The memecoin market, in this 2025, after an initial real boom, has gone through a period of “distribution”.
Indeed, it has been months since prices like those at the beginning of the year have been seen, but this is a fairly classic cycle.
What are memes
The so-called “meme coins” are cryptocurrencies dedicated to memes.
Memes are by definition ideas, behaviors, styles, or information that spread rapidly, for example on the Internet.
In reality, the original concept was coined as far back as 1976 by the biologist Richard Dawkins, in his book “The Selfish Gene”, and it was based on the idea that, just as genes are transmitted and evolve, ideas also replicate and spread.
With the advent of the Internet, the word “meme” began to refer mainly to images or videos that convey a humorous, sarcastic, or ironic message, and that go viral especially on social media or in chats.
Since they are viral phenomena, they are very easy to recognize, but only after they have occurred.
What are memecoins
Memecoins are cryptocurrencies specifically dedicated to one of these memes. In other words, each memecoin is dedicated to a specific meme.
They are usually tokens that are created easily and quickly on already existing blockchains, and only very rarely are they true native cryptocurrencies with their own blockchain.
The first memecoin, for example, was Dogecoin (DOGE), created in 2013 with its own blockchain, copied from that of Bitcoin.
In reality, it was created just as a joke, to mock the ease with which a new cryptocurrency could be created from nothing, so much so that for years it had no role within the crypto sector, except as a very particular case study.
The meme being referenced is the famous dog Shiba Inu from which it derived its logo. The name Dogecoin itself refers to the dog, which in English is called “dog”.
Two years later, however, with the launch of Ethereum, it finally became possible to arbitrarily create an indefinite number of tokens, and this sparked the proliferation of memecoins.
Memecoins have no specific role and no utility, except for being traded within their community.
Everything changed in 2021 when Elon Musk started to promote Dogecoin, probably as a joke, achieving a sensational result. That same year, for example, the memecoin Shiba Inu (SHIB) experienced a tremendous boom, which is a kind of version on Ethereum of Dogecoin.
The Boom of Memecoins
That boom, however, was confined to a few memecoin, because at the time they had not yet proliferated excessively.
The turning point came in 2023, when the Solana ecosystem opened up to memecoins.
On Solana, in fact, it was much cheaper to create a token compared to Ethereum, and the transaction fees are extremely low. For tokens that have no real use value, these characteristics have proven to be winning.
Even the following year, a dedicated platform called Pump.fun was launched for the creation and promotion of memecoins.
At that point, a spectacular boom of memecoins began, because millions were created, even though the vast majority turned out to be worthless.
The peak occurred after the electoral victory of Trump in November 2024, and especially in January 2025 with the official launch of his memecoin on Solana. However, that boom was short-lived, and starting from February, the memecoin market experienced a significant downturn.
In general, however, the memecoin market behaves this way, alternating between boom periods and dump periods, which may eventually be followed by new boom periods. It should be noted, however, that generally new memecoins perform better in the market compared to those that were born and flourished during past cycles.
The Memecoin Market
Currently, the total market capitalization of all existing memecoins is approximately 76 billion dollars, of which a significant 39 belong to Dogecoin.
It is therefore a relatively small market, compared to the over 4 trillion dollars of capitalization of the entire crypto market, of which almost 2.3 trillion belong to Bitcoin alone.
For example, the altcoin market, excluding stablecoins and Ethereum, in addition to Bitcoin, capitalizes more than 1.1 trillion dollars, therefore the total 76 billion of memecoins is really insignificant in comparison. If we then exclude Dogecoin, the other memecoins overall are worth less than 37 billion dollars.
After Dogecoin, which dominates the memecoin market, there is Shiba Inu, with nearly 8 billion dollars.
In third place is PEPE, with 4.4 billion. Probably the PEPE meme (the green anthropomorphic frog with a vaguely humanoid body) is the most famous among those represented by the memecoin.
There are still five more memecoins that each have a market capitalization of more than a billion dollars, while those with a market capitalization of more than a hundred million are fewer than 50.
In total, there are almost 5,000 memecoins traded on the markets nowadays.
The Value of Memecoins
The market value of memecoins (i.e., their price) continuously fluctuates depending on the normal interaction between market demand and supply, just like other cryptocurrencies.
However, generally memecoins do not have any other value, except in rare cases.
In particular, almost none of the 5,000 traded on the markets have a real use value, so much so that they should be considered 100% purely speculative assets.
In theory, it is not entirely possible to rule out that some might have a use value in the future, but for now, they are only extremely limited cases. For example, the attempt to transform the Shiba Inu token into the native cryptocurrency of a real crypto project seems largely failed, even though it was technically implemented.
The same Dogecoin, which has had its own blockchain from the beginning, has never really been used for anything specific, despite, for example, Elon Musk trying to propose it as a means of payment for Teslas.
However, the crypto markets are highly speculative, so memecoins have carved out a small role within this market precisely due to their speculative nature.