From Peak to Valley: The Rise and Fall of Meme Coins in the Crypto Market and the Astonishing Scandals Behind It
In 2024, meme coins created a frenzy in the crypto market, but now their glory is gone. After the hype subsided, naked swimmers and fraudsters are nowhere to hide.
The popfun project is a microcosm of the market's decline, with its issuance peak in January plummeting 64% compared to now, and the proportion of projects with a market cap exceeding $100,000 has also dropped to its lowest point since July 2024. Trump bears undeniable responsibility for this round of meme coin collapse. He released Trump tokens two days before taking office, with a market cap surpassing $80 billion within two days, triggering market excitement. The tokens subsequently launched by Melania also attracted attention. However, shortly after, these tokens rapidly crashed, with Melania tokens plummeting by as much as 94%, and the market instantly sobered up. This farce drained funds from the meme coin sector and rang alarm bells for traders. Meanwhile, the rug pull behavior of the Libra project completely shattered market confidence.
Zhao Changpeng, founder of BN, pointed out through his family office Eclabs that meme coins have lost their development momentum due to weak fundamentals, with VC profit benchmarks dropping to three times, far below the peak return rate of 563 times. For this reason, Zhao advocates for a more cautious token release mechanism. However, BSC still faces numerous challenges in incubating the meme ecosystem, as its infrastructure is weak, with TPS just over 400, and bottlenecks such as traps and transaction capacity. In the future, projects with technology, practicality, and solid fundamentals will be the direction for meme coin development, such as data on-chain and SQV that cannot be controlled by project parties.
The behind-the-scenes founder of the Libra project, Hayden Davis, can be regarded as a market disruptor. Previously, Libra's eight wallets cashed out $107 million, wiping out $4 billion in market value and was wanted by Interpol. But just after the storm passed, he launched a new project, Wolf, which immediately plummeted by 99%. At the beginning of March, he launched Wolf meme coin with the news of Wall Street's wolf, and although its market cap once soared, it was accused of having a model similar to the old tokens, suspected of manipulating the market and building a mouse warehouse. Now, on March 6th, New York City legislators submitted a bill planning to establish criminal penalties for meme coin fraud. In the current environment where market supervision is not yet perfect, investors must be extremely cautious when investing in meme coins and must not blindly enter the market. #你看好哪一个山寨币ETF将通过? #稳定币激增