The truth behind the Meme coin frenzy: 6 million Token issuance, 98% drop to zero within 24 hours.

From community jokes to a speculative battlefield worth hundreds of billions of dollars, the evolution speed of Meme币 in the past