A shark that drew attention after appearing at a waterfront park in Busan's North Port has made its way into the cryptocurrency market. A meme coin named after the shark, called Bukangi, has been issued and is trading with a market capitalization of about 1.7 billion won ($1.26 million).
According to the cryptocurrency industry on the 28th, a coin named Bukangi was issued on the 20th on Pump.fun, a meme coin launch platform, and is currently trading.
As of 2 p.m. that day, the Bukangi coin was priced at $0.00126142, or slightly more than one won. Its market capitalization stood at about $1.26 million, or roughly 1.7 billion won.
Meme coins are digital assets built around content, people or animals that go viral online. Because they often emphasize buzz and entertainment rather than any underlying utility, they tend to be highly speculative and volatile.
Cases like Bukangi, in which topics that gain attention in South Korea are turned into meme coins, continue to emerge. Coins with Korean names such as Bus House, Love Bug, Neukgu and Fu Bao are also in circulation.
On meme coin launch platforms, coins can be created without any particular technical expertise, so countless tokens appear and disappear every day. When a specific keyword catches on, coins using it are launched one after another, and multiple tokens with similar names sometimes emerge.
Industry watchers caution against investing in meme coins based solely on their buzz. Coins with few participants can see sharp price swings, and market capitalization may not adequately reflect the actual size of the market.
"Meme coins based on Korean issues have appeared many times in the past," said Ahn Kwang-ho, a researcher at Tiger Research. "If you buy at the wrong time, you can get stuck without a chance to sell."
