Whale activity is surging across meme coins, but the moves point to trading, with no signs of panic or quiet accumulation.
Meme coins are back in motion as on-chain data shows a sharp rise in large whale transactions across Pepe PEPE $0.000003 24h volatility: 0.6% Market cap: $1.41 B Vol. 24h: $284.45 M , Shiba Inu SHIB $0.000006 24h volatility: 1.8% Market cap: $3.48 B Vol. 24h: $147.37 M , and FLOKI FLOKI $0.000030 24h volatility: 1.6% Market cap: $291.02 M Vol. 24h: $23.01 M .
The market intelligence firm Santiment noted in its latest X post that FLOKI, PEPE, and SHIB recorded significant spikes in whale transactions, each worth at least $100,000, over the past seven days.
📈 Among projects with at least $500M market caps, meme coins have the #1, #2, #3, and #10 highest increases in $100K+ whale transactions this week. Here is the full leaderboard:
🐳 @floki $FLOKI (On Ethereum): +950% more 🥇
🐳 @pepecoineth $PEPE: +620% 🥈
🐳 @floki $FLOKI (On… pic.twitter.com/yTMyRp3UdM— Santiment (@santimentfeed) January 8, 2026
FLOKI, on Ethereum, and PEPE are leading the list with 950% and 620% increases in their whale transactions. SHIB secured the 10th spot with a 111% rise in similar transactions.
Meme coins have also been seeing strong trading volumes on the Solana-based Pump.fun, Coinspeaker reported on Wednesday, Jan. 7.
While some investors and traders would take this as a strongly positive sign, the on-chain flows tell a different story.
Where’s the Money Going?
The digital asset market, including meme coins, started January with a bullish momentum. The global crypto market capitalization rose from $2.96 trillion on Jan. 1 to $3.2 trillion on Jan. 6.
Despite the latest market-wide decline, PEPE is still up 57% in the past seven days. FLOKI and SHIB are following with 36% and 26% gains in the same timeframe, respectively.
PEPE, SHIB, and FLOKI are down by 6.2%, 3.8%, and 5.9% in the past 24 hours. As the meme coins took a hit, leading crypto exchanges and trading firms started repositioning the tokens.
According to data from Arkham, PEPE’s top whale transactions were flowing into and out of Binance, OKX, Kraken, and the algorithmic crypto trading firm Wintermute.
SHIB’s top inflow transaction was sent to Cumberland DRW, the digital asset trading arm of DRW, Arkham data shows. The second-largest meme coin also saw large movements tied to Coinbase Prime and Coinhako.
While both PEPE’s and SHIB’s top transactions were valued at millions of dollars, FLOKI’s whale movements were relatively small. The biggest FLOKI transaction, sent from the Binance hot wallet, is worth $436,700.
Arkham data shows that FLOW saw heavy interaction with PancakeSwap and Binance, with MEV bots clearly showing up.
At this point, the most likely scenario is continued high volatility instead of expecting a market top. Since the liquidity is being added and pulled quickly to and from leading crypto exchanges, the meme coins are positioned in a high-risk and high-reward zone.
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