Moo Deng

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Moo Deng
Image: token logo via CoinGecko / DexScreener listings
ticker	MOODENG
blockchain	Solana
launched	September 2024
peak market cap	about 614 million dollars (December 2024)

Moo Deng is a Solana meme coin based on a viral baby pygmy hippopotamus at a Thai zoo, launched on pump.fun in September 2024.

Contents

1 Origin
2 Market history
3 Cultural impact
4 References

Moo Deng (MOODENG) is a meme coin on the Solana blockchain named after a baby pygmy hippopotamus at Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Thailand. Launched on pump.fun on September 10, 2024, it became the archetypal "animal meta" coin of late 2024, turning a real zoo animal into a nine figure asset.

Origin

The real Moo Deng (a Thai name roughly meaning "bouncy pork") was born in July 2024 and became a global internet celebrity through videos posted by her zookeeper, Atthapon Nundee. As the meme saturated TikTok and X, an anonymous deployer launched MOODENG on pump.fun. It was one of several hippo coins created that week, but this deployment won the attention war and graduation to Raydium. The zoo itself had no involvement with the token.

Market history

MOODENG passed a 70 million dollar market capitalization within about two weeks and reached roughly 100 million dollars by September 26, 2024, aided by a public mention of the hippo by Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin, who later sold donated MOODENG for charity. After cooling off, the coin rallied to an all time high around 0.50 dollars in December 2024 amid Binance listing rumors, with its peak market capitalization reported at just over 614 million dollars. A second life came in 2025: a Binance Alpha listing on May 11, 2025, ignited a surge of several hundred percent to a market capitalization near 257 million dollars, and an Upbit listing in July 2025 added another spike. By 2026 the token had retraced most of these moves and trades far below its highs.

Cultural impact

Moo Deng crystallized the late 2024 "animal meta," in which real viral animals (Peanut the Squirrel, Chill Guy's dog adjacent cousins, and a parade of hippos, ducks, and capybaras) were tokenized within hours of trending. It demonstrated pump.fun's core loop at scale: internet event, instant token, attention flywheel, exchange listing. The coin's repeated revivals through 2025 also made it a case study in how exchange listings, rather than the underlying meme, drive the second and third acts of a meme coin's life in the trenches.

References

Category: Coins