Meme Coin: From Marginal Novelty to Speculative Mainstream

Meme coins, which originate from community jokes rather than fundamentals, have evolved from fringe novelties to significant speculative assets. They are influencing capital flows, social media sentiment, and even political brand shaping.

In the marketing field, brands may issue Meme coins to enhance engagement; in the financial sector, some institutions may allocate small positions to high-volatility Meme coins.

The following data-driven insights outline the current landscape of the Meme coin sector.

Recent Updates

In 2024, the total capital in the Meme coin sector grew by over 500%, prompting speculative funds to rapidly shift from large-cap coins to Meme altcoins at the beginning of 2025. In 2025, U.S. regulators officially classified many Meme coins as collectibles rather than securities, reducing regulatory protection for investors.

Since its launch on January 17, 2025, a president-themed token's market value skyrocketed to $27 billion in less than a day, sparking further interest in such tokens. Within weeks, over 700 similar meme coins emerged, with 192 containing names of relevant figures and 67 using “official” branding.

By mid-2025, a certain public chain occupies 45% of the trading volume on the Meme coin DEX, surpassing another public chain whose share drops to 25%, while Ethereum ranks third with 20%.

The report shows that less than 1% of new tokens on a certain issuance platform can upgrade to mainstream DEX trading. The platform is currently facing a lawsuit, accused of charging nearly $500 million in fees and issuing over 11 million tokens, of which 98% collapsed within 24 hours.

A certain public chain economy is highly dependent on Meme coin activities

Currently, over 60% of economic activities in a certain public chain ecosystem are highly dependent on Meme coin related businesses, which reflects the increasingly prominent Meme-driven ecological characteristics of this public chain.

The Telegram bot leads all sectors with 26% of application revenue, driven by trading automation and Meme coin issuance.

The issuance platform ranks second with 23%, indicating a surge in the issuance of new Meme coins on the chain.

Wallet contributes 18% of total revenue, driven by on-chain transactions and user growth.

The trading application accounts for 14%, reflecting the high daily activity of Meme coin swaps and speculation.

Derivatives, coin trackers, and other applications each account for 5%, indicating a moderate level of participation beyond the core Meme functionalities.

DEX only accounts for 4%, with some exposure risk, as many Meme coin traders prefer bots and issuing platforms over traditional decentralized exchanges.

Market Overview

The Meme coin market is increasingly becoming a domain driven by speculative capital rotation.

In 2025, meme coins will account for 5% to 7% of the total value of the global cryptocurrency market, with a total market cap of approximately $63.6 billion. The 24-hour trading volume is about $7.61 billion.

The market cap high point in the field is still driven by a few coins.

Meme coin issuance statistics

In early 2025, the monthly average issuance of Meme coins exceeded 800,000. Among them, 1.7 million new Meme tokens were issued in January 2025. Furthermore, some issuance platforms claimed to have issued millions of Meme coins through their platforms.

The best performing Meme coin in 2025, with an average realized return on initial investment of 150%.

The issuance of Meme coins has surged, driving the estimated value of its development service market to over $70 million.

However, the surge in issuance indicates that the low creation threshold remains a significant characteristic of Meme coins. Many issuances bypass strict scrutiny or audits, increasing the likelihood of rug pulls or fraud.

Meme coin price prediction

2025

The average market price of Meme coin is expected to be $0.0226, with a potential high point of $0.0245, indicating an early stabilization trend in the market.

2026

The average price of Meme coin is expected to rise to $0.0278, an increase of 23% compared to the average price in 2025.

2027

Predictions show that Meme coin will continue to rise to an average price of $0.0379, with a peak close to $0.0409.

2028-2029

The average price of Meme coin is expected to stabilize at $0.0501.

2030

With the widespread adoption of applications and the enhancement of token utility, the average price may reach $0.0572, with a peak potentially touching $0.0613.

