Meme Coins This Year: From a 500% Market Cap Surge to Rug Pull Scams Everywhere, Data Reveals the Truth

From Fringe Joke to Speculation Mainstream: What Really Happened with Meme Coins This Year?

In 2024, the entire meme coin sector’s market cap ballooned by over 500%. Can you believe it? This category, once mocked by the mainstream as “air coins,” can now sway liquidity trends, manipulate social media sentiment, and even get intertwined with political brands.

Brands want to do marketing? Launch a meme coin to boost engagement. Hedge funds seeking high-volatility returns? Allocate a small position to meme coins to test the waters. This market is no longer the pure joke it once was.

What’s Been Happening Lately?

2025 started off with a bang. The U.S. SEC directly classified a bunch of meme coins as “collectibles” rather than securities—sounds cool, right? But in reality, it means less investor protection.

On January 17, $TRUMP’s market cap surged to $27 billion in less than 24 hours after launch. Shocking, right? Then what? Within weeks, over 700 Trump-themed copycats appeared, 192 used his family members’ names, and 67 explicitly claimed to be “official.” Even scammers couldn’t keep up.

By midyear, BNB Chain grabbed a 45% share of meme coin DEX trading volume, leaving SOL (25%) and Ethereum (20%) behind.

And let’s talk about Pump.fun—a platform where less than 1% of newly issued coins ever upgrade to mainstream DEX trading. Now the platform is being sued for collecting nearly $500 million in fees, issuing over 11 million tokens, 98% of which hit zero within 24 hours. That’s reality.

SOL Ecosystem: Meme Coins Hold Up Half the Sky

The data is staggering. Over 60% of Solana chain’s economic activity is meme coin related. What does that mean? Telegram bots account for 26% of app revenue, launchpads 23%, wallets 18%—all driven by meme coin fever.

Trading apps take 14%, derivatives and trackers 5% each. And traditional DEXs? Only 4%. Why? Because many meme coin players don’t even use DEXs; they prefer bots and launchpads.

Such heavy dependence is risky. If the meme coin craze fades, will the SOL ecosystem crash with it?

How Big Is the Market?

In 2025, meme coins make up 5%-7% of the global crypto market cap, totaling about $63.6 billion, with a 24-hour trading volume of $7.61 billion. Sounds big, but it’s highly concentrated—top projects like DOGE, SHIB, and PEPE dominate the space.

The issuance numbers are even crazier. In early 2025, over 800,000 meme coins were launched per month, with 1.7 million in January alone. Some platforms claim to have issued millions.

The best performers? Average returns of 150%. But most coins don’t survive a week.

How High Will Prices Go?

Some institutions forecast price trends for the coming years (for reference only, not investment advice):

2025: Average price $0.0226, peak $0.0245. The market is just stabilizing.

2026: Average rises to $0.0278, up 23% from 2025.

2027: Climbs further to $0.0379.

2028-2029: Oscillates around $0.0501.

2030: Could reach $0.0572, peak at $0.0613.

2031: Long-term bulls predict an average of $0.0811, maximum $0.0836—over 250% higher than 2025.

Believe it or not, the market will answer.

How Many Active Meme Coins Are There?

In 2024, CoinMarketCap listed 2,229 meme coins. But the real number of active coins is always changing, since new coins launch and delist quickly.

At any given time in 2025, thousands of active meme coins are quoted on 217 markets. The problem is, new coins usually don’t last 6-12 months and have poor liquidity.

Want to filter for solid projects? You’ll need professional indices and ranking tools to weed out low-activity tokens.

Who Are the Top Meme Coins?

By market cap, the top few are no surprise:

Dogecoin: $31.59 billion, the OG leader.

Shiba Inu: $6.29 billion, solidly in second place.

PEPE: $3.2 billion, king of the frog coins.

Floki: Fluctuates around $705 million.

BONK: In July 2025, surged over 15% in a single day, market cap hit $1.6 billion.

TRUMP: Peaked at $27 billion within 24 hours of launch, then fell sharply. Interestingly, 80% of the token supply was controlled by Trump or related entities, earning over $350 million in revenue from issuance.

The top 10 meme coins account for about 90% of the sector’s total market cap. The remaining thousands fight over the other 10%.

How Wild Is the Volatility?

The SEC explicitly warned in February 2025: Meme coin volatility far exceeds most crypto assets.

BONK leads in volatility. Only 8% of new coins survive past 60 days, most lose over 97% of their peak value during bust cycles.

Meme coins average daily volatility above 11.7%, much higher than Bitcoin and mainstream altcoins. Tokens like POPCAT have shown daily swings of 53%—soaring in the morning, halved by the afternoon.

In the first half of 2025, the meme coin sector’s average annual return reached +1,313%, making it the only profitable crypto sector. But by Q3, average gains dropped to +33.08%.

Whales and bots can amplify hourly volatility by 6x. That’s the game.

Trading Volume Data

• In Q1 2025, meme coins made up 25% of total crypto trading volume.
• From January to April, meme coins lost about 58% in value, trading volume fell 63%.
• By midyear, Dogecoin and PEPE maintained 24-hour trading volumes over $500 million and $760 million, respectively.
• In early October, top meme coins’ 24-hour trading volume exceeded $9 billion.
• Pump.fun’s daily trading volume fluctuated between $96 million and $320 million, with total historical volume over $7.3 billion.

Of all issued coins, less than 5% maintain high trading volume after the first 72 hours. Viral social media, celebrity effect, and influence-driven hype are the core drivers of trading spikes.

