Popular dog-themed meme currencies, SHIB and Dogecoin, fell heavily over the week as the crypto winter continues

Dogecoin (DOGE) has lost 5.2 percent over the past 24 hours and is trading at $0.065, according to data from Coingecko.

The leading meme currency surged last week after the launch of Dogechain, an independent blockchain built using Polygon Edge, a custom blockchain creation tool from Polygon.

Dogechain brings EVM compatibility to the Dogecoin network, allowing developers to create Ethereum-like applications.

DOGE surpassed its 10-week high after the announcement. Soon after, however, Jens Wiechers, president of the Dogecoin Foundation in charge of legal and governance issues, said that Dogechain was not affiliated with Dogecoin.

Claims in paid media that Dogecoin launched a “Dogechain” test network are false. Neither @Dogecoin/@dogecoin_devs, nor @BillyM2k, @ummjackson or others associated with @DogecoinFdn are in any way affiliated with the token.

– ⬢ Jens Wiechers ⬡ 🇺🇦 (he/they) (@jwiechers) August 16, 2022

Following the announcement, DOGE collapsed, losing 12.4% over the past week. The weekly losses sent DOGE down 90.95% from its all-time high of $0.7376 recorded in May 2021, according to data from Coingecko.

More than $1.56 million in DOGE transactions have been liquidated in the past 24 hours, Coinglass data suggests. Of the total liquidations, 90.92 percent were long positions.

Elon Musk’s favorite crypto-currency has a market cap of $8.7 billion and is currently the 10th largest crypto-currency in terms of capitalization.

Shiba Inu follows the decline of Dogecoin

Shiba Inu (SHIB), the second-largest meme currency by market capitalization, is also down 7.8% in the past 24 hours and is trading at about $0.00001292, according to data from Coingecko.

SHIB’s trading volumes have also fallen 30% in the past 24 hours. On a weekly note, SHIB has lost over 17% of its value.

A very bearish past week has seen the meme currency fall 85.17% from its all-time high of $0.00008845 recorded in October 2021, according to data from Coingecko.

Despite the week’s bearish price action, more than 1.2 million addresses hold SHIB, a figure up 0.015% over the past 24 hours, according to Etherscan data.

SHIB rallied last week alongside DOGE, driven by excitement over the expected launch of a Layer 2 scaling product called Shibarium. That product has not yet been launched.

With a market capitalization of $7.04 billion, SHIB is the 12th largest crypto-currency.

The broader crypto market is in bearish territory amid fears of continued U.S. Fed rate hikes and high inflation rates.

The market capitalization of the crypto sector is on the verge of falling below $1 trillion, down 2.14% in the past 24 hours, according to data from Coingecko.