What is Sugar Bush The Squirrel (SUGAR) Crypto Coin? The Meme Token with a 2013 Bitcoin Connection
Jan, 30 2026
Most meme coins come and go - launched with a funny image, a viral tweet, and a hype cycle that burns out in weeks. But Sugar Bush The Squirrel (SUGAR) isn’t just another dog or cat with a wallet. It’s a crypto token built around a real internet legend: a squirrel that’s been photographed over 6,000 times wearing more than 400 different outfits. This isn’t AI-generated content. This is a real animal that became a global meme before most people even knew what Bitcoin was.
Where Did Sugar Bush Come From?
Sugar Bush isn’t a fictional character. He’s a real red squirrel who lived in the Pacific Northwest and became famous for his curious, almost human-like behavior. People started leaving him tiny outfits - hats, scarves, even Halloween costumes - and photographing him. By 2010, he was already an internet sensation. His photos spread across forums, blogs, and early social media. He wasn’t just cute; he was iconic.
Then, in 2013, something unexpected happened. Charles Hoskinson, who would later co-found Cardano, posted on the Bitcointalk forum. He didn’t want to launch a coin. He wanted to make Sugar Bush the official mascot of Bitcoin. He wrote about how the squirrel’s resilience, adaptability, and charm made him the perfect symbol for decentralized money. The idea never took off back then. But the post stayed online. And now, over a decade later, someone decided to bring it back - this time as a Solana token.
What Is the SUGAR Token?
The $SUGAR token is an SPL token on the Solana blockchain, meaning it’s built to work with Solana’s fast, low-cost network. It launched in late 2025 with a maximum supply of 1 billion tokens. As of early 2026, about 955 million are in circulation. That’s nearly all of them - meaning there’s no big reserve being held back by developers. That’s unusual for a meme coin. Most hoard tokens for future sales or team funding. SUGAR didn’t.
The token’s contract address is 9wBNNCXg8pb4SZpTY868CEr74S25Qy1JmGHFwo9F37dC. You can verify it on CoinGecko, CoinMarketCap, or LiveCoinWatch. All three list it as a meme coin. No utility. No DeFi staking. No NFTs. Just a token named after a squirrel with a weirdly strong backstory.
Price and Market Performance
At the start of 2026, SUGAR trades around $0.000013 to $0.000022. That’s less than a tenth of a cent. To buy $10 worth, you’d need nearly 800,000 tokens. It’s not designed for small purchases - it’s designed for collectors, meme lovers, and people who appreciate the irony of a 2013 internet joke becoming a blockchain asset.
Its all-time high was $0.004549 - reached in late 2025. That’s a drop of over 95% since then. But here’s the twist: while most meme coins tanked in January 2026, SUGAR rose 18.1% in the last week. The broader crypto market fell 4%. Other meme coins averaged a 23.6% gain. SUGAR didn’t lead, but it didn’t lag either. It held its own.
Its market cap sits around $659,000. That’s tiny. Bitcoin’s market cap is over $1.2 trillion. Even Dogecoin is worth over $15 billion. SUGAR is a speck. But that’s part of the charm. It’s not trying to be the next Shiba Inu. It’s trying to be the squirrel that almost became Bitcoin’s mascot.
Where Can You Buy SUGAR?
You won’t find SUGAR on Binance or Coinbase. It’s too small. Instead, you’ll need to go to niche exchanges. The most active trading pair is SUGAR/USDT on GroveX, where most of the daily volume happens. Other places include AscendEX (BitMax), Minswap, BC.Game, Whale.io, and 1XBit.
To buy it, you need a Solana wallet - Phantom, Solflare, or Backpack work fine. You’ll swap SOL for SUGAR using a decentralized exchange like Jupiter or Raydium. Binance has a guide for buying SUGAR through its Web3 Wallet, but you’ll still end up on a Solana-based DEX. There’s no direct fiat on-ramp. You need crypto first.
Trading volume is low - around $64,000 in 24 hours. That means if someone tries to dump 10 million tokens, the price could crash hard. Liquidity is thin. This isn’t a place for large investors. It’s for people who want to own a piece of crypto history, not make a fortune.
