Memecoins: too old to die young
11 min read
- Altcoins
Memecoins- tokens inspired by internet memes- may have been circulating for over 10 years, but they were one of the definitive crypto trends in 2024. Despite the light-hearted role they appear to play in the ecosystem, support from enthusiastic communities has helped memecoins grow to a significant market capitalisation, with a total value of $75 billion (as of February 2025). Although they fall under the same ‘memecoins’ category, it seems unfair to rank them as if they are all the same. For instance, some have a long track record, are built on time-tested protocols, and have a relatively decentralized distribution of coins, while others lack these strengths. It’s time to take a closer look at this intriguing ecosystem.
It All Started With Dogecoin, the Original Memecoin
When Dogecoin was created in 2013—featuring as its muse a popular japanese dog named Kabosu, adored on Internet because of the viral pictures of its laughing face—the crypto landscape was totally different than it is today: first of all, Bitcoin was worth $829 a coin with a market capitalization barely exceeding $10 billion dollars¹. Litecoin was its number two, Ripple number three, a podium followed by a variety of “something”coins: Peercoin, Megacoin, Primecoin, all copycats or forks of Bitcoin. Contrary to what the popular legend says, it is to mock this fad of copying Bitcoin, and not to mock Bitcoin itself, why the developers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer invented Dogecoin. “We didn’t create Dogecoin to parody Bitcoin; it is the pioneer, and I will always respect it,” Billy Markus told French media Le Monde². “We made it to mock all those clones created with big promises, most of which no longer exist today.”
Designed as a medium of exchange, with an unlimited supply (over 147 billion tokens in circulation as of January 2025), Dogecoin was built on Litecoin’s architecture, relying on its proof-of-work consensus mechanism to validate transactions. This protocol made it one of the most accessible coins for miners using low-end hardware, enhancing its decentralization.
Thanks to the ingenuity of its inventors—and Kabosu’s lovable face—Dogecoin quickly gained attention, surging 400% in value just days after its creation³.
A passionate community emerged, driven more by contributing to internet culture and humor than by the coin’s market capitalization. With 2.6 million subscribers on its subreddit, the Dogecoin community raised:
$30,000 to support the Jamaican Bobsled Team’s participation in the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics⁴,
Thousands more for the Doge4Water campaign, which funded water wells in Kenya⁵,
Additional funds to sponsor NASCAR driver Josh Wise.
Meanwhile, celebrities joined the movement, including Snoop Dogg, who in 2021 tweeted a fake album cover tribute to Dogecoin, and Elon Musk, who has continuously promoted the cryptocurrency through memes and tweets—famously calling it “the people’s crypto” in 2021.
It’s hard to disagree with the head of X, as Dogecoin has firmly established itself as one of the market’s favorite cryptocurrencies—even recognized by those who know little about crypto.
Even though the project started as a joke, many would argue that its community and popularity have become real fundamentals.
The Emergence of a New Meta
Following the journey of Dogecoin, many others have tried to replicate its success, but only a few have managed to do so thus far. One of the most emblematic coins in the memecoin category is Pepe, primarily for cultural reasons. Pepe, whose emblem is a frog drawn by comic artist Matt Furie, has become the centerpiece of millions of memes broadcast on the Internet since its inception in 2005. It was later used for digital collectibles issued on Counterparty (a protocol based on Bitcoin) called Rare Pepe, followed by a memecoin issued on the Ethereum blockchain. Launched in 2023, its design incorporates a deflationary mechanism that burns a small percentage of tokens with each transaction to create scarcity. Boosted by the popularity of its muse, and the launch of its own layer-2, the coin has reached a significant valuation of $4.4 billion as of February 2025.
Others that come to mind include Shiba Inu (SHIB), which has gained impressive traction since its launch, inspired by the dog breed of the same name, as a token deployed on Ethereum (ERC-20). However, in 2023, SHIB’s development team released Shibarium, a layer-2 (L2) protocol built on Ethereum to improve scalability. Stories of overnight millionaires who placed bets before the coin’s parabolic growth have flourished in mainstream media⁶. Similar to Dogecoin, low fees, viral marketing, and a strong community have propelled its market cap to $10 billion as of January 2025. Its trajectory remains uncertain, as in 2023, the French-based analytics firm Bubblemaps revealed that the founder of SHIB likely holds 10% of the total supply, worth more than $900 million as of February 2025.⁷.
