Author: Blockchain Knight

The biggest topic in the industry last week, apart from the sudden crash in the Crypto market, was the various chain reactions of liquidations. Although BTC has fallen from its peak of $100,000 to below $80,000, a drop of only 20%, compared to the many Memecoin that have fallen by more than 80%, BTC seems to be relatively mild.

Through the chart below, we can see the current situation of the Memecoin market. As the main battlefield, Pump.fun, its trading volume on Ray has dropped from a peak of over $3 billion per day to about $144 million currently, a drop of more than 95%, naturally corresponding to the overall market decline.

Of course, in a sense, it is hard to imagine that the rate of decline will be so fast, as it has only been 1 month, and the Meme craze that has lasted for half a year seems to have already fallen into the bottom.

Faced with the decline in various trading data and the plummeting market value of related Meme, the market has also been filled with mockery of Meme and various big shots have started to make fun of those arrogant PVP players last week, so is the narrative of the Meme movement, which started as an anti-VC movement, only left with death?

First, let's briefly review the "history" of Meme and look at its value at the origin.

Meme itself is not a sudden outbreak in the past year or more, it has existed since the dawn of BTC, that is, when the Internet began to become popular, Meme has already taken root in people's hearts, all kinds of weird emoticons or various Internet cultural terms can be called Meme.

The earliest (2013) Memecoin introduced into the Crypto market is DOGE, which still has a market value of $30 billion and has been popular for more than 10 years. Of course, previously Meme was mainly mentioned as a single asset in the Crypto industry, far from forming a cultural narrative similar to the Internet, until last year Meme became the representative of anti-VC, it suddenly grew into a topic worth attention and participated by the entire industry.

Subsequently, with the participation of various celebrities and traffic organizations in the Meme wave (especially the huge money-making effect), we ushered in the "Meme Summer", and gradually evolved from a single asset category to the largest and hottest narrative in the industry.

Through the chart below on the market value changes of Memecoin over the past year, we can see the huge impact of this narrative, the overall market value soared from $36 billion to a peak of $137 billion in just 3 months, the terrifying growth rate, of course, the current decline is also quite fast.

Later, at the end of 2024, we saw the Meme story begin to evolve from a pure traffic narrative to some empowering Meme related to Agent, DeFAI and Desci, and Meme itself has also changed from the worthless thing in everyone's mouth to a way of issuance with certain specific functions.

Finally, what really brought the climax of Meme, but also brought "death", was the political Meme related to Trump, which has now become the most complained point, since then, this grand drama began to fall.

Looking back on this Meme wave, we came from anti-VC, but in the end were killed by another hand, experienced exaggeration, and stepped through countless potholes, but failed to escape the fate of being washed away, falling into nothing but another form of VC harvesting.

From these starting points, people are still anti-VC, still full of respect for the traffic in the industry, and from this logic, the "breeding ground" of Meme seems to have not changed, so it will still exist, at least it will not disappear.

Secondly, since the end of last year, some MEME have already broken away from the pure story or pure traffic logic and have begun to become a means of value bearing.

Therefore, whether it is IP topics, celebrity effects or issuance methods, this asset category will not disappear, and may even have new evolutions, after all, the things it carries are gradually changing, MEME has also returned from a kind of hype to the logic of "MEME+Agent", "MEME+Desci", "MEME+DeFAI" and other innovative directions.

Finally, looking at the price itself, many Memecoin have already experienced or are experiencing a downturn, so facing them, using the classic lines of "Hamlet" to say, there are only two paths: "To be, or not to be".

And the only ones who decide the direction of these MEME are the community and the teams that dominate the community (including funds), as long as they still have the courage to fight on, these MEME that have fallen into the abyss will have the hope of rebirth, just like DOGE a few years ago. After all, those who cannot kill them will only make them stronger, this is the spirit of Crypto, and also the true value, so let's see which MEME are still building, this is the answer.

Postscript: On the evening of March 2nd, the day after this article was written, Trump posted on social media that the Presidential Working Group is advancing a Crypto asset strategic reserve including XRP, SOL and ADA, which has changed the depressed market situation that has lasted for a week. Will this be a turning point? Even in the trough, we should be full of hope, who knows if the market will "suddenly come like a spring breeze".