michi

michi

Image: token logo via CoinGecko / DexScreener listings
ticker	MICHI
blockchain	Solana
launched	April 2024
peak market cap	about 322 million dollars (mid 2024)

michi is a Solana cat meme coin from spring 2024 that became one of the first breakout successes launched through pump.fun.

michi (MICHI) is a cat themed meme coin on the Solana blockchain, launched on pump.fun in the spring of 2024. Based on a widely shared drawing of a serene sitting cat, michi was among the first tokens to prove that pump.fun's bonding curve model could produce a nine figure coin, making it a foundational asset of the launchpad era.

Origin

The michi image, a simple illustration of a contented cat, circulated as a reaction meme across X and Instagram before being tokenized. Per Bybit's explainer, the drawing traces back further than the 2024 meme cycle: it originated from a small clay cat sculpture made by Japanese artist Kakuho Fujii, posted to Instagram in 2018, which spread through Spanish language meme culture in 2019 under the nickname Mini Michi before being tokenized anonymously on pump.fun in April 2024, when the platform was months old and its largest graduation stories were still in the tens of millions. The name comes from the affectionate Spanish language internet term for cats.

Market history

michi climbed through the spring 2024 cat rotation alongside POPCAT and cat in a dogs world, reaching an all time high price around 0.59 dollars and a market capitalization of about 322 million dollars in mid 2024, per price trackers. This made it, at the time, the most successful coin to have originated on pump.fun, a title later taken by Goatseus Maximus and the AI cohort. The token faded through 2025 with the broader meme market. In 2026 the team, posting as @michionsolana, ran a migration from the original contract to a new one, opening the token swap window via migrate.fun from February 24, 2026 at 1:00 pm ET to March 10, 2026 at 1:00 pm ET, followed by a 90 day claim period, carrying a 5 percent penalty for late claims, that ran to about June 7 or 8, 2026. The resulting squeeze was mechanical rather than driven by fresh demand: the new contract's circulating supply came in around 264 million tokens against the old token's roughly 999 million total supply, because a large share of old holders missed the deadline, chose not to swap, or were unreachable, permanently stranding tokens in the old contract. The reduced float produced a reported 325 percent squeeze in the new token, with the original listing marked as michi [OLD] on aggregators. As of August 2026, price aggregators disagree on which listing represents "the real" MICHI because several contract versions trade simultaneously, the old [OLD] contract, the migrated Solana contract, and unrelated clone tokens on other chains; CoinMarketCap's migrated michi (SOL) listing showed a market capitalization in roughly the 300,000 to 900,000 dollar range in August 2026, far below the 322 million dollar 2024 peak.

Drama

In July 2026, clipper and influencer rasmr admitted to a firsthand instance of chart manipulation involving michi. Relaying his account, he said he used to make "meme coin comparison videos" and noticed his own videos moved charts, describing a specific instance pitting "Michi versus Nubcat": he bought about eight thousand dollars of MICHI into side wallets before posting the video, watched the coin rise about 15 percent afterward, and sold for about a 3,000 dollar gain.

Cultural impact

Within the trenches, michi represents the pump.fun proof of concept: an anonymous, utility free cat drawing that outran venture backed tokens using nothing but curve mechanics and community. It anchored the "michi lineage" of minimalist cat art coins and is regularly cited in histories of pump.fun as the platform's first blue chip. Its 2026 contract migration is also one of the few examples of a legacy meme coin community reorganizing supply years after launch. The community's affection outlasted the price: in July 2026 one fan wrote "I miss saying gmichi every morning," a nod to the daily greeting ritual that had defined the token's presence on X at its height.

References

• CoinGecko: https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/michicoin
• michi.meme: https://michi.meme/
• Medium: https://medium.com/coinmonks/the-most-memeable-cat-on-the-internet-just-migrated-and-the-supply-squeeze-already-caused-a-325-3089fa9ae8e1
• Bybit Learn: https://www.bybit.com/en/learn/memes/top-cat-meme-coins
• Bybit Learn: https://www.bybit.com/en/learn/memes/what-is-michi-crypto
• X post by @Yennii56: https://x.com/Yennii56/status/2080695493274095787
• X post by @kai_xbt: https://x.com/kai_xbt/status/2073015359620431982
• X post by @michionsolana: https://x.com/michionsolana/status/2020943752706261380
• CCN: https://www.ccn.com/analysis/crypto/crash-ath-to-surge-solana-memecoin-michi-migration-price-impact/
• CoinMarketCap: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/michi/