Memecoin Market Map: A $120 Billion Asset Class

Original title: Memecoin Market Map – a $120 Billion Asset Class

Author: Eli Nuss

Compiled by: Scof, ChainCatcher

Over the past year, Memecoin has been the best performing sector of the cryptocurrency market. Today, Memecoin’s total market cap has surpassed $100 billion, surpassing the combined total of DeFi, DePin, gaming, and the metaverse.

As the scale and diversity of this asset class continues to grow, we attempt to create a map of the market to identify the opportunities within it.

We analyzed the best performing Memecoins from each quarter this year, and the results confirmed our hypothesis:Memecoin led the market every quarter. In the first quarter, $POPCAT, $WIF, $MOG and $MYRO were the best performers;

In the second quarter, $PONKE, $SPX, $TURBO, $GIGA, $WOJAK, $BRETT and $MOG stood out; in the third quarter, $SPX, $GIGA, $FUD and $MUMU led the way.

When attempting to formulate a methodology for the Memecoin market, one thing is very clear: understanding the “meta” (cultural trends and movements) is crucial. While this is generally applicable to cryptocurrencies, it is particularly important for Memecoin, with a much greater impact than other categories. Below is an expanded timeline aimed at highlighting some important meta changes and emerging trends.

Until 2021, the Memecoin market was almost solely dominated by Doge. Then Shiba Inu was launched as the first true “Doge Killer”, and people naturally flocked to him, hoping to replicate Doge’s success. This search for the “next XX” mentality is at the origin of the formation of Meta. The success of Shiba Inu gave rise to various Memecoins related to dogs and Elon Musk, making 2021 the first true Memecoin Meta. Then, in 2023, the launch of Pepe Coin led to a wave of Memecoins related to frogs and the “boys club”, while the subsequent launch of Bonk and Wif coins established Solana as the dominant chain for Memecoins, eventually leading at Pump.fun. In the first quarter of 2023, the Memecoin market erupted into widespread frenzy, with new Metas emerging almost every week, if not daily. After reaching a local peak in March, the market slowed slightly during the summer. As Bitcoin began to break out, market enthusiasm increased again, with new metas continuing to emerge, including @truth_terminal’s $GOAT, $MOODENG (the cute hippo coin), and $PEANUT.

Today, the Memecoin market has seen an overflow of metas and we are trying to break down the market into different categories.

As you can see, Dogecoin remains the dominant sector in the Memecoin market, mainly 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 was not showing significant performance (although one must respect the OG $Harambe piece). This is enough to demonstrate the rapid evolution of the Memecoin market.

Unsurprisingly, since the launch of Pepe Coin, Dogecoin’s dominance began to gradually decline.

It looks like this trend will continue, as new metas continue to emerge and different sectors are brought into the spotlight.

From the changes in market capitalization by category, several interesting trends emerge.

For example, the Crypto Culture category of Memecoins (like $bitcoin) attracted some attention in 2023, especially when relatively little new capital was entering the market at that time. However, with the influx of new capital towards the end of the year, the Crypto Culture category gradually gave way to broader Internet culture (like $giga, $npc, etc.).

As mentioned earlier, the rapid rise of $GOAT and $PEANUT is also quite surprising. Although it may still be too early to put them into new categories, it is evident that there are many AI-related Memecoins today, with market capitalizations already reaching nine figures.

Additionally, early celebrity tokens and politically connected Memecoins saw some growth, but most have gradually cooled off since then.

Over time, Memecoins could potentially become a fractal of the entire cryptocurrency market, with Dogecoin’s status akin to that of Bitcoin (BTC). Some “cult pieces” will benefit from the loyal support of the community and will exist for the long term; However, most Memecoins may be ephemeral like NFTs in 2021.

However, it is clear that there are significant opportunities to quickly access new metas.

I predict the fastest growing categories in the future will be internet culture and self-aware AI. Internet culture is already widely recognized and has a rich cultural foundation, giving it a clear advantage over other categories. Self-aware AI combines the most interesting technology with the most volatile asset class, and it could continue to dominate the Memecoin market in the future.

As for free market space, there will always be room for new animal species – many animals are currently missing from the market, including some exotic ones (like tigers, giraffes, zebras, etc.). When it comes to entirely new categories of Memecoins, existing fan cultures (like superheroes, sports, etc.) can be symbolized in creative ways.