GuShiio.com The collapse of Memecoin can be traced largely to the launch of Donald Trump’s official Memecoin.
Author: Ryan S. Gladwin
Compilation: Vernacular blockchain
The number of Tokens launched by popular launch platform and cultural center Pump.fun on Wednesday fell 64.6% from its peak in January. At the same time, Token’s weekly graduation rate has also dropped to its lowest level since July 2024, according to Dune data. The so-called “graduation” means that Token has reached a certain market value threshold. The threshold was previously US$69,000, but it was raised to US$100,000 at the end of last year.
The silence led some traders to believe that Memecoin’s casino had closed and would never reopen. Loopify (pseudonym), founder of crypto education platform Pluid, and a trader believe that the Memecoin cycle is over. He pointed out that some data showed that the Memecoin craze had surpassed the peak of the previous NFT bull market.
According to Dune, OpenSea, the most popular NFT market, has generated $943 million in revenue since its launch in 2017, compared with Pump.fun’s revenue since its launch in January 2024, which has exceeded $574 million. Not to mention the revenue generated by trading robots, market makers and other agreements crucial to the Meme economy.
Others looked at the statistics and thought it was time to abandon Pump.fun as the center of the Memecoin ecosystem.
“The era of Pump.fun is over,” Solana Bateman, a pseudonym trader and WIFToken deployer, told Decrypt. “They never gave anything back, but they squeezed too much.” He added: “The difference between us and them is that we care about Solana, this is our home. And all they care about is filling their pockets.”
Such accusations are often directed at the launch platform, with opponents arguing that it has not done enough to grow the market and is simply selling all SOLs generated by the platform-although the founder denies this. Bateman said the platform could be improved by improving Token economics, creating better liquidity pools, or providing a more sustainable model, such as increasing Token unlocking at a specific market value.
“I also agree that Pump.fun’s model is far from perfect, and I know the team has been trying to find ways to improve it,” Pump.fun co-founder Alon Cohen said in an interview with Decrypt.
“After the creation of Token, the design space for managing user incentives was very broad, so it will take time to improve this. However, from day one, Pump.fun has adhered to some principles that I believe are still valid today.”
Cohen said those principles include keeping entry barriers low when creating Tokens while pursuing “simplicity and elegance” because complexity can push retail investors far away. He added that he believed Pump.fun’s standardized contracts would have a “extremely positive impact” on the ecosystem because they reduce the risk of developers creating malicious contracts and being abused.
How did we get here?
Much of Memecoin’s collapse can be traced to the launch of Donald Trump’s official Memecoin, just days before his inauguration in January. The market is filled with fanaticism, as speculators announce a new era for Memecoin and cryptocurrencies.
The next day, Melania Trump launched her own Token, causing TRUMPTToken to plummet-and MELANIA soon followed suit. Moods changed quickly and traders began to realize the “scam”. According to data from DEX Screener, TRUMPToken has fallen 85% from its all-time high, while MELANIA has fallen 94%.
These launched Tokens sucked away the liquidity of Memecoin traders and also created a large number of loss-makers. Rennick Palley, founder of hedge fund Stratos, said in an interview with Decrypt. In the following months, more large MemecoinTokens surged and plunged within 24 hours-causing heavy losses for traders.
Most notably, LIBRA soared to a market value of US$1.17 billion after Argentine President Javier Millay promoted it through social media, but plunged 96% to US$40 million in just six hours. Afterwards, widespread allegations of insider trading broke out, involving multiple major agreements and influential figures, and investigators also found connections between the issuer of the Memecoin and the team behind Melania Trump Memecoin.
As claims that Memecoin is a manipulation game continue to ferment, fears of complete corruption in the industry have reached unprecedented heights. Bateman believes that this is Memecoin’s “last nail”.
“At first,[Memecoin] looked like a casino game,” Nick Vaiman, co-founder and CEO of analytics firm Bubblemaps, told Decrypt in an interview. “But in reality, it’s far worse than that: the game was manipulated from the beginning.” He explained,”Your odds of winning are almost zero because the real winners are destined: the inside runners who know the inside story in advance, the savvy snipers who enter early, and the team behind them.”
For some, this is enough to give up Memecoin and start looking for more stable investments with real value behind them. In an interview with Decrypt, VanEck portfolio manager Pranav Kanade said he expected funds to flow out of Memecoin and flow to “some niche Altcoins” because they provide more psychological comfort. But not everyone is convinced of this.
“Many people don’t like traditional VC-backed Altcoin with big visions,” Loopify told Decrypt,”so they are more likely to stick to a single cultural Token or simply exit the market until new opportunities arise.”
Crypto trader Murad Mahmudov once talked about his Memecoin investment theory, the core of which is to find “sects” and buy the tokens within them. However, according to CoinGecko, none of the tokens on his list have increased in the past seven days.
In addition, macroeconomic pressures are also pushing the overall market downward. According to TradingView, Bitcoin (BTC) has fallen 17% since the launch of LIBRA, the S & P 500 has fallen 2.7% in the past month, and the Trump administration’s tariff policies have exacerbated market instability.
“Global liquidity has declined recently, and Memecoin is particularly sensitive to this change,” Palley said, predicting,”It looks like liquidity has bottomed out and Memecoin may recover in the next few months.”
Some traders in the market also agree with this view. 0xWinged, a trader with the pseudonym Memecoin, believes that the market has overreacted and predicts that Solana will soon rebound to $170, and market liquidity will also flow back into the Memecoin field.
“In the final analysis, human nature likes gambling. With the subsequent recovery of market liquidity, I believe that the funds participating in gambling will also increase.” Palley said, adding,”Memecoin will continue to exist.”
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