Meme Coin News This Week: What Moved and What to Avoid (7 August 2026)
SHIB is up 10% on the week, DOGE is in oversold territory, and PEPE is pulling back after a brief rally. Here is what UK investors need to know about this week’
The meme coin market had a split week. Some tokens posted genuine gains, some continued sliding, and a handful of smaller projects put up numbers that look spectacular until you check the trading volumes. Here is what actually moved, why it moved, and which parts of the sector UK investors should look at with scepticism rather than excitement.
This article is not a price prediction or an invitation to buy anything. If you are new to the meme coin sector and want to understand how these tokens work before following any news cycle, the guide on what meme coins are and how they actually work covers the fundamentals without the noise. What follows is this week’s real price action, macro context, and the scam activity running alongside it.
The Meme Coin Market This Week: Sector Snapshot
The total meme coin market has been in a consolidation phase through mid-2026, following a 30% surge earlier in the year. That rally took the sector to its highest point since the 2021 cycle. This week, momentum slowed. Most major tokens are trading below their recent July peaks, and without a significant catalyst, the sector is drifting sideways with occasional short bursts of volatility.
The top 10 meme coins by market capitalisation right now are Dogecoin (DOGE), Shiba Inu (SHIB), MemeCore (M), Pepe (PEPE), Official Trump (TRUMP), pippin (PIPPIN), Bonk (BONK), Pudgy Penguins (PENGU), SPX6900 (SPX), and Floki (FLOKI). The composition of that list has changed since 2024 — newer entrants like MemeCore, PIPPIN, and PENGU have displaced some older tokens — which tells you something about how quickly this sector rotates.
Bitcoin’s relative stability this week has removed one of the common ignition sources for meme coin rallies. When BTC breaks sharply upward, speculative capital tends to flow into higher-risk assets and meme coins are often the first to move. That dynamic is not in play right now. Without it, the market defaults to incremental moves driven by social sentiment.
Dogecoin (DOGE): Technical Pressure, No Fresh Catalyst
Dogecoin is the original meme coin. It has more than a decade of history, the largest community in the sector, and a brand name that even people outside crypto recognise. None of that protected it this week. DOGE is trading between $0.069 and $0.075, down approximately 0.54% over the seven-day period. The token is sitting below its 50-day exponential moving average of $0.0760, which most traders treat as a dividing line between bullish and bearish trend direction.
The RSI on the daily chart reads around 35, placing DOGE in oversold territory by standard technical definitions. Some traders interpret this as a potential reversal signal — the logic being that selling pressure exhausts itself and buyers step in. The counter-argument is that oversold conditions can persist for weeks in a trending downmarket, particularly for speculative assets with no underlying fundamentals to provide a floor.
Key support sits at $0.068 to $0.069. If DOGE loses that zone convincingly, the next meaningful level is the yearly low of $0.0695. The weekly forecast range runs from $0.0675 to $0.0778. This week’s weakness is sector-driven rather than project-specific — there is no negative Dogecoin news, just a general absence of positive catalysts.
Shiba Inu (SHIB): The Week’s Strongest Major
Shiba Inu is up approximately 10 to 11.47% over the past seven days, making it the best-performing token among the major meme coins this week by a clear margin. The move is meaningful enough to note, but not large enough to suggest a trend reversal. SHIB remains capped below a descending trendline that has been in place since its 2024 highs. Each rally has faded before breaking through that resistance level.
Earlier this week, SHIB outpaced PEPE significantly on the day both coins were rallying. SHIB rose approximately 35% intraday during that session while PEPE gained around 14%. Intraday moves of that size are not unusual for SHIB — the token has a large retail holder base and reacts sharply to any perceived momentum shift. Social media volume on SHIB increased notably during the rally, which often precedes and accompanies these short-term spikes.
SHIB’s expected price range for August 2026 runs from roughly $0.00000015 to $0.00000025. The precise numbers matter less than the pattern: SHIB tends to spike, retrace, and consolidate over periods of two to three weeks. UK investors watching this token should be aware that a 10% weekly gain does not signal that the downtrend from the 2024 highs has ended.
Pepe (PEPE): Double-Digit Rally, Then Profit-Taking
Pepe is the third-largest meme coin by market cap and has maintained a relatively stable community since launching in 2023. This week, it briefly joined SHIB in a sharp intraday rally — posting approximately 14% gains in 24 hours — before giving most of that back as traders took profits. The current expected range for August is $0.00000199 to $0.00000285.
The pattern here is familiar. PEPE runs when sentiment turns positive, attracts momentum buyers, then gets sold back down by longer-term holders locking in gains. Resistance levels above the current price have held repeatedly over recent weeks. Until the token can close above those levels on meaningful volume, the rallies are likely to continue fading rather than developing into a sustained trend.
PEPE has proven more durable than many observers expected at its launch. Tokens with strong meme identity and active community development tend to survive longer than those built purely on hype. That does not make it a safe investment — it simply means it is less likely to go to zero overnight than a newly launched anonymous token.
TRUMP, BONK, and the Rest of the Top 10
Official Trump (TRUMP) is down 1.36% in the last 24 hours. The token remains highly sensitive to US political news cycles and has shown that it can move 20% or more in either direction on a single news event. Daddy Tate (DADDY) posted a 17.65% volume spike over the same period, though its price remains far below the 2024 peak and daily liquidity is thin compared to the major tokens.