2031

The long-term outlook shows significant growth, with an average price expected to reach $0.0811, a maximum of $0.0836, representing an increase of over 250% compared to the 2025 level.

Active Meme Coins Count

In 2024, a certain data platform listed a total of 2229 Meme coins. Many newly issued tokens quickly disappear or are delisted. Therefore, the actual number of active ones continues to fluctuate.

The analysis report indicates that there will be thousands of active Meme coins at any given time in 2025. They have active quotes in 217 trading markets worldwide, confirming the role of their tokenomics model in regulating activity.

New Meme coins usually quickly fall into market saturation, leading to most tokens having minimal liquidity. In addition, the survival rate of new tokens beyond 6 to 12 months is very low, but exact loss data is difficult to publicly track.

Investors can use a professionally filtered index and ranking mechanism to filter out low-activity meme coins.

Top Meme coins ranked by market capitalization

In October 2025, the top Meme coins tracked by market capitalization include: DOGE, SHIB, PEPE, BONK, FLOKI, and TRUMP. The top 10 Meme coins account for approximately 90% of the total capital in the entire Meme coin sector.

Dogecoin

With a market value exceeding $31.59 billion, it remains the highest valued Meme币.

Shiba Inu coin

With a market capitalization of $6.29 billion, it ranks second.

PEPE

followed closely by 3.2 billion dollars.

Floki

The market capitalization fluctuates around $705 million, while the ranking of Meme coins often changes within a few hours due to social popularity.

BONK

In July 2025, the daily increase exceeded 15%, with a market value of 1.6 billion USD, becoming the fifth largest Meme coin.

TRUMP

Reached a peak market value of $27 billion within 24 hours of launch, followed by a significant drop in massive trading.

Approximately 80% of the total supply of TRUMP tokens is held by entities controlled by Trump or his affiliates.

TRUMP issued over $350 million in token sales and related platform fees.

Meme Coin Volatility Indicator

U.S. regulators pointed out in their regulatory notice in February 2025 that Meme coins often exhibit significant market price volatility, with a risk level higher than that of most crypto assets.

• BONK is the most volatile major Meme coin, with a daily price change correlation of over 0.72–0.83 with JEETS, PEPE, and BOME.

• The survival rate of newly issued tokens is below 8% after 60 days, with most losing over 97% of their peak value during rapid crash cycles.

Research has found that the volatility of Meme coins typically exceeds 11.7% daily, far higher than the average levels of most altcoins or Bitcoin. POPCAT and similar Meme tokens have demonstrated daily price fluctuations of up to 53%, making sudden reversals the norm in this field.

In 2025, Meme coins often trade within the “squeeze zone,” and after social-driven surges, they are often followed by a breakthrough movement of 2 to 4 times. Additionally, price waterfalls driven by whales or bots can amplify hourly volatility by 6 times.

The Meme coin sector achieved an average year-to-date return of +1,313% in the first half of 2025, becoming the only profitable crypto segment during that period. Before the third quarter, the average profit and loss in the Meme coin sector was +33.08%, driven by a few outstanding performers.

Meme coin trading volume

• In the first quarter of 2025, when the Meme coin sector reached a local peak, its trading volume accounted for a maximum of 25% of the total cryptocurrency trading volume.

• Between January and April 2025, the Meme coin sector lost approximately 58% of its value, with trading volume declining by about 63%.

• By mid-2025, Dogecoin and PEPE will maintain 24-hour trading volumes of over $500 million and $760 million, respectively.

• In early October 2025, top Meme coins continued to maintain a 24-hour trading volume exceeding $9 billion, led by peak popularity.

• During the summer and autumn of 2025, the daily trading volume of a certain issuance platform fluctuated between 96 million and 320 million USD, depending on the issuance quantity of Meme coins. The platform reported a daily trading volume of approximately 264 million USD, and by the fourth quarter of 2025, the historical total trading volume exceeded 73 billion USD.

