Weekly Meme Coin Data Report — 9.28–10.4, 2026

The pause week, measured properly: $23.91B → $23.66B (-1.1%) on Sunday closes, four green and four red, equal-weighted -0.6%, dispersion 15.3 points — the narrowest of the quarter — with PENGU's +31% unwind the week's whole story on the downside.

1. The eight closes

Basis notes, stated plainly as always: closes are UTC daily closes — DOGE from CoinOtag's daily table, SHIB and PEPE from CoinMarketCap's historical tables, SPX and WIF from AWebAnalysis, BONK and FLOKI from MEXC's daily histories, PENGU from CryptoSlate's October 4 snapshot (price band $0.00919–$0.00926 across trackers; TokenToria's 7-day read of -10.6% corroborates our -10.7%). BONK's cap is computed at close × ~88.8T circulating and FLOKI's at close × 9.66T, our standing convention where trackers disagree on supply.

2. What the narrowest dispersion of the quarter means

Weekly dispersion on this board has told the story all quarter: 32.6 points in the August 24–30 washout, 20.2 in the August 31 – September 6 rebound, 28.5 in the September 14–20 squeeze, 30.4 in last week's all-green melt-up. This week: 15.3 — the narrowest of the comparable series, with the next tightest the 20.2-point August 31 – September 6 week. The September 7–13 week is left out of the comparison on purpose: it is the one week in our record built on press-time closes rather than Sunday boundaries (its spread was 7.9 points on mixed as-of dates, the site's own figure that week), so it is not comparable to the Sunday-close rows above. The board did not crash and it did not rotate — it stalled. Four coins within a point or two of flat (PEPE +0.5%, SHIB -0.2%, DOGE -1.2%, FLOKI +1.4%) and one coin, PENGU, supplying almost the entire downside on its own. Strip PENGU out and the equal-weighted move of the other seven is +0.8%.

That single-name concentration is the week's most actionable fact. A board that falls 1.1% because its most crowded momentum trade unwinds is a different object from a board that falls 1.1% because money is leaving. The breadth (4 up / 4 down), the flat majors, and Bitcoin's +2.03% Sunday session ($86,482.90, CryptoOceans, 23:55 UTC) all point the same way: no exodus, just one token mean-reverting toward where August said it lives.

3. The five-week arc

Read the arc as a position, not a sequence: $23.66B is still 17.7% above the August 30 monthly close of $20.11B, 40.8% above the $16.8B mid-August base of our close series — and 1.1% below last week's quarter-high. Every one of those numbers can be recomputed from the Sources block. The pause did not break the month's structure; it tested whether the melt-up could hold its full gain on a tenth of the flow, and the answer was 'most of it'.

The flow ledger behind the arc

(Daily figures: Farside data, via YFarmX; the October 1 composition via SoSoValue, reported by The Crypto Times.) The ledger explains the arc's shape line by line. September's ledger closed at +$2,647.7M for the month, with nine consecutive inflow sessions from September 17 through September 29 worth $3,075.5M - the run that built the melt-up. Wednesday broke it, and the two recovery sessions re-absorbed $292.6M, nearly double the break-day outflow. Read as a throttle: the board's -1.1% week ran on roughly a tenth of the prior week's flow, held its level on the recovery days, and gave back only what the Wednesday print alone could explain. A flow ledger this shallow usually produces a wider board drawdown than -1.1%; the narrow dispersion is the tell that sellers were as idle as the buyers.

4. Where the volume went

Quiet, measurably. Bitcoin's session volume into the Sunday close ran $15.0B against a 10-day average of $30.5B — roughly half the recent pace (CryptoOceans, October 4, 23:55 UTC). DOGE's heaviest session of the week was Monday at $993M (CoinOtag daily table), fading to $518M by Sunday — a weekend board that traded like a holiday except for Sunday's late bid. On this board, volume drying while price holds a 1.1% range is consolidation evidence, not distribution evidence; the distribution signature is volume rising into falling closes, which did not print on any of the eight.

