Editor: Nianqing, ChainCatcher
2024 was the year of the meme explosion, with the meme craze permeating the entire year. As of the editorial deadline, CoinGecko data shows that the meme sector has exceeded a trillion dollars. Memes have become not only the battlefield of retail investors, but also the must-have territory for major institutions, CEXs and public chains to compete for traffic.
Compared to the past, which mainly focused on animal-themed memes, 2024 can be said to be a year when anything and everything can become a meme, with unexpected angles. This article reviews the main types of meme hype concepts in 2024, as well as investment and research institutions' predictions for the development trend of memes in 2025.
Top 7 Meme Hype Concepts in 2024
Political Concept Memes
The 2024 US presidential election has spawned and fueled many political concept Altcoins, and on March 5, 2024, CoinGecko has already added a PolitiFi token section.
Political memes can be said to be the earliest and mainly revolve around Trump. In 2023, a Meme token called TRUMP saw a surge of over 1,000%, stunning the community. In the key election year of 2024, various memes named after Trump, Biden, Harris, Pence and other important political figures have once again become a hot spot for speculation. Representative tokens include TRUMP, BODEN, KAMA.
In addition to political figure tokens, slogans and catchphrases from political speeches have also spawned a large number of memes. For example, the Meme coin MAGA named after Trump's campaign slogan "Make America Great Again". The Meme coin FIGHT, themed on the Trump attack incident, saw a significant price increase after Trump posted "FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT!!!!!".
In addition, memes represented by PNUT have also been endowed with the meaning of expressing political demands. A viral squirrel was captured and euthanized without proper communication, which later became a political controversy seeking animal protection and expressing legitimate demands, and the squirrel-named meme PNUT therefore exploded. In addition to PNUT, there are also Altcoins such as the monkey Jorgie being taken away by the police, which are similar memes expressing political demands.
AI Concept Memes
In October, an AI Bot called "Truth Terminal" (@truth_terminal) "talked to itself" and came up with a meme coin name GOAT, and a16z founder Marc Andreessen even bought $50,000 worth of Bitcoin for it. GOAT soared from 0 to $270 million in just 4 days after its creation, a 150-fold price increase, attracting attention from the community.
Since then, various meme coins incorporating AI concepts have been flying around, spawning multiple sub-tracks. AI Agent memes represented by GOAT, GNON, VIRTUA, FUN; AI+infrastructure memes represented by ACT; AI investment DAO memes represented by ai16z; AI+art memes represented by slop; AI+animal memes represented by Shoggoth.
Hot Spot Mapping Memes
This is also a very interesting phenomenon this year, as there are memes mapping to every hot spot. For example, in August 2024, the release of the Chinese 3A game "Black Myth: Wukong" was extremely popular, and soon there were a large number of meme coins such as $WuKong on the chain following this hot spot.
Memes can also easily ride the heat of hot events. In November, when Justin Sun announced that he had bought Maurizio Cattelan's iconic work "Comedian" for $6.2 million, the Meme coin Ban, with Cattelan's banana as the background, rode the wave of Sotheby's banana auction and the interaction with the banana on the SpaceX starship launch.
In addition, if players didn't participate in the Altcoin trading hot spot in time, a group of players would choose to wait for the meme coins of the hot spot concept for trading. On December 2, when the XRP price hit a seven-year high and its market cap surpassed Solana, many people missed the nearly 400% surge in XRP and turned their sights to memes related to XRP. As of around 1pm that day, the 24-hour trading volume in this ecosystem reached over 70M, with over 330,000 transactions, and the $RIPPLE meme named after Ripple surged over 400% in 24 hours, while the $589meme calling for XRP to reach $589 surged over 160% in 24 hours.
DeSci Concept Memes
DeSci, or decentralized science, is not a new concept this year. But in November, when Binance Labs announced an investment in the DeSci concept project BIO Protocol, and CZ and Vitalik discussed their insights on DeSci, several DeSci memes saw a surge, bringing this concept into widespread discussion, with the aim of injecting meme liquidity into fields such as medicine, physics and chemistry.
Representative projects include the DeSci concept meme coins RIF and URO, which come from the meme issuance platform Pump.science launched by the DeSci project Molecule DAO, representing the compounds rifampicin (RIF) and uric acid (URO), with the aim of supporting medicine through meme coins.
RIF and URO did not have high heat when they were first launched, but with the drive of Binance and CZ, they kept hitting new highs, with a market cap reaching nearly $3 million at the highest, a 20-fold increase in two days.
