Investment products that utilize traditional finance have reached record highs, but appetite for speculative assets remains weak in the virtual currency market.
According to cryptocurrency data platform CryptoQuant, speculative appetite among cryptocurrency investors has cooled, and the dominance of memecoins over altcoins has hit a two-year low in February 2024.
“The meme coin market is over,” CryptoQuant co-founder and CEO Ki Young Ji wrote in a post on Thursday.
By contrast, assets under management in traditional leveraged exchange traded funds (ETFs) hit a record high of $239 billion in the third quarter of 2025, according to Bloomberg data shared by Barchart, and stock investors are increasingly speculative.
The move signals waning enthusiasm for high-risk digital assets as speculative appetite recalibrates towards regulated TradFi leveraged products in less volatile stock markets.
Lacey Chan, a market analyst at BitGet Wallet, told Cointelegraph that this market trend signals the maturation of the crypto and equity markets, as risk-taking is “expressed through regulated, familiar products with prescribed safeguards” rather than meme coins that suffer from “thin” liquidity and regulatory uncertainty.
“A revival will likely require strong catalysts such as new viral stories, major exchange listings, and bold price action to reignite retail interest.”
Related: Bitcoin Treasuries Stall in Q4, but Largest Holders Continue to Accumulate Funds
Cryptocurrency investor sentiment has yet to recover from the October market crash
Cryptocurrency investors’ appetite for most cryptocurrencies, not just meme coins, remains muted since the record market crash in early October.
According to CoinMarketCap’s Fear & Greed Index, crypto investor sentiment has recovered slightly from the “extreme fear” level of 10 recorded on November 23rd, but the current reading of 29 still indicates “fear” and remains well below the “greed” level of 62 on October 7th, before the $19 billion crypto market crash.
Meanwhile, the crypto industry’s most profitable traders, tracked as “smart money” traders on Nansen’s blockchain intelligence platform, are betting on the decline of major meme coins and most cryptocurrencies.
According to Nansen data, smart money had a net shortfall of $3.5 million in Fartcoin (FART) and a net shortfall of $1.5 million in Pump.fun (PUMP) tokens.
However, the group is betting on further gains for Ether (ETH) and decentralized exchange HyperLiquid (HYPE) tokens, showing a preference for tokens with blockchain protocols that actually generate revenue.
Related: Cryptocurrency approaches ‘Netscape moment’ as industry approaches inflection point
The positioning of this cohort may also indicate investor fatigue with meme coin launches in past cycles, as troubling data has emerged regarding some of these coins.
On Thursday, Bubble Map blockchain data claimed that approximately 30% of the Genesis supply of PEPE tokens was bundled under an entity that sold $2 million per day after the coin’s debut, calling into question the premise of a fair launch for the meme coin.
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