these two immediately slumped to multi-week lows. Far from it were new meme coins not spared. On the day the hack occurred, PEPE, which runs on the Ethereum platform and was around 10% down, got a bit of dead cat bounce, having recovered by 6% the next day. Likewise, well-loved community tokens like FLOKI and BONK saw double-digit percentages losses nor were they immune from the post-hack sell-off.

All fizzled out with the hype and trading volumes, which eventually dropped on meme coin mania. Speculation on meme coins had begun to show signs of cooling off in early 2025, and the Bybit incident did serve to speed up that process. Indeed, the numbers currently being churned out paint quite a dramatic picture: by early March 2025, the entire meme coin market capitalization had plummeted to about $54 billion, down 56.8% from a three-month prior high of $125B. In other words, from December to March, a whopping $70 billion paper value associated with meme tokens was ripped from the fabric.

Trading also dried up, with a 26% month-on-month backing loss in meme coin volumes in the month following peak. It was at one point in January that exaggerated meme trades accounted for more than 10% of the entire crypto trading volume, but by April, that number had dwindled to less than 4%. That means that many traders have now rotated out of meme coins, at least for the time.

The performance of the major meme coins, both before and after the hack, highlights the decline—Dogecoin (DOGE): Approximately -22% over the month that surrounded the hack. (It continues to languish at about $0.26 in late February, down to about $0.21-0.24—scarping a good chunk of market cap.

Shiba Inu (SHIB): Roughly -10% in that same period, with trade prices hovering around $0.00001 since the higher levels could not be sustained.

Pepe (PEPE): Double-digit percentage declines; down around ~10 % still from pre-hack levels despite a short-lived bounce.

Floki (FLOKI) & Bonk (BONK): Each saw steep sell-offs exceeding 10-15% in the weeks after the hack, reflecting a broader downturn across smaller meme tokens.

Such downfalls in the household-name meme coins dragged all sectors further down. Dogecoin itself represents roughly half of meme-coin market value; its fall naturally biased the scale to have an outsized effect. The confidence crisis was later observed within social metrics too. With this downturn came a significant decline in social media buzz about meme coins in crypto.

Search interest on Google Trends indicated that “meme coin” attracted a perfect score of 100 in mid-January and plunged to