Journalist
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Key Takeaways
Why was the memecoin market suffering so badly?
After December 2024, the memecoin mania narrative died out and has not been revived in any significant way. Until it is, the sector will continue to underperform.
What would be signs of a sentiment reversal?
A bullish Bitcoin is necessary to precipitate a memecoin trend shift. These assets will also need to trend on social media, capturing public attention and garnering capital flows.
The memecoin sector has been in decline throughout 2025. A year ago, the sector had a market capitalization of $114.14 billion. At the time of writing, this figure was at $44.31 billion, down 62%.
At the start of 2025, the memecoin market cap was $95.86 billion. This showed that the sector’s decline was already underway by the start of the year.
Source: CoinMarketCap
Right now, the sentiment across the market is extremely fearful. Bitcoin [BTC] was able to defend the $100k level despite the turmoil in October.
This defense came undone in recent days, briefly taking Bitcoin prices below $90k.
The memecoin market has not been able to stall the bearish pressure. Major memes have been in a steady downtrend since September.
Understanding the memecoin sector’s woes in 2025
Source: TradingView
Since the beginning of 2025, major memecoins have been trending downward. Among the popular assets compared here, Dogecoin [DOGE] experienced the least losses in 2025.
DOGE has the largest market cap in the sector by far, which might have helped reduce panic-selling.
Pepe [PEPE] was down by the highest margin in 2025, at 76.15%. Only Memecore [M] (not shown on the chart) was a relatively large-cap meme that has made gains this year.
It should be noted that M began trading only in July and has gone up many multiples since then. It continued to defend the $2 level, but this could be misleading for buyers.
Only 10.39% of the total M supply was in circulation, and unlocks could dilute supply and reduce prices.
In conclusion, the market sentiment did not favor memecoins at all. There have been brief periods, such as the first half of July, when the memecoin sector began to look bullish.
The sector’s languished in woe, and a change in narrative in favor of memes is necessary to pull memecoins out of this year-long slump. Until then, buyers be wary.
Disclaimer: The information presented does not constitute financial, investment, trading, or other types of advice and is solely the writer’s opinion