Most Popular Themes

Animal Coins: DOGE, Shiba Inu, BONK, WIF. In 2025, their total market cap exceeded $30 billion, dominating meme branding. BONK will burn 1 trillion tokens this year.

Frog Coins: Led by PEPE, daily trading volume in July spiked over $1.7 billion, social engagement rose 27% month-over-month.

Political Satire: TRUMP, MAGA, BODEN. During US political events, these pushed SOL meme coin trading volume to $26 billion.

Pop Culture: During X platform hashtag trend surges, prices can spike 300%-600%.

Ultra-deflationary meme coins with burn mechanisms accounted for 21% of the year’s best-performing launches. Those promising “10x returns” but with no real utility? Made up 17% of daily trending launches, usually crashing within weeks.

By April, fewer than 10% of the top 100 meme coins still kept their original Q1 themes. Trends shift too fast.

Blockchain Distribution: Where Are They Launching?

Meme coin issuance is migrating to low-fee chains—those with average transaction fees below $0.01. SOL, Base, and BNB account for 95% of new meme token launches.

Ethereum? Its market share fell below 5% in Q2 2025.

SOL Data

Issuance: Since January 2024, over 6 million meme coins have launched on Pump.fun. In February 2025, daily launches fell from a peak of 70,000 to 25,000. By midyear, the daily average was 65,000 token launches.

DEX Volume: SOL meme coin DEX volume peaked at $206 billion in January, making up 79% of total monthly trading activity. But less than 2.1% of coins manage to upgrade from launchpads to major DEXs like Raydium.

Liquidity is highly fragmented. Successful meme coins are usually spread across 3-5 chains, but liquidity pools on each chain remain shallow.

Multi-Chain Meme Coins

In 2025, 21% of the top 100 meme coins implemented cross-chain mechanisms. Over 13 million unique wallets interacted with multi-chain bridges.

During Q2, celebrity token launches and NFT airdrops drove a 420% increase in meme coin cross-chain bridging.

DOGE and SHIB each support more than four major chains. Ethereum and SOL account for 78% of all cross-chain settlement value, with Base’s share rising to 16% in the summer.

But risks remain: By September, multi-chain bridge security events had cost holders over $190 million.

Social Media Influence

#Meme币# Related hashtag mentions grew about 53% from January 2024 to 2025. Viral memes, influencer posts, and coordinated campaigns can trigger over 20% price moves within hours.

X, Reddit, Discord, and TikTok are the primary sentiment battlegrounds. But comment bots and fake accounts inflate engagement metrics, masking real interest.

Many meme coin communities have Discord or Telegram groups with 50,000-100,000+ members. They host meme contests, AMAs, and NFT giveaways to spark viral growth.

Who’s Buying Meme Coins?

A survey found that about 31% of US crypto investors first entered crypto via meme coins. Younger investors are more active.

• Many holders have small positions, usually <1% of their total portfolio.
• Some whales may control 20%-50% of certain tokens’ circulating supply.

Retail often enters mid-cycle after short-term price surges, exposing themselves to reversal risk. Institutions are showing interest, but mainly through structured theme funds or small alt allocation.

In emerging markets, meme coins often overlap with speculative trading in local FX/crypto channels.

How Bad Are the Risks and Scams?

So far in 2025, over $2.17 billion has been lost in the crypto space (not limited to meme coins).

Analysts estimate up to 95% of new tokens could be scams or extremely low-success projects, most of which collapse rapidly. 60% of new coins have a lifecycle of less than 24 hours.

Security Flaws

Of meme coins issued in 2025, less than 15% have undergone smart contract audits.

• Over 25% of audited SOL meme coins were flagged for centralized token allocation risks.
• Over 91% of new meme coins on Base chain have at least one security vulnerability.

Major attack vectors include: mint/burn logic flaws, owner rug-pull exploits, and delegatecall misuse.

Automated bot-driven sandwich and front-running attacks have led to market manipulation in over 35% of low-liquidity pools.

The Sniping Bot Frenzy

On platforms like Pump.fun, up to 80% of early trading volume is driven by sniping bots, especially within the first few blocks.

Bots can execute trades within less than a second after a new coin’s liquidity event. In some launches, bots made up over 70% of unique wallet interactions in the first 10 blocks.

Volume bots simulate organic order flow by rotating wallets, providing liquidity for over 100 new coins daily.

Craziest case? A single sniping bot accumulated over $6.8 million in meme coin profits on Pump.fun in one month, with single-trade returns as high as 2,227x. At peak activity in 2024, sniping bots realized over 15,000 SOL in profits across thousands of trades.

Sophisticated bots monitor DEX mempools for new contract deployments, anticipating thousands of launches per month.

Historical Performance Review

2023-2024 Bear Market: Meme coin prices fell as much as 85%; over 60% didn’t survive six months.

Early 2024: Top five meme coins accounted for over 40% of all crypto speculative trading volume.

Q1-Q2 2024: Meme coin market cap grew over 550%, outpacing most other sectors.

May 2024: Unique wallet holders surpassed 18 million.

Late 2024: Over 30% of leading meme coins added community governance features.

Total annual trading volume soared to over $35 billion in 2024. Dogecoin’s yearly market cap remained above $10 billion. PEPE and FLOKI returned over 100x from launch to peak.

Final Thoughts

Meme coins have gone from fringe sideshow to a major force in speculative markets. The rewards are tempting, but risks, scams, hacks, and brutal volatility are all too real.

Want to play this game? Strict due diligence, on-chain analysis, and community signals—these are not optional, but must-haves. Don’t let get-rich stories cloud your judgment; the fate of most participants is right there in the data.

The market doesn’t believe in tears—only in data and probabilities.