TikTok Concept Memes
Around November 2024, a meme character called ChillGuy went viral on TikTok, a personified character wearing a sweatshirt, jeans and sneakers, hands in his pockets, looking very calm, and very popular with young people, with related videos getting over 20 million views in just two months.
With the popularity of CHILL GUY, a meme coin of the same name was born on the Solana chain, and celebrities like Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and Musk helped it explode by reposting CHILL GUY elements, with $CHILLGUY growing 7,000% in just five days, reaching a peak market cap of over $500 million.
The user group of TikTok and the investors in Altcoins/meme coins may highly overlap, both being Gen Z and millennials, so TikTok may become a generator of meme coin ideas.
In addition to CHILLGUY, there are also MOODENG, APPLE, WAIT, HUZZ, GRIDDY and other TikTok concept Meme coins that have received considerable attention.
Zoo Memes
Zoo memes remain one of the most easily propagated and most resilient narratives. In addition to Doge, this year also saw the rise of newcomers like Neiro and MOODENG.
Neiro is the namesake meme of the new pet adopted by the owner of the Doge prototype, which exploded on the night of Trump's Bitcoin conference speech, overshadowing the NSYB (never sell your bitcoin) meme themed on Trump, and also sparked a debate on the use of uppercase and lowercase letters in memes.
The prototype of MOODENG is a viral baby hippopotamus born in Thailand, and the popularity of MOODENG has also driven the crazy animal city phenomenon on the Solana chain, with penguins PESTO, elephants TOTO, monkeys GEORGIE, beavers BOBR, and frogs omochi all becoming hot spots for speculation.
And under the dominance of Doge, the cat culture meme theme is also a new direction for speculation, giving birth to memes like MEW that represent the concept of "rebelling against dogs", as well as the cat-themed meme MIGGLES that was boosted by Coinbase's promotional video.
In addition, the PNUT meme mentioned earlier, which expresses political demands, also belongs to the animal-themed meme category.
Celebrity Memes
Celebrity memes remain an undeniable direction in meme trading. This year, in addition to Trump and Musk, the issuance of memes by some artists, including entertainment stars, has also become a trend and received great attention.
Earlier this year, the BOOK OF MEME (BOME) issued by Pepe Meme artist Darkfarm went viral on various social platforms, surging 20-fold just three hours after launch, and reaching a market cap of over $1 billion in just three days, while Doge took 4 years to reach a $1 billion market cap.
In the middle of the year, several celebrities released tokens, from Caitlyn Jenner, the transgender stepfather of the Kardashians, who released JENNER, to female rapper Iggy Azalea who released MOTHER, all of which achieved hundreds of times the increase, causing celebrity memes to sweep the crypto community once again.
However, celebrity memes are usually extremely short-lived, and these token releases have been criticized as a quick money grab, with Vitalik once expressing strong dissatisfaction with the experiment of celebrities issuing MEME coins.
2025 Meme Trend Forecast: Larger Scale, AI Meme May Be the Leader
Messari and DWF Labs both believe that the popularity of Meme will continue in 2025. Messari mentioned three aspects that will drive the continued growth of meme.
On the infrastructure side, some high-throughput chains provide ample block space, allowing meme transactions to avoid high fees.
In terms of user experience optimization, applications like Moonshot and Pump.fun continue to lower the entry threshold and simplify the transaction process, which is expected to attract more retail participants.
In addition, the speculative export attribute of meme coins, similar to gambling, may continue to attract users seeking entertainment and profits in the current macroeconomic environment.
Bitwise also predicts that an even larger Meme coin craze is expected to emerge in 2025 compared to 2024, and believes that tokens issued by AI agents will become the leader of this wave.
In addition to AI endowing meme narratives, the Web3 ecosystem incubator Nomos Labs also mentioned that more technologies will empower the development of meme, such as attempts to integrate with NFTs, payment scenarios and DeFi. Nomos Labs believes that technological empowerment will be an important focus in the next stage of Meme coins. "In the long run, only when the technological narrative is implemented, Meme coins may eventually break free from the fate of short-term speculation."
The practicality of meme may also be further highlighted in 2025, with venture capital firm MV Global saying that decentralized science (DeSci) is expected to see significant growth in 2025 driven by the practical application of meme coins.
However, Murad, the meme shill king who exploded in 2024, has a different view, believing that in a bull market, practicality may actually become a constraint, and pure speculation will make Meme coins perform better. However, he also mentioned that future Meme coins may add DeFi functions, develop into investment DAOs, and even create fashion and lifestyle brands.
