Keith A. Grossman, president of payments infrastructure company MoonPay, said memecoins are not dead just because the market is down and the story is fading, and that they will come back in a different form.
The real innovation of MemeCoin, Grossman said, is that attention can be easily and cheaply tokenized through blockchain technology, democratizing access to the attention economy. He continued:
“Before cryptocurrencies, only platforms, brands, and a few influencers could monetize attention. Everyone else created value and gave it away for free. Likes, trends, inside jokes, and communities created enormous economic value.”
But that value is not returned to participants, he added, and remains largely locked away in large, centralized platforms.
Grossman compared the dire outlook for meme coins among analysts to predictions of the demise of social media in the early 2000s, before the failure of the first generation of social platforms and the rise of the latter group of companies, which turned a niche sector into a cultural phenomenon.
According to crypto market data platform CoinGecko, meme coins were one of the best-performing crypto asset sectors in 2024 and the top topic among crypto investors that year.
But sharp criticism that meme coins and other social tokens have no value, and the implosion of several high-profile tokens, ultimately cratered the market and turned investors away from the story.
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Presidential Antics and the Downfall of the Meme Coin Sector
The memecoin market collapsed in Q1 2025 following several high-profile token collapses and a significant drawdown characterized as a “lag pull.”
According to CoinMarketCap, US President Donald Trump issued a meme coin ahead of his inauguration in January 2025, which peaked at $75, but has fallen more than 90% to around $5.42 at the time of writing, according to CoinMarketCap.
Argentina’s President Javier Millay endorsed a social token called Libra in February, but Libra also tanked, leaving 86% of Libra holders with realized losses of $1,000 or more.
The token reached a market capitalization of $107 million before collapsing and was characterized as a juggernaut by the crypto community.
Although Millay tried to distance himself from the token launch, a government investigation into his involvement began, leading to lawsuits from individual investors and calls for impeachment from Argentine lawmakers.
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