After riding high on post-election euphoria and celebrity hype, the meme coin market has crashed back to earth with a thud. The numbers tell a brutal story: total meme coin market cap has plummeted 56% since December 2024, erasing all the gains that followed Trump’s election victory. What was once a $124 billion market now sits at just $54 billion. Ouch.
The meme coin dream has turned into a financial nightmare as billions evaporate from an over-hyped market.
Trading volume has collapsed even faster. Weekly trading on Pump.fun — once the hotbed of meme coin creation — dropped 63% from January to February. The platform’s daily trading volume shrank from $184 million to $134 million. New wallet registrations hit their lowest point since November. The party’s clearly winding down.
Even the big names couldn’t escape the carnage. Dogecoin tumbled 21.7% in just the past month. Shiba Inu dropped 10.6%. The much-hyped Trump token? It nosedived from $72 to under $13. Not exactly “winning.”
The real disasters came from high-profile launches that crashed and burned spectacularly. LIBRA, associated with Argentina’s president, collapsed 94%. FARTCOIN — yes, that was really a thing — dropped 87% in one week after January’s initial hype. Most top 200 meme coins have lost about 80% from their peaks. Dreams of lambos quickly turned into nightmares of ramen.
Insider trading concerns have only made things worse. LIBRA developers allegedly pocketed $107 million at launch while regular investors got hammered. Celebrity pump-and-dump schemes left retail traders holding the bag. Economic uncertainty has been cited as a primary reason for the memecoin bubble burst. The lack of technological advancements in these tokens compared to mainstream cryptocurrencies has made them particularly vulnerable to market downturns. Many analysts compare the collapse to the NFT market crash that saw similar patterns of meteoric rise followed by devastating decline. Trust? What trust?
Regulators are finally taking notice. New York legislators have proposed banning presidential meme coins entirely. Argentine lawyers filed fraud complaints over the LIBRA fiasco. The SEC is eyeing celebrity-endorsed tokens with increasing suspicion.
Google searches for “meme coin” tell the final chapter of this saga — plunging from a score of 100 to just 8. The get-rich-quick crowd has moved on, leaving behind empty Discord servers and worthless tokens. The meme coin bubble hasn’t just deflated — it’s completely burst.
