Keith A., president of payments infrastructure company MoonPay. Memecoins aren’t dead because the market is down and the narrative has faded, according to Grossman, who said memecoins will come back but in a different form.
The real innovation of Memecoin, Grossman said, is that attention can be tokenized easily and at low cost through blockchain technology, thereby democratizing access to the attention economy. He continued:
“Before crypto, attention could only be monetized by a small group of platforms, brands, and influencers. Everyone else generated value and gave it away for free. Likes, trends, inside jokes, and communities created massive economic value.”
However, that value did not return to participants and remained mostly trapped by large, centralized platforms, he said.
Grossman compared the gloomy memecoin outlook among analysts to predictions of the demise of social media in the early 2000s after the first generation of social platforms failed, before the rise of a group of companies that turned the niche into a cultural phenomenon.
According to crypto market data platform CoinGecko, memecoins were one of the best-performing crypto asset sectors in 2024 and the top narrative that year among crypto investors.
However, sharp criticism that Memecoin and other social tokens have no value and several high-profile token busts eventually sent the market into crisis and investors had to move on from the narrative.
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President’s actions and the collapse of the memecoin sector
The memecoin market collapsed in Q1 2025 following several high-profile token collapses and significant declines, which was known as the “rug pull.”
United States President Donald Trump launched a memecoin ahead of his January 2025 inauguration, which reached a peak of $75 before falling more than 90% to around $5.42 at the time of this writing, according to CoinMarketCap.
Argentina’s President Javier Meili endorsed a social token called Libra in February, which also crashed, causing 86% of Libra holders to lose $1,000 or more.
Before its collapse the token had reached a market capitalization of $107 million and was known as a rug puller by the crypto community.
Although Miley attempted to distance herself from the token launch, a government investigation into Miley’s involvement was launched, culminating in lawsuits from retail investors and calls for impeachment from Argentinian lawmakers.
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