Why Does This Matter?
Most meme coins are jokes. SUGAR is a time capsule. It connects today’s crypto culture to its earliest days - when people were still figuring out what Bitcoin could be. Hoskinson’s 2013 post wasn’t a whitepaper. It wasn’t a pitch. It was a passion project. A guy who believed in decentralization saw a squirrel and thought, ‘This is what Bitcoin should look like.’
That’s rare. Most tokens today are built on hype, influencers, or AI-generated art. SUGAR is built on a real story - one that predates Ethereum, DeFi, and NFTs. It’s not about utility. It’s about legacy.
There’s no roadmap. No team updates. No development blog. The token isn’t being improved. It’s being preserved. That’s why it’s still alive. People aren’t buying it to get rich. They’re buying it because they remember Sugar Bush from 2012. They remember the photos. They remember the internet before everything was monetized.
Is SUGAR a Good Investment?
No. Not if you’re looking for returns.
Is it worth owning? Maybe - if you care about crypto history.
There’s no financial analysis to back it up. No expert ratings. No institutional interest. It’s not listed on any major exchange. Its market cap is smaller than the cost of a decent used car. It doesn’t have a team, a product, or a vision. It has a squirrel. And a story.
If you’re drawn to tokens with deep roots in crypto’s early culture - the days when forums were the main hub, when memes were shared for fun, not profit - then SUGAR is one of the few left. It’s a digital artifact. A piece of crypto folklore.
Don’t buy it because you think it’ll go to $0.10. Buy it because you once saw a photo of a squirrel in a tiny hat and laughed. That’s the whole point.
What Makes SUGAR Different?
Other meme coins have dogs, cats, or anime characters. SUGAR has a real animal with documented history. It has a direct link to a major crypto founder. It has over 6,000 photos. It has a story that predates the entire DeFi boom.
It’s not the biggest. It’s not the fastest-growing. But it’s one of the few meme coins that can say: We were here before you were.
Its value isn’t in its price. It’s in its meaning.
Rob Duber
January 31, 2026 AT 00:12Sugar Bush was already a legend before most of us knew what a blockchain was. I remember seeing those photos on 4chan back in 2011 - tiny hat, confused face, looking like he just robbed a kindergarten. Now he’s a SOL token? I’m not buying it for the price - I’m buying it because my 12-year-old self would’ve cried if he knew the squirrel from his late-night meme scroll was gonna outlive half the crypto projects of 2021.
Gary Gately
February 1, 2026 AT 11:43bro i just bought 500k sugar and im not even sure what im doing lmao but the squirrel in the tiny vest?? i cried. its like crypto but with heart. also i think charles hoskinson is a wizard.
Joshua Clark
February 1, 2026 AT 23:57Let me just say - this isn’t just another meme coin. This is a cultural artifact. A living, breathing (well, technically dead now, but still iconic) piece of internet history that somehow survived the Great Crypto Purge of 2018, the NFT bubble, the FTX collapse, and the AI-generated dog coin explosion. The fact that Charles Hoskinson, the guy who later helped build Cardano, saw a squirrel in a hat and thought, ‘This is what decentralization looks like,’ is honestly poetic. No whitepaper. No tokenomics. No VC funding. Just a guy on Bitcointalk, inspired by a wild animal that didn’t care about market caps, only snacks and seasonal attire. And now? Here we are, a decade later, trading tokens named after a squirrel who probably didn’t even know what a computer was. That’s not speculation - that’s nostalgia with a blockchain.
Gareth Fitzjohn
February 2, 2026 AT 00:38Interesting story. The squirrel’s history is genuinely charming. The token itself seems to have no real utility, but its narrative gives it a unique place in crypto folklore. Not an investment, but perhaps a collector’s item.
Moray Wallace
February 3, 2026 AT 21:36I’ve seen this squirrel on old Reddit threads. I didn’t know he was linked to Hoskinson. That’s actually kind of beautiful - a quiet moment of inspiration from before the hype machine took over. I’m not buying, but I’m glad someone preserved this.