5. The PENGU unwind, quantified

Last week's best performer (+31.0%) was this week's worst (-10.7%), retracing nearly half of its melt-up gain (the coin sits +17.0% over two weeks, from $0.00786 to $0.0092). The levels that now matter, from Ali Charts' October 4 map: $0.0106 has been tested three times as resistance with the 200-day average at $0.00856 below and immediate support at $0.0090–$0.0092 — the week closed at $0.0092, sitting exactly on that shelf. For context, PENGU's October 4 close still leaves it +55.7% above its August 16 base ($0.00591) and +6.9% above its August 30 monthly close ($0.00861): the unwind is real, and so is the month.

6. Level watch

7. The cap-weight arithmetic behind a 1.1% week

The week's -1.1% is a cap-weighted figure, and the weight is why it looks modest next to PENGU's -10.7%. Summing the eight members' market caps from our Sunday closes, the board gave back about $253.7M: $23.91B on September 27 to $23.66B on October 4. Two names supplied almost all of it - Dogecoin, down roughly $187.3M, and PENGU, down roughly $54.4M - together about 95.3% of the week's entire move. The other six net to roughly -$12.0M combined, and three of them (BONK, WIF, FLOKI) actually rose.

Weight each coin by its board share and the same picture holds. DOGE is 69.7% of the board, so its -1.2% close pulled the index by $187.3M - 73.8% of the week's total drawdown - on its own. PENGU is 2.4% of the board; its -10.7% moved the index by only $54.4M (21.4%) because it is small. PEPE (-$22.0M, 8.7%), SPX (-$10.7M, 4.2%) and SHIB (-$7.0M, 2.8%) filled in the rest. The cap-weighted number is not smoothing over weakness; it scales a board whose anchor drifted and whose most crowded trade unwound, while the rest held.

The equal-weighted read makes the point sharper. Across all eight the average member fell 0.6%, but strip PENGU out and the other seven rose 0.8% on average; strip both heavy names and the remaining six averaged about +1.15%. A board whose base members were net positive, and whose index fell only because its two heaviest names each did something idiosyncratic, is structurally different from one that fell because money left. The cap decomposition is how you tell them apart before the next flow print decides the direction.

8. The two-month ledger — where the pause left the base

A single week says very little on its own, so it is worth printing where the board stands against the anchor every monthly report chains to: the August 30 close of $20.11B, the figure our published series treats as the September starting line. From that close to the October 4 close of $23.66B the board is up 17.7% cap-weighted and 18.7% equal-weighted, with seven of eight members green over the stretch.

The shape of that ledger is why this week's -1.1% reads as a pause rather than a turn. The board's two heaviest names did the September damage and gave only a little back in October's first week: DOGE is still 16.8% above the August close and PENGU, the week's worst member at -10.7%, is still 6.9% above it. Neither has surrendered its monthly gain, and the two feeds carrying the week's drawdown - Dogecoin at -$187.3M and PENGU at -$54.4M - are the same two that built most of it.

The dispersion over the two months is 58.1 points, BONK's +40.3% against SPX's -17.8% - wider than any single week of the quarter, which is what a longer window does: it accumulates each member's idiosyncratic path instead of netting it out. Read beside the weekly 15.3, the pair is the report's whole message in two numbers. Narrow dispersion over seven days means the board moved as one; wide dispersion over sixty means the members did not.

The one red row is the interesting one. SPX sits 17.8% below its August close while every other member is up, so the board's two-month breadth is 7 of 8 - the same score, and the same coin, as its September breadth. A board this broad two months into a recovery is not one that distributed its gains away; it is one that rotated, kept them, and is now waiting on the flow line the rest of this issue tracks. The ledger is the floor the pause is standing on.

9. What would change our read

• A negative ETF week with negative breadth. The flow pause produced a flat board this time; the same pause with six or more members red would be the fade's first hard evidence.
• PENGU losing $0.0090 on volume. The 200-day average at $0.00856 is the next bid; through it, the unwind stops being mean-reversion.
• DOGE closing under $0.0927. The shelf has defined the month's structure since September 23; losing it reopens the low-$0.08s.
• Dispersion re-widening above 25 points. Narrow dispersion with flat price is waiting; wide dispersion with falling price is leaving.

FAQ

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• Meme Coin Weekly News Review — 9.28–10.4, 2026
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