Author: Eli Nuss Source: Jinse Finance, @nuss_eli Translator: Shan Eoba, Jinse Finance
Over the past year, Memecoins have been the best performing sector in the cryptocurrency space. The total market cap of Memes has now surpassed $100 billion. This makes it larger than DeFi, and larger than the sum of Defi, Gaming, and Metaverse.
Given the scale and diversity of this asset class, we've attempted to map it out to find opportunities.
We looked at the top performing tokens each quarter, and our hypothesis was confirmed - memecoins have dominated the top spots each quarter. $POPCAT, $WIF, JPMorgan, and $MYRO were the best performers in Q1.
$PONKE, S&P 500 Index, $TURBO, Gigabyte, $Vojak, $Bret, and JPMorgan were the best performers in Q2. S&P 500 Index, Gigabyte, Fear & Uncertainty, and $MUMU were the best performers in Q3.
One thing you quickly notice when trying to apply a framework to memecoins is the importance of understanding the metadata. This is true for cryptocurrencies in general, but for memecoins it's amplified by several orders of magnitude. Here's an extended timeline trying to highlight some of the more significant metadata shifts/onsets.
Up until 2021, it was really just Doge. Then Shiba Inu emerged as the first true Doge Killer. People naturally flocked, hoping to replicate Doge's success. This desire to find the "next..." ultimately created a meme. Shib's success led to a variety of other dog/Elon related memes in 2021, making it the first true meme coin meta. This was followed by Pepe in 2023, which spawned a whole host of frog and boy band related memecoins. Then in late 2023 we got Bonk and Wif, cementing Solana as the dominant meme chain. This peaked in the first quarter's large-scale memecoin mania, leading to new memecoins popping up almost weekly or even daily. Things cooled off a bit over the summer after the March peak. @MustStopMurad's understanding of the memecoin community and network effects framework became very popular, leading to a flood of funds into cults like SPX6900. More recently, as BTC has finally started to take off, we're starting to see the mania reignite, with new meme coins forming around @truth_terminal's GOAT, the cute hippo $MOODENG, and PEAUNT RIP.
Now we have so many different metadata to track, we've tried to segment the market by their categories.
As you can see, Dogecoin still dominates the memecoin space, primarily driven by Doge. A few weeks ago when we started compiling this data, the Sentient AI category was almost non-existent, and the Martyr category actually didn't exist at all (RIP OG $Harambe). This just shows how rapidly this asset class is evolving.
Unsurprisingly, Dog Dominance has been on a downward trend since the rise of Pepe.
This trend is likely to continue as new metadata forms and different verticals capture people's attention.
Observing the shifts in the weightings of these different categories over time reveals some interesting trends.
Crypto-cultural currencies like Bitcoin were in vogue in 2023 when there wasn't much new capital entering the space, but from later that year we've seen crypto-culture give way to a broader internet culture ($giga, $npc, ETC.).
As we mentioned earlier, $GOAT and $PEAUNT have suddenly emerged. While there are now a huge number of AI MEME worth 9 figures, it may still be too early to move them out of the meme category into a new one.
Some other categories like Celebrity Tokens and Political MEME saw some growth earlier in the year but have since faded away.
Over time, memecoins will likely become a part of the broader cryptocurrency market, with Doge playing a role akin to BTC. The community may see some cults that never sell, which could persist long-term, but most will likely be fleeting, like we saw with NFTs in 2021.
That said, there is clearly huge opportunity in getting in early on new meme/meta.
I expect the fastest growing categories to be Internet Culture and Sentient AI. Internet memes are already widely recognized and deeply tied to culture, giving them an inherent advantage over most other categories. And Sentient AI combines the most exciting technology with the most volatile asset class. They seem highly likely to continue dominating the meme landscape.
In terms of open space, there's always room for new animals - the zoo of animal tokens (tigers, giraffes, zebras, etc.) on the market is astounding. In terms of completely new things, existing fandoms (superheroes, sports, etc.) seem ripe to be tokenized in some creative way.