This question of the concentration of coins in a minority has become one of the worst things associated with memecoins, especially with the rise of new platforms dedicated to the deployments of such assets, most notably Pump.fun.
The Flourishing Business of Memecoins
Founded in January 2024, Pump.fun has become the platform of choice to launch a memecoin on Solana. As a no-code platform, it allows anyone to deploy a memecoin in two clicks and a bit of SOL (Solana currency) and others to bet on its success: if it amasses enough capital from Pump.fun users, the platform deploys a liquidity pool on a decentralized exchange (Raydium) so that the coin becomes available for anyone to invest in. It is quite easy to acknowledge a token issued by the platform since every token address ends with ‘pump’; it gave birth to thousands of coins, with some having significant market caps (as of February, 2025):
FARTCOIN: $729,695,593
WOULD: $306,078,411
ARC: $280,132,734
GRIFFAIN: $264,446,537
ACT: $222,751,010
According to CoinMarketCap, the total capitalization of all Pump.fun coins exceeded $5.5 billion as of February 4, 2025. The mania surrounding this token largely contributed to Solana’s resurgence, as the use of Pump.fun attracted a wave of users alongside fee collections.
In 2024, the platform generated $494 million in fees, and its growth closely mirrored Solana’s activity peaks.
As with every successful venture, many others are attempting to follow in Pump.fun’s footsteps, such as Daos.fun, Sun Pump on the Tron blockchain, and Hypurr.fun on Hyperliquid. One of these has even become one of the most successful mobile apps: Moonshot, which allows users to buy memecoins on mobile using payment cards. In fact, it temporarily reached the top position among finance apps on the U.S. App Store in mid-January 2025.
The platform’s explosion coincided with the issuance of the TRUMP memecoin on Solana by a company linked to the Trump Organization. Initially, 200 million tokens were issued, with an additional 800 million set to be released over the next three years. Within a few days, TRUMP’s value surged to $15 billion before dropping to $8 billion, coincidentally following the launch of the MELANIA memecoin (also on Solana) by a company controlled by the First Lady. As of February 2025, TRUMP had a market cap of $3.5 billion, while MELANIA was worth $839 million.
Those launches highlight another risk facing investors-—insider trading. The crypto news site Cointelegraph reported that Bubblemaps identified a digital wallet that received $1 million shortly before the token started trading. The wallet purchased nearly $6 million worth of TRUMP at launch and then sold roughly 15% of the holding for $20 million. Given CIC Digital and Fight Fight Fight LLC own 80% of the total supply, Preetam Rao, CEO of Web3 security firm QuillAudits, told the same media that he believed an insider controls the wallet.
Investors must also be aware of rug pulls, where developers launch a token and drive up its value before disappearing with the proceeds. For instance, a 13-year-old created a memecoin called Gen Z Quant on Pump.fun in November 2024. After the price surged, he sold most of his holding, earning a profit of $30,000 as the token’s value plummeted. The teenager then created two further memecoins- ‘SORRY’ and ‘LUCY’ (named after his pet dog, naturally) netting another $33,000. Unfortunately, this example is one among thousands of them.
An Inherent Part of the Decentralized Aspect of Crypto
Volatility, fraudulent activity, rug pulls, and insider trading are significant aspects of the memecoin industry. However, there are still some instances of intriguing success stories, such as those driven by the Dogecoin community or the rise of Book of Meme—which started as a token sale by an OG crypto artist and became one of the most impressive gains of 2024, reaching a capitalization of over $1 billion within days. The phenomenon even caught the attention of Beeple⁹, one of the world’s most famous (and expensive) digital artists.
Despite these few examples of economic growth and cultural impact, memecoins cannot be considered a reliable investment thesis—unless one is willing to take substantial risks. A more cautious way to gain exposure to the sector without holding tokens directly is by investing in the protocols providing the underlying infrastructure, a space currently dominated by Solana.
¹Coinmarketcap: https://coinmarketcap.com/historical/20131206/
³Digital Trends: https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/dogecoin-price-value-jump-bitcoin/`
⁵https://www.itnewsafrica.com/2014/03/10000-dogecoin-tweet-builds-water-well-in-kenya/
⁶https://watcher.guru/news/shiba-inu-3-investors-that-became-millionaires-with-shib
⁷ https://bubblemaps.io/case-studies/
⁸ https://www.techinasia.com/news/memecoin-app-moonshot-tops-finance-apps-trump-surge
Published onFeb 18th, 2025
