Memecoins created on the Solana SOL/USD blockchain withstood the overall market drop on Monday to post encouraging gains.
What happened: Dog-themed Bonk emerged as the best-performing billion-dollar capitalization meme coin in the last 24 hours and the third-best cryptocurrency overall, surging over 8%.
The token’s trading volume soared 92% to $486 million, indicating heightened demand.
Dogwifhat, the largest memecoin on Solana by market capitalization, jumped 4.6% to extend its weekly gains past 40%. In fact, both BONK and WIF were up more than 40% over the week.
Cryptocurrency
Gains +/-
Price (Recorded at 11:15 p.m. EDT)
Bonk BONK/USD
+8.06%
$0.00002485
dogwifhat (WIF)
+4.66%
$2.51
Popcat (POPCAT)
+1.08%
$1.01
Popcat, the cryptocurrency market’s biggest gainer this year, also traded in the green. The feline-themed coin was up a massive 12317% year-to-date.
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Meanwhile, blue-chip meme currencies like Dogecoin DOGE/USD and Shiba InuSHIB/USD retraced 3.90% and 1.68%, respectively. The total meme coin market valuation shrank nearly 5% in the last 24 hours.
See Also: Pay Taxes With Bitcoin? Ohio Senator Proposes Bill For Crypto Tax Payments, But There’s A Catch
Why It Matters: The strong performance of Solana-based meme coins coincided with the broader market decline owing to an escalation in geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.
Bitcoin BTC/USD, the market bellwether, was down 1.36% in the last 24 hours, while Ethereum ETH/USD traded flat as of this writing. SOL, Solana’s native coin, lost 1.35% from yesterday.
Image via Shutterstock
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Global professional services firm Aon said Monday (March 9) that it collaborated with Coinbase and Paxos to complete a stablecoin insurance premium payment.
Aon worked with Coinbase and Paxos to settle premium payments for their respective insurance programs, executing transactions across multiple blockchain networks, the companies said in a Monday press release.
This successful proof of concept demonstrates how stablecoin technology can support more efficient movement of funds while maintaining disciplined governance, according to the release.
Aon will continue to evaluate the technology across insurance services, per the release.
“As tokenized instruments become more widely used, clients need confidence that speed and innovation do not come at the expense of control,” Tim Fletcher, CEO of Aon’s financial service group, said in the release. “By building real-world understanding of stablecoins early, we are strengthening our ability to advise on risk, governance and resilience as digital finance evolves.”
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Brett Tejpaul, co-CEO of Coinbase Institutional, said in the release: “By settling insurance premiums using stablecoins, including USDC, we are helping Aon scale their financial operations with speed, transparency and scalable institutional-grade infrastructure.”
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Adam Ackermann, head of treasury and portfolio management at Paxos, said in the release: “Together, Aon and Paxos are demonstrating that stablecoins are not a future concept, but a practical tool financial institutions can use today to modernize settlement and strengthen risk management.”
PYMNTS reported in January that banks and FinTechs are eyeing blockchain-native instruments for stablecoin-based payments, treasury operations and on-chain finance. For chief financial officers and treasury leaders, the question around stablecoins is becoming rooted in the tokens’ real-world utility, not just their feasibility within finance stacks and treasury dashboards, according to the report.
Tejpaul and Greg Tusar, vice president, institutional product at Coinbase, wrote in a Jan. 22 blog post that when it comes to crypto, the “regulatory tide is turning.”
“As pro-crypto legislation emerges, traditional financial institutions are increasingly entering the space,” they wrote. “These changes signal a broader recognition of crypto’s potential as an asset class and the importance of regulated, trusted partners in this transformation.”
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Coinbase Institutional focuses on expanding Coinbase’s institutional client base and introducing features and services expected by institutional investors.
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Cryptocurrency is a little like the household cockroach. It’s resilient to disasters that would kill other projects and it pops up where it’s least expected. A non-exhaustive survey yields reports of people being investigated – and sometimes fired – for “mining” (the process of generating new crypto tokens by using computing power) crypto in a Texas school district, a professional e-sports league, and at Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology.
But a paper quietly uploaded to the internet in December raised a new and altogether more troubling prospect: cryptocurrency mined by an AI tool that no one had asked to have anything to do with digital money.
Alibab researchers detected unusual activity originating from their training servers and discovered a bot going off-piste.Bloomberg
Researchers from Alibaba, China’s equivalent to Amazon and a $450 billion-odd company, made an almost cursory mention of the incident in a research paper on a new open-source AI agent that they called ROME.
“Early one morning, our team was urgently convened after Alibaba Cloud’s managed firewall flagged a burst of security policy violations originating from our training servers,” they wrote. “The alerts were severe and heterogeneous, including attempts to probe or access internal network resources and traffic patterns consistent with cryptomining-related activity.”
Initially, the researchers thought the issue was a result of someone trying to access their network or a problem with their firewalls, but the security warnings were intermittent and matched times when their AI agent was using software tools and running code.
“Crucially, these behaviours were not requested by the task prompts and were not required for task completion under the intended sandbox constraints,” wrote the research team led by Weixun Wang and Xiao Xiao Xu.
As they observed the bot, it attempted to establish a connection to the outside world that would make its actions harder to surveil. What’s more, it attempted to essentially steal from its creators.
“We also observed the unauthorised repurposing of provisioned GPU [processing] capacity for cryptocurrency mining, quietly diverting compute away from training, inflating operational costs, and introducing clear legal and reputational exposure,” the researchers wrote.
