Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Wenser (@wenser 2010 )
Without a doubt, when the market is in the "market leader" stage, the only performance opportunity falls on the MEME coin projects, and more and more market attention is beginning to shift to the MEME coin sector.
Data shows that the search volume for "Bitcoin" on the search engine Google reached a one-year low in the week of October 12, with the search indicator dropping to 33 on weekends, while the "memecoins" search indicator was 77 during the same period. Although it has not yet broken through the historical high set in late October 2023 (100), compared to Bitcoin, MEME coins have undoubtedly become the most concerned topic and field for the general public in recent times.
The question that follows is: Is there an excessive bubble phenomenon in the MEME coin track? How high is the ceiling of MEME coin projects? With such a dense "shill fever", has the MEME coin track reached its peak? Odaily Planet Daily will briefly analyze the MEME coin track in this article and look at the future market performance of MEME coins from the data dimension.
MEME Coin Sector Performance: Market Cap Accounts for Less Than 2.5% But Top 100 Accounts for 10%
According to Coingecko website data, the overall MEME coin sector is currently around $58 billion, which is only 2.4639% of the industry's total market capitalization of $2.354 trillion, less than 2.5%.
Previously, the crypto KOL and crypto trader Ansem, known as the "MEME coin shill king" and the "No. 1 on-chain meme promoter", wrote: "The overall crypto funds flowing into MEME coins are insufficient (500 billion out of 2.2 trillion market cap, accounting for 2.5%), but they have a trend of gradually gaining more attention.
The best trades in the next 4 months will determine which MEME coins have the following characteristics: 1) Long accumulation period; 2) Passionate community on X platform (i.e. Twitter); 3) Easy to associate with the general public."
Interestingly, someone in the comments mentioned that MOG meets the 3 requirements mentioned by Ansem, and as the "MOG shill leader", Ansem did not hesitate to positively affirm it, saying: "So True."
Screenshot of Ansem's statement
In contrast to the market cap ratio, we can now see more and more MEME coin projects among the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap.
Coingecko website information shows that currently the top MEME coin projects occupy 10% of the top 100 market cap, with the top projects being: Doge, SHIB, PEPE, WIF, BONK, FLOKI, POPCAT, BRETT, NEIRO (lowercase projects), MOG; among the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap, Doge ranks 9th with a market cap of $16.57 billion.
If we compare the crypto industry to a country, this "country's" overall economic scale, the MEME coin "economic system" currently only accounts for 2.5% of the total GDP; but among the "companies" in the top 100 of this "economic system", 10 "companies" belong to the MEME coin track.
In comparison, in 2023, the total revenue of the companies on the Fortune 500 list in the US was $18.1 trillion, accounting for 71% of the country's GDP that year; in 2024, the total revenue of the top 500 companies in the US rose to $18.8 trillion, an increase of about 4% from the previous year; the total revenue of the listed companies accounts for two-thirds of the US GDP.
Of course, it is extremely ridiculous to compare the crypto industry with a market cap of just over $2 trillion to the US economy with a GDP of tens of trillions of dollars, but we can clearly see that: Compared to the relatively fixed market cap range of the crypto industry ($2 trillion-$3 trillion), the market cap of the MEME coin sector is undoubtedly in a strong growth trend in this cycle.
The Heroes of the MEME Coin Track: Solana Ecosystem + pump.fun's Pioneering "One-Click Minting" Model
According to market data, in 2024, the MEME coin marketoutperformed all other crypto sectors, and there are no signs of slowing down.
Relevant statistics from an article in June
According to Step Finance website data, since September 12, 497,153 new token projects have been created on the Solana network.
Solana Floor previously stated that on October 8, nearly 20,000 new token projects were launched on Solana, most of which were MEME coin projects. On October 12, it posted that the total market cap of the MEME coin sector on Solana exceeded $10 billion, with a 24-hour trading volume of about $2.3 billion.
At its core, the prosperity of MEME coins is mainly due to the following 3 aspects:
The approval of Bitcoin spot ETF and Ethereum spot ETF, leading to the concentration of mainstream capital
Many crypto VC projects "mint tokens without results", further draining market liquidity
Continuous development of the Solana ecosystem, and the pioneering "one-click minting" model of pump.fun
Because mainstream capital is concentrated in ETF investment portfolios, new entrants to the crypto industry will focus more on the MEME coin sector with propagation effect, wealth effect, and herd effect; because many crypto VC projects have not achieved any impressive results after going through the previous bear market, but they want to "seize the bull market opportunity and mint tokens quickly to profit", they are queuing up to mint tokens on the platform, and then disappear without a trace, further draining the already limited market liquidity, causing further vicious cycles; while the continuous construction of the Solana ecosystem and the pioneering "one-click minting" model of pump.fun have on the one hand further lowered the threshold for minting, truly realizing the vision of "everyone can mint tokens"; on the other hand, MEME coins have become the "new growth point" of different blockchain network ecosystems, such as the TRON, Base, and SUI ecosystems, which have gained tremendous market attention, capital liquidity, and ecological attention through MEME coins.
