From a joke to a financial weapon, Meme coins have really gone big
Speaking of Meme coins, many people's first reaction still sticks to the impression of "community stunts." But the reality is——these things are no longer fringe products.
In 2024, the total market cap of the entire Meme coin sector surged by over 500%. By early 2025, speculative funds withdrew from the market like a tide, flooding into various clone Meme coins. Now? The US SEC has directly classified a large number of Meme coins as "collectibles" rather than securities, with virtually no regulatory protection.
Sounds exciting, right? But behind the excitement is the brutal reality that 98% of tokens will become worthless within 24 hours.
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$TRUMP skyrockets overnight, 700 imitators rush in
On January 17, 2025, $TRUMP suddenly emerged.
In less than a day, its market cap skyrocketed to $27 billion. This number

Elon Musk is causing a stir again.
On November 4th, the "Dogecoin godfather" reposted an old tweet from April 2021 — "SpaceX will send a real Dogecoin to the real moon," accompanied by three words: the time has come.
Once the news broke, the community erupted. DOGE briefly surged from $0.172 to $0.178, but was quickly pushed back by market selling pressure. Compared to the frenzy in 2021 when "a single tweet caused a 30% surge," the reaction this time was much calmer.
What does this indicate? The market has become smarter. Investors today don't fall for empty promises; you have to show some real substance.
This time, it's not just hype.
Back in 2021, a few weeks after Musk's tweet, he officially announced that SpaceX was planning the DOGE-1 lunar mission, and they would only accept Dogecoin as payment.
This project was led by the Canadian company Geometric E

During the National Day holiday, the A-shares market was closed. While stock investors were stuck in highway traffic, the crypto community was already exploding.
Several inexplicable meme coins—Meme4, PALU, and that one called "Binance Life"—saw their market caps multiply dozens of times in just a few days. Early entrants had millions of dollars on paper, people started sharing screenshots in their friend circles, and Twitter influencers were collectively ecstatic.
And then?
Starting October 9, it was a free fall. Some coins dropped 95% in a single day, over 100,000 people got liquidated, with a total amount of $621 million. The myth of overnight riches instantly turned into a bloody tragedy for retail investors.
If this happened on Wall Street
Do you remember the 2021 GameStop incident?
Retail investors on Reddit pumped the stock price of a near-bankrupt game store to the moon, causing short-selling institutions to lose everything. The chairman of the U.S. SEC called it "a milestone in behavioral finance"—no matter how outrageous the price, as long as the trades are real.

Dogecoin was originally a joke by two programmers, but it gradually increased in value due to the enthusiasm of the community, reaching a market capitalization of over $85 billion in 2021. Subsequently, imitation projects like Shiba Inu and PEPE also emerged, indicating that the value of meme coins depends on their virality and community consensus. Participating in meme coins requires identifying with cultural symbols, actively spreading them, and approaching investment with an entertainment mindset, as grassroots culture achieves a counterattack within the financial system.

Once considered a joke in the crypto world, meme coins have now become a speculative battlefield that cannot be ignored. They not only influence capital flows and trends on social media, but even politicians have started issuing their own tokens to ride the hype.
Brands use them for marketing campaigns, and hedge funds test the waters of high volatility with small positions—meme coins are no longer just fringe toys. The data speaks for itself, so let’s take a look at what this wild, fast-growing market really looks like.
The Truth Behind the Market Boom
In 2024, the total capital in the meme coin sector surged more than fivefold, directly leading to a frenzy at the beginning of 2025 as people withdrew from mainstream coins and rushed into various alt-meme coins. This year, the US SEC directly classified most meme coins as “collectibles” rather than securities, meaning there is basically no regulatory protection.
On January 17, $TRUMP burst onto the scene, reaching a market cap of $27 billion in less than 24 hours. The result? Within a few weeks, 7 more appeared...

Something pretty surreal happened in May 2021—a "joke coin" that was created back in 2013 actually broke into the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap.
This surge in Dogecoin left even veteran crypto users baffled. People outside the crypto world were even more shocked: How could something with a Shiba Inu as its logo be worth tens of billions of dollars?
The answer is actually pretty well hidden. It’s in every "To the Moon" comment, in the flood of meme shares, and, most of all, in the energy created by millions of holders coming together on their own.
Today, let’s break down how meme coins work, and why spreading culture is more reliable than constantly watching the charts and hoping for a pump.
From joke to #5 in market cap: how did Dogecoin defy the odds?
The story starts in 2013. Programmers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer were fed up with the rampant speculation in crypto at the time, so they decided to create an "anti-crypto"...

A Polish Trader’s Shocking Moment
When Barry first saw a token labeled in Chinese reach a market cap of over $20 million, he was stunned.
As the co-founder of WOK Labs, this Polish trader runs a European crypto community with hundreds of members. That day, he realized something: is this really how conspiracy coins work?
By the time that token soared to $60 million, and even surpassed $100 million, his Discord group had exploded. A bunch of people were frantically depositing into the BSC chain, having no idea why the price was rising—just knowing that it was skyrocketing.
This wasn’t an isolated case.
On-chain data shows that on October 8th, BSC’s trading volume surged to $6.05 billion. This number has returned to the levels seen during the mechanism coin frenzy of 2021. But this time, the leaders weren’t DeFi projects, but a wave of Chinese meme coins.
That day, over 100,000 people…

Musk has sparked attention again by announcing that SpaceX plans to send Dogecoin to the moon, stating that "the time has come." This mission will be led by Geometric Energy Corporation and will use DOGE as payment, making it the first space project to rely entirely on cryptocurrency. Although the market response has been lukewarm, the practical significance of DOGE has increased, demonstrating the potential of cryptocurrency in the real economy. The launch is scheduled for December 2025 and will serve as a key technology test.

Lately, I’ve been bombarded with questions: What on earth are $PING and $PAYAI doing? The price isn’t moving, but there sure seem to be a lot of changes.
One is clearly a MEME coin but insists on launching a Launchpad; the other should be focusing on building tools, but suddenly wants to migrate and change pools. For those not in the loop, it almost looks like they’re planning an exit scam.
But if you think about it, the choices these two projects are making actually make a lot of sense.
Why all the fuss?
$PING’s dilemma is obvious—being a pure MEME means it relies entirely on consensus and sentiment. Without real use cases, it’s just a castle in the air, ready to collapse at any moment. Sparking the x402 narrative track was a good start, but relying solely on concepts like “chat-to-mine” just can’t hold up in a bear market.
So pivoting to Launchpad is a smart move. Becoming a platform token means every new project launch is a new empowerment opportunity. Even if the first few projects flop, as long as there’s a…

The market has entered a bear phase, liquidity has dried up, buy orders have decreased, and both developers and token holders are leaving. Although MEME coins briefly provided a solution against high FDV coins, they lack long-term value. Exchanges are gradually becoming more internalized, making self-rescue increasingly difficult. Projects are facing a survival crisis, and the crypto industry urgently needs technological innovation to revitalize the sector.