BONK, PENGU, FLOKI, and SPX6900 have all shown modest, undirected movement this week. None of them has a fresh catalyst in play. The top 10 is broadly in consolidation mode, and without new exchange listings, integrations into mainstream platforms, or celebrity involvement, the sector has no obvious near-term narrative to drive the next leg higher.
Smaller Movers: The Numbers That Need Context
Outside the top 10, a handful of smaller tokens put up numbers that look extraordinary. Cash Cat gained 1,896% over the past 30 days. The Black Bull is up 43.1% over the same period. Meme Horse has climbed 23.8% in a month. Each of those figures needs serious context before drawing any conclusions.
Monthly percentage gains for micro-cap tokens almost always reflect very thin liquidity. When a token has a market cap of a few hundred thousand pounds, a modest influx of buy orders can push the price up hundreds of percent. A single large holder exiting can erase those gains in hours. Cash Cat’s 1,896% gain almost certainly involves a tiny float and a handful of active buyers — not organic adoption or real-world utility. UK investors looking at these numbers should check the 24-hour trading volume and the number of holders before treating any of these as meaningful opportunities.
I have looked into several of these micro-cap movers this week, and the pattern is consistent. The tokens posting four-figure percentage gains share the same profile: anonymous teams, no published roadmap, concentrations of supply in a small number of wallets, and volume spikes that last between two days and two weeks before collapsing. That is not a blanket accusation of fraud, but it is a pattern worth recognising.
Scam Warning: What Is Active in Meme Coins This Week
In March 2026, the FBI issued a public consumer alert about a fake TRC-20 token airdrop on the Tron network. Attackers distributed unsolicited “FBI Token” coins to thousands of wallets, then directed victims to a fraudulent claim site that drained their wallets on connection. The FBI characterised this as a large-scale criminal operation. Meme coins, with their social-media-driven communities and low barriers to token creation, are the most common vehicle for this type of fraud.
Security researchers report that impersonation scams in the crypto sector grew by 1,400% year on year in 2026. Two tactics dominate in the meme coin space specifically. Token impersonation: criminals create tokens with names almost identical to established projects — Pepe2.0, DOGEGOLD, SHIBAv2 — list them on a small decentralised exchange, inflate the price artificially with wash trading, then exit. Retail buyers who follow the momentum are left holding worthless tokens. The second tactic is fake meme coin airdrop campaigns: generating buzz around a fictional token launch and directing victims to a site that either harvests wallet credentials or triggers a malicious approval that drains holdings over time.
The FCA does not directly regulate most meme coins, but it has standing guidance classifying speculative crypto tokens as high-risk investments where losses are common and regulatory compensation does not apply. If you buy a meme coin that turns out to be fraudulent or that simply collapses, there is no FSCS protection, no regulatory redress, and no chargebacks. That is a feature of the market, not a bug — and it is worth understanding clearly before putting any real money in.
HMRC and UK Tax on Meme Coin Trading
HMRC treats meme coins the same as any other cryptoasset. Buy DOGE or SHIB at a gain and sell it, and Capital Gains Tax applies. The CGT annual exempt amount for the 2026/27 tax year is £3,000. Gains from all sources — crypto, shares, investment property — count toward that figure together. Below £3,000 in total gains for the year, no CGT is owed. Above it, basic-rate taxpayers pay 18% and higher-rate taxpayers pay 24%.
Active meme coin traders face a specific complication: every token-to-token swap is a taxable disposal in HMRC’s view. Swapping DOGE for SHIB is not a tax-deferred portfolio rebalance — it is a disposal of DOGE at current market value and an acquisition of SHIB at the same value. If DOGE has gained since you bought it, that gain is taxable. UK investors who rotate between meme coins frequently can accumulate dozens of taxable events in a single week without realising it.
Record-keeping is non-negotiable. HMRC expects crypto holders to document every trade: the date, the amount, the sterling value at the time, and the gain or loss. Failure to report is not a grey area — it is tax evasion once gains exceed the exemption. Tools like Koinly and CoinTracker support meme coins and most major decentralised exchanges, and they can generate a UK-compatible tax report if you connect your wallets consistently.
What This Means for UK Readers
SHIB is this week’s standout among major meme coins, up 10 to 11% over seven days. DOGE is in technical oversold territory but has no catalyst to trigger a bounce. PEPE posted an intraday rally and then gave it back. The rest of the top 10 is flat. None of this constitutes an actionable signal in any direction. Meme coins move on unpredictable sentiment, not fundamentals, and this week’s winner is often next week’s biggest loser.
The micro-cap movers — Cash Cat, Black Bull, Meme Horse — are not opportunities for most UK investors. The percentage gains are real, but so is the risk of a complete wipeout in days. If you are considering any position in the meme coin sector, understand that HMRC counts every swap as a taxable event and that the £3,000 CGT exemption does not give you unlimited room to trade without declaring profits. Keep clean records from the first trade and use a tax tool that understands UK crypto reporting rules. The cost of getting that wrong is higher than the cost of a subscription to Koinly.
This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Cryptocurrency investments involve significant risk. Always do your own research.
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