The Establishment of the MEME Coin Super Cycle: Universal Celebration, Market Cap Ratio Close to 10%, and $100 Billion Projects Appearing
In my personal opinion, if the crypto industry gradually enters a major bull market in this cycle, according to the normal distribution law, the market cap ratio of MEME coins should be at least close to or on par with the ratio of the top 100 projects, i.e. the market cap of the MEME coin sector should be around 8%-10% of the total crypto market cap.
Previously, the peak market capitalization of the cryptocurrency industry was over $3 trillion in November 2021, in other words, in a highly optimistic scenario, the potential market of the Meme coin sector still has 4-5 times growth potential.
Industry OG, crypto KOL, and investor Murad previously mentioned in a speech: "The super cycle of Meme coins is not a prophecy about the future, but something that is happening now." Furthermore, he also mentioned that among the top 300 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, only 43 tokens have outperformed Bitcoin, and among them, Meme coins are undoubtedly the main sector.
Murad's speech-related data in September
In a recent tweet, Murad mentioned: "The number of Meme coin holders in the Ethereum and Solana ecosystems is growing rapidly, and we are still in the early stages of the Meme coin super cycle."
Meme coin projects with rapidly growing holder numbers in the past 30 days
Crypto KOL and veteran Meme coin player Neso previously expressed his personal views on the future development of the Meme coin sector: "What kind of market conditions can be considered a Meme coin super cycle? At least the following key indicators need to be met:
The total market capitalization of the Meme coin sector reaches or exceeds $300 billion (which will be about 5%-8% of the peak cryptocurrency market capitalization of this cycle);
At least 1 Meme coin with a market capitalization of over $100 billion;
5-10 Meme coins with a market capitalization of over $10 billion;
At least one Meme coin that is reported by mainstream global media, chased by celebrity fans, and experiences a nationwide FOMO."
It is worth mentioning that, as the "Meme coin progenitor", the peak market capitalization of Doge was on May 8, 2021, when it was under the push of the "tech genius" Musk and a frenetic fan base, its market capitalization once exceeded $100 billion, reaching a price of $0.7316 per Doge and a total market capitalization of $107 billion, accounting for about 4.65% of the total cryptocurrency market capitalization at the time, although the stage of cryptocurrency industry development at that time was completely different from today, and it had not yet reached the peak of the cryptocurrency industry market capitalization, but it still has extraordinary reference value for the "ceiling" of the current Meme coin projects' development. (At the same time, the price of Bitcoin was around $57,361; the total cryptocurrency market capitalization was about $2.3 trillion)
We have reason to believe that the conditions for the Meme coin super cycle to be fully established are still not mature, and in the current increasingly tense global political and economic situation, cryptocurrencies as assets with certain hedging properties will inevitably receive more and more attention.
In the future, under the atmosphere of nationwide frenzy, 1-3 Meme coin projects with a market capitalization of over $100 billion are entirely possible, and the total market capitalization of the Meme coin sector may even break through $300-500 billion.
After all, as CryptoQuant CEO and founder Ki Young Ju mentioned, "Due to the continued high market interest in Meme coin-related digital assets, the search volume for Memecoins may recover to its previous historical high by the end of October 2024."
Summary: The Meme coin super cycle will arrive in 2025
A report from the crypto asset management firm Matrixport shows that the global adoption of cryptocurrencies is approaching an important milestone, with currently 7.51% of the global population using cryptocurrencies.It is expected that by 2025, this figure will exceed 8%, marking the transition of cryptocurrencies from a niche market to the mainstream financial system.
In addition, the CMC Research department of CoinMarketCap Q3 market research report mentioned that "the Bitcoin bull market cycle is accelerating, with this bull market arriving 100 days earlier than the typical four-year cycle. Multiple factors indicate that Bitcoin may enter a super cycle, driven by institutional adoption, BTC exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and constantly changing market dynamics. This bull market is expected to peak between mid-May and mid-June 2025, although there is some early acceleration, there are signs that infrastructure growth is slowing, which may indicate broader market dynamics are changing."
As Murad previously stated, 2025 will be "the year when Meme coins rise and fall like a parabola."
In other words, the bull market in 2025 is promising, and Meme coins will also shine brightly in the cryptocurrency industry, which is no longer a niche.