Among all issued Meme coins, less than 5% can maintain high trading volume after the first 72 hours. The core drivers of the sudden increase in trading volume are viral social media propagation, celebrity catalytic effects, and influencer-driven issuance, often growing 2 to 5 times within a few hours.

The Most Popular Meme Coin Themes

Animal-themed Meme coins: Such as DOGE, Shiba Inu, BONK, WIF, with a total market value exceeding $30 billion in 2025, dominating the Meme brand space.

Among them, BONK is set to achieve the milestone of burning 1 trillion tokens this year.

Frog and Amphibian Themed Meme Coin: Led by PEPE, with a trading volume surge exceeding $1.7 billion in July 2025, and a 27% month-over-month increase in social participation.

Meme coins centered around political satire: Such as TRUMP, MAGA, BODEN, during major political events in the United States, the trading volume of a certain public chain's Meme coin surged to $26 billion.

Among them, TRUMP was launched in 2025, reaching a historical high market value of 14.9 billion dollars, and then the volatility erased 5 billion dollars in market value within minutes after the peak.

Meme coins associated with pop culture: During the surge in hashtag trends on a certain social platform, daily price spikes of 300–600% can occur.

The ultra-deflationary Meme coin with a burn mechanism accounts for about 21% of the best-performing issuances this year; tokens lacking practical utility and promising “10x returns” make up about 17% of the daily trending Meme coin issuances, often surging sharply before fading within weeks.

As of April 2025, less than 10% of the top 100 Meme coins by market capitalization still reflect their original themes from the first quarter, highlighting the rapid changes in trends.

Distribution of Meme Coins on the Blockchain

The issuance of Meme coins is increasingly migrating to blockchains where the average transaction fee is below $0.01, promoting adoption on certain public chains that together account for 95% of new Meme token issuance.

Ethereum's market share in Meme coins will drop below 5% in the second quarter of 2025.

a certain public chain

Issuance Data

Since the creation of the platform in January 2024, a certain issuance platform on this public chain has issued over 6 million Meme coins.

In February 2025, along with the cooling of the market and a decrease in retail investor interest, the daily issuance of meme coins on the platform has fallen from a peak of 70,000 coins to 25,000 coins.

By mid-2025, the platform is expected to support the issuance of 65,000 Meme coins on this public chain daily, and expand to other chains through the Meme coin minting API.

DEX trading volume

The DEX trading volume of the public chain Meme coin reached a peak of 206 billion USD in January 2025, accounting for 79% of the total trading activity of the public chain that month.

Only less than 2.1% of the public chain Meme coins can “upgrade” from the issuing platform to mainstream DEX, and most have failed to establish sustainable liquidity.

Moreover, liquidity fragmentation continues to exist, and successful Meme coins are usually distributed across 3 to 5 major chains, but many liquidity pools on each chain remain shallow.

Multi-Chain Meme Coin Statistics

In 2025, 21% of the top 100 Meme coins implemented cross-chain minting/burning mechanisms to maintain supply balance between networks; there are over 13 million independent wallet addresses interacting with multi-chain Meme coin bridges.

In the second quarter of 2025, during the celebrity token issuance and major NFT airdrop, the total cross-chain bridging volume of Meme coin increased by 420%.

The Meme coin project using chain-agnostic token contracts achieved a distribution that is 2-3 times broader, but the wallet retention rate is 17% lower than that of similar single-chain projects.

By the third quarter of 2025, DOGE and SHIB will each support over four major chains, with an active multi-chain bridging network covering multiple mainstream public chains.

Ethereum and a certain public chain account for 78% of the cross-chain settlement value of all Meme coins, while another public chain's share will grow to 16% in the summer of 2025.

In addition, as of September 2025, security incidents related to multi-chain bridging have caused over $190 million in losses for Meme coin holders.

Social Media Activities and Trends

The mention volume of Meme coins and related tags increased by about 53% from January 2024 to 2025, surpassing discussions in many altcoin verticals. 病