Solana loses a third of its market cap — is memecoin season officially over?

According to some of the biggest names in crypto, the peak of memecoin mania has passed.

With the sitting president of a G20 country facing initial impeachment proceedings for promoting a memecoin, every Trump family memecoin negative since listing on a major US exchange, and memecoin platforms targeted for money-laundering of billion-dollar hacks, it might seem as though the bubble has popped.

Even Solana, the host blockchain for most memecoins, has shed one-third of its market capitalization over the last month.

People, it appears, are sick of losing money in memecoins. TRUMP has declined over $11 billion since its peak, MELANIA is down 90%, and investors lost untold millions in Argentina’s LIBRA, Central African Republic’s CAR, and countless offerings by celebrities and brands.

These projects include those launched by Dave Portnoy, Changpeng Zhao, Enron, Vine, John McAfee, Donald Trump’s inauguration pastor, the Hawk Tuah girl, and thousands more.

Savvy investors have noticed a pattern: endless supply and dwindling demand.

Even before they rallied to unimaginable heights, many crypto veterans suspected that memecoins would follow the same pattern as the metaverse craze, NFT bubble, DeFi Summer, ICO winter, or other season-long crypto fads.

Trends in crypto are hot for a few months and then nobody wants to touch them.

No value except for vibes and feels

The problem with memecoins is particularly acute, however: They are self-described as worthless. As opposed to utility tokens, yield-bearing farms, artwork-owning NFTs, or other types of utility, most memecoin founders often explicitly promise no value to token holders and that they’ll provide no long-term development.

This is a tactic to avoid the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and its disclosure requirements. By promising nothing, memecoin creators slide under the radar of the Howey test for investment contracts.

Read more: Abolish the SEC! A decade of battling crypto’s top regulator

Cyclical history of memecoin seasons

Memecoins have existed at least as long as the creation of Dogecoin and Counterparty tokens in 2013. Although the recent wave of mostly Solana memecoins seems to have crested, a few weeks of decline is probably too little to claim as evidence that memecoins will never recover.

Since 2013, many memecoin seasons have come and gone. There was one amid the ICO boom of 2017, and then in spring 2021, Dogecoin rallied tens of thousands of percentage points and spawned multi-billion dollar dog coins like Shiba Inu.

In late 2023, another so-called “memecoin supercycle” sent prices of DOGE, SHIB, MOODENG, and PNUT thousands of percentage points higher.

Most recently, in January 2025, at least presidents of the US, Argentina, and the Central African Republic launched tokens on Solana with many believing that this marked the permanent top.

Perhaps it was. Or perhaps memecoins will emerge again in future years — as they have cycled throughout the past decade.

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