MANEKI
 | |
| ticker | MANEKI |
|---|---|
| blockchain | Solana |
| launched | April 2024 |
| peak market cap | about 260 million dollars (April 2024) |
MANEKI is a Solana meme coin modeled on the Japanese maneki neko lucky cat figurine, which reached a nine figure valuation within a day of its April 2024 launch.
MANEKI is a cat themed meme coin on Solana inspired by the maneki neko, the Japanese beckoning cat figurine displayed in shops to invite luck and wealth. Launched on April 22, 2024, it turned one of the world's oldest good fortune symbols into one of the fastest nine figure meme coin debuts of the 2024 cycle.
Origin
MANEKI arrived during the cat coin rotation of spring 2024, when popcat, michi, and cat in a dogs world had made felines the dominant Solana meta. The project wrapped the lucky cat iconography in polished branding and launched with unusually strong distribution and exchange access for a day one meme coin. The premise required no explanation in any language, which helped the coin travel across both western and Asian trading communities; coverage from KuCoin and others grouped it immediately with the top tier of cat memes.
Market history
The debut was the story. Within 24 hours of launch the token's market capitalization topped roughly 260 million dollars according to InsideBitcoins coverage, an opening few coins of the era matched without a celebrity attached. It could not hold the level: like most 2024 launches it spent the following months in decline, interrupted by rallies during broader cat coin surges, including a double digit move alongside popcat covered by Crypto Briefing later that year. Tracker data thereafter shows the familiar decay curve, with the price down more than 99 percent from its all time high by the mid 2020s and the coin surviving as a small cap listing on major aggregators.
Cultural impact
MANEKI is cited in the trenches as the cleanest example of the instant nine figure debut, a launch engineered to open at scale rather than climb from nothing, and its first day remains a reference point in arguments about whether coins that start big can ever compound the way organic risers like popcat did. It also marks the moment the 2024 cat meta went global: by borrowing a symbol with centuries of real world meaning, MANEKI showed that trench culture would strip mine any iconography, ancient or modern, for a tradable mascot. The beckoning cat holding a gold coin became a recurring visual in later cat coin branding, and the token's fast fade after a huge open is used as a standard case study in launch structure debates.