Some memes have deviated from the logic of pure stories or pure traffic and have begun to become a means of carrying value.
Written by: Blockchain Knight
In addition to the sudden plunge in the Crypto market, the biggest topic in the industry over the past week was the various serial liquidations. Although BTC fell from its peak of $100,000 to a low of less than $80,000, it was only a 20% retracement. Compared with many Memecoins that fell by more than 80%, BTC seemed to be relatively mild.
Through the figure below, we can intuitively see the current situation of the Memecoin market. As the main battlefield, Pump.fun's trading volume on Ray has dropped from a peak of more than 3 billion US dollars per day to the current 144 million or so, a drop of more than 95%, which naturally corresponds to the decline of the entire market.
Of course, in a sense, it is hard to imagine that the rate of decline would be so fast, because in just one month, this meme craze that lasted for half a year seems to have hit bottom.
Faced with the decline in various transaction data and the plummeting market value of related Memes, the market has been filled with ridicule of Memes in the past week, and various shamans have begun to come out to mock those arrogant PVP players in the past. So, is the only ending of this massive narrative of Memes that started with the anti-VC movement its death?
First, let’s briefly review the “history of Meme’s development” and go back to the origin to see the value of its existence.
Meme itself did not suddenly explode in the past year or so. It has existed since the creation of BTC. That is, when the Internet began to become popular, Meme had already been deeply rooted in people's hearts. Various strange emoticons or various Internet cultural terms can be called Meme.
The earliest Memecoin introduced into the Crypto market (in 2013) is DOGE, which still has a market value of 30 billion US dollars and has been popular for more than ten years. Of course, Meme was previously mentioned in the Crypto industry as a single asset, and it was far from forming a cultural narrative similar to the Internet. It was not until last year that Meme became a representative of anti-VC that it suddenly grew into a topic worthy of attention and participation by the entire industry.
Later, as various celebrities and traffic organizations joined the Meme wave (especially the huge money-making effect), we ushered in the "Meme Summer", and gradually it became the industry's largest and hottest narrative from a single asset class.
The following figure shows the changes in Memecoin's market value over the past year, which shows how much influence this narrative has brought. In just three months, the overall market value soared from 36 billion to a peak of 137 billion US dollars. The growth rate is terrifying. Of course, the current decline is also quite fast.
Then at the end of 2024, we saw that the story of Meme began to change from a pure traffic narrative to some empowering Memes such as Agent, DeFAI and Desci. Meme itself also changed from being worthless to a distribution method with certain specific functions.
Finally, what really brought Meme to a climax, but also brought "fatal disaster" was the Trump-related political Meme, which has now become the most complained point. Since then, this drama has begun to come to an end.
Looking at this meme wave, we came from being anti-VC, but ended up being defeated by them. We experienced exaggeration and stepped into countless pits, but ultimately could not escape the fate of being purged. What we fell into was just another form of VC harvest.
Judging from these starting points, people are still against VC and still respect the industry's traffic. From this logic, the "breeding ground" of Meme does not seem to have changed, so it will still exist, or at least will not die out.
Secondly, since the end of last year, some memes have deviated from the logic of pure stories or pure traffic and have begun to become a means of carrying value.
Therefore, regardless of the IP topic, celebrity effect or distribution method, this asset class will not die out, and may even evolve. After all, what it carries has been gradually changing, and Meme has also returned from a hype to the logic of innovative directions such as "Meme+Agent", "Meme+Desci", and "Meme+DeFAI".
Finally, back to the price itself, many Memecoins have experienced or are experiencing a low period, so there are only two paths before them, as the classic lines from Hamlet: "To be, or not to be".
The only thing that determines the direction of these memes is the community and the team that dominates the community (including funds). As long as they still have the courage to fight, these memes that have fallen into the abyss will have hope of rebirth, just like DOGE a few years ago. After all, what doesn’t kill them will make them stronger. This is the spirit of Crypto and the true value. So let’s take a look at which memes are still under construction. This is the answer.
Postscript: On the evening of the next day after this article was written (March 2), Trump posted on social media that "the Presidential Task Force is promoting the strategic reserve of Crypto assets including XRP, SOL and ADA", which changed the market's decadent trend that lasted for a week. Will this be a turning point? We must be full of hope even at the bottom. Who knows if the market will "suddenly come like a spring breeze overnight"?