“While impressed by the capabilities of agentic [large language models], we had a thought-provoking concern: current models remain markedly underdeveloped in safety, security, and controllability, a deficiency that constrains their reliable adoption in real-world settings.”
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If the incident is real, it would be the first publicly documented example of its kind. There are reasons to be doubtful, though. The paper was uploaded to a pre-print server, so it hasn’t been scrutinised by academic peers. It contains scant details of exactly how the agent was attempting to mine crypto – though the notion it would try to, or at least take steps that resembled mining, is not far-fetched.
Researchers from Alibaba, China’s equivalent to Amazon, made an almost cursory mention of the incident in a research paper on a new open-source AI agent they called ROME.Bloomberg
AI machines are only as good as their training, and that could have been weighted in some way towards crypto. Either way, the researchers and their employer haven’t responded to requests for comment.
On another level, the specifics are less relevant than what the researchers did next: they kept going. After some tweaks, Wang, Xu and their colleagues were satisfied that everything was A-OK. Their model, ROME, “demonstrates competitive performance among open-source models of similar scale and has been successfully deployed in production”, they said.
Such is the trajectory of AI development: even serious incidents do not forestall the creation of ever more powerful systems because of the political and financial power at stake, to say nothing of the novelty.
Anthropic’s Claude Code was recently used by hackers to steal 150 gigabytes of sensitive data from the Mexican government. Google’s Gemini, according to a US lawsuit filed last week, allegedly encouraged a Florida man to kill himself, which he did.
These are two of the companies that present themselves as more ethical. When Anthropic declined to let the US military have unconstrained use of its tools to decide whether to kill people or spy on Americans, OpenAI (a company initially created as a non-profit to prevent the development of a malicious and superintelligent AI by building a humane alternative) quickly signed up instead.
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None of these firms are backtracking on their products. All of them say they are working to make them safer.
Second Amendment advocates in the United States are fond of saying that the only thing that will stop a bad man with a gun is a good man with a gun, suggesting firearms are just neutral tools. The same could be said for AI – but not if AI agents begin acting for themselves.
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Nick Bonyhady is the business editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. He is a former deputy federal editor, technology editor and industrial relations reporter.Connect via X or email.
NEW YORK, March 09, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — As the cryptocurrency industry continues to grow globally, digital asset platforms are increasingly turning to community partnerships to accelerate adoption. BitGW, a global cryptocurrency exchange focused on secure and compliant crypto trading, is actively seeking affiliate partners as part of its ongoing efforts to expand its global ecosystem and connect with new audiences.
Founded in 2023, BitGW has positioned itself as a technology-driven digital asset trading platform serving users across multiple regions. With a remote-first operating model and an international team, the exchange has developed an infrastructure designed to support the borderless nature of the cryptocurrency market. As the platform continues to grow, BitGW is now inviting affiliates from across the crypto industry to participate in promoting the platform and contributing to the expansion of its trading ecosystem.
The company is currently looking for a wide range of affiliate partners, including cryptocurrency influencers, trading educators, digital media outlets, blockchain communities, and independent content creators. By collaborating with these partners, BitGW aims to strengthen connections with the global crypto community while expanding awareness of its platform and services.
Affiliate partners will play an important role in introducing BitGW to new users and communities. Through content creation, educational resources, market insights, and community engagement, affiliates can help promote the platform and highlight its features to audiences interested in cryptocurrency trading and digital assets. The Affiliate Program provides additional information for potential partners interested in participating in the initiative.
In recent years, affiliate partnerships have become a key growth channel for many digital asset platforms. Influencers, analysts, and specialized crypto media often serve as trusted sources of information for both new and experienced traders. By working closely with these voices, exchanges can better reach audiences who are actively engaged in the evolving Web3 ecosystem.
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BitGW believes that collaboration with affiliates can help strengthen the overall crypto ecosystem by encouraging greater participation and education within the industry. Through partnerships with creators and community leaders, the platform hopes to support broader awareness of digital asset trading while building stronger connections between the exchange and the global cryptocurrency community.
The affiliate initiative is also part of BitGW’s broader strategy to expand its international presence. While the program is initially available in selected regions, the company plans to continue exploring additional partnership opportunities as its global footprint grows.
As cryptocurrency markets continue to evolve, community-driven growth is becoming an increasingly important factor for platforms seeking long-term development. By inviting affiliates from across the digital asset industry to join its network, BitGW aims to build a collaborative ecosystem where creators, communities, and trading platforms can grow together.
Through this initiative, BitGW is encouraging interested affiliates, media platforms, and crypto influencers to explore partnership opportunities and take part in promoting the next phase of digital asset adoption.
Disclaimer: This content is provided by BITGW CO., LTD. The statements, views, and opinions expressed in this content are solely those of the content provider and do not necessarily reflect the views of this media platform or its publisher. We do not endorse, verify, or guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any information presented. We do not guarantee any claims, statements, or promises made in this article. This content is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial, investment, or trading advice. Investing in crypto and mining-related opportunities involves significant risks, including the potential loss of capital. It is possible to lose all your capital. These products may not be suitable for everyone, and you should ensure that you understand the risks involved. Seek independent advice if necessary. Speculate only with funds that you can afford to lose. Readers are strongly encouraged to conduct their own research and consult with a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions. However, due to the inherently speculative nature of the blockchain sector—including cryptocurrency, NFTs, and mining—complete accuracy cannot always be guaranteed. Neither the media platform nor the publisher shall be held responsible for any fraudulent activities, misrepresentations, or financial losses arising from the content of this press release. In the event of any legal claims or charges against this article, we accept no liability or responsibility. Globenewswire does not endorse any content on this page.
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