Unofficial LUCE Token Surges 134% After News of Pope Francis’ Death

• Despite no direct ties to late Pope Francis, the LUCE token has skyrocketed over 100%.
• The memecoin ecosystem is generally seeing a rally with DOGE and SHIB leading the pack.

LUCE, an unofficial memecoin inspired by Pope Francis, is trending as it surges by 134% over the past 24 hours. This spike follows news of the Pope’s death on Easter Monday. Although LUCE is not linked to the Vatican or the Pope, the memecoin has gained popularity among traders.

LUCE Price Skyrockets

Data from the memecoin tracking platform GMGN.Ai reveals a 134% price increase for LUCE. The Solana-based memecoin has also appeared on the market as an outstanding performer. 

At press time, LUCE was trading at $0.014, with a market cap of $14.28 million. The meme token rose as high as $0.025 during today’s morning trading session, before dropping to its current levels. The daily trading volume increased by over 577% to $53.8 million, demonstrating investors’ rising interest in the meme.

LUCE, launched in October 2024 and named after the official mascot of the Holy Year of 2025, is becoming a market sensation. Only two days after launching, LUCE saw its market cap surpass $80 million, making it one of the largest coins created on Pump.Fun.

Following its recent surge, the LUCE platform has attached a 100% rug pull probability warning to the token as a precautionary measure. 

The price of LUCE plummeted over 40% within the past seven days. Thus, the recent rebound came after the Vatican confirmed Pope Francis dead on April 21 at around 7:35 AM local time. Per Reuters report, Pope Francis died of double pneumonia after weeks of battling an infection.

The deceased Pope Francis made his first public appearance since being discharged from a 38-day hospital stay. For the first time since Christmas, he offered a special blessing on Easter Sunday.

Some projects began launching new memecoins, following the announcement of the Pope’s death. Per data from GMGN.Ai, a memecoin called Francis, launched just an hour ago, has spiked over 115%.

Other new memecoins in the lineup include POPE, RIP POPE, and simply RIP with a picture of the deceased Pope.

Memecoin Gaining a Fresh Breath

Notably, the latest rally is unrelated to the memecoins linked to the deceased Pope Francis. Top memcoins like Dogecoin (DOGE), Shiba Inu (SHIB), and PEPE demonstrated amazing performances on the daily chart. 

Smaller memecoins, including the Solana-based Bonk (BONK), Floki, and dogwifhat (WIF), also rallied substantially. These memecoins increased by 4.2%, 4.09%, and 5.4% over the previous day, respectively.

Marketcap’s data suggests that DOGE, SHIB, and PEPE rose 4.5%, 1.7%, and 6.3%, respectively, within the same timeframe. As we reported last week, analysts are forecasting a potential 550% price increase for SHIB. 

As regards PEPE, the recent surge is supported by a strong upward trendline, showing consistent upward movement. This trendline is a consistent solid support level, helping PEPE stay bullish.