A wave of retail investor enthusiasm for fast-food chain Wendy’s (WEN) escalated on Wednesday, with shares jumping more than 25% amid heavy promotion on Reddit’s r/WallStreetBets forum. The move, fueled by hopes of a short squeeze and calls to “save” the beleaguered brand, quickly spilled over into crypto markets, giving birth to a Solana-based meme coin that posted an extraordinary 1,450% gain in 24 hours.
Wendy’s stock, which had languished near $6.08 earlier this week, finished regular trading at $7.86 and rose as high as $8.89 intraday. Trading volumes exploded to over 203 million shares, roughly 20 times the daily average. Data from Swaggy Stocks placed WEN as the second-most talked-about ticker on Reddit, with a post titled “We need to save Wendy’s” racking up more than 18,000 upvotes. Retail traders pointed to the company’s profitability, a dividend yield, and an elevated short interest—34% of free float according to ORTEX—as ingredients for a potential squeeze.
The frenzy wasn’t confined to equities. On the token launchpad Pump.fun, an unaffiliated meme coin sharing the ticker WEN was deployed on Solana. Within 24 hours, its market capitalization reached $439,000, marking a gain of roughly 1,450%. The original Reddit poster promoting the stock campaign had also linked the same token in their profile bio, underscoring how meme-stock mania seamlessly bridges traditional and crypto assets.
Bitcoin was slipping on Wednesday, but the isolated meme coin rally demonstrated that speculative energy can quickly find a new home in on-chain tokens, even when the catalyst originates from an old-economy stock.
