Today's memecoin news spans a viral Solana rally, a broader sector recovery led by two established names, and a regulatory milestone that puts a memecoin on the same list as Bitcoin and Ethereum for the first time in a G7 country.
Source: X(formerly Twitter)
Solana memecoin CATE gained roughly 25% over the past 24 hours after a volatile trading session, following an earlier single-day surge of around 230-fold triggered when Kabosu's owner — the Shiba Inu that inspired Dogecoin — shared a viral kitten video on X. CATE briefly touched an $11 million market cap before retreating to around $4.5 million, illustrating how quickly Solana momentum can build and unwind.
CATE's move fits a broader pattern on Solana. In the week of July 20–26, memecoin pairs made up 29% of Solana's weekly spot DEX volume, the highest share since August 2025, up from just 10–15% a few weeks earlier. The revival traces largely to ANSEM (also known as The Black Bull), a token with no product, team, or roadmap that launched on Pump.fun in late June and rallied roughly 18,000% in three days after trader Ansem began redistributing creator fees to holders through weekly airdrops. That single token's momentum helped push Pump.fun's share of Solana's daily DEX volume to roughly $614 million of the network's $1.65 billion total — notable given crypto sentiment has remained in Fear territory through the same stretch.
Beyond Solana, established memecoins are showing signs of stabilizing investor interest. Dogecoin trades at approximately $0.0709, with a market cap near $12 billion, while Shiba Inu trades around $0.0000046, with a market cap near $2.7 billion. Crypto commentator David Gokhshtein has pointed to combined strength in DOGE and SHIB as a positive signal for the broader meme coin sector, suggesting investor interest is shifting away from newer, unstable tokens toward established communities with larger holder bases. SHIB has also seen continued token burns aimed at reducing supply over time, while technical analysts have flagged DOGE's key resistance levels as a potential trigger for a larger rally if broken.
The most structurally significant memecoin news this month came from Japan. Shiba Inu became the first meme coin from a G7 country's regulator to be added to the Japan Virtual and Crypto Assets Exchange Association's Green List — a whitelist that previously held around 30 assets, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Litecoin, and Polygon. To qualify, SHIB had to be listed on at least three JVCEA-registered exchanges (it was already trading on eight), and pass reviews covering transparency, technological soundness, and liquidity thresholds.
The approval landed alongside a bigger shift: Japan's National Diet gave final approval on July 15, 2026, to move crypto assets out of the Payment Services Act and into the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, reclassifying Bitcoin, Ethereum, SHIB, and roughly 105 other tokens as financial instruments, with expanded disclosure duties and insider-trading restrictions now applying to crypto for the first time. A related proposal would cut Japan's crypto gains tax from a progressive rate near 55% to a flat 20.315%, though the effective date depends on Cabinet timing and could land in either 2027 or 2028.
Today's memecoin news shows a sector moving on two speeds simultaneously — Solana's speculative, cyclical token launches driving short-term volume spikes, and established names like DOGE and SHIB gaining structural legitimacy, with Japan's Green List approval marking a real regulatory first for the memecoin category.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. All figures are based on publicly available market data and regulatory announcements as of July 29, 2026, and are subject to change. Prices are highly volatile and speculative. Always conduct independent research before making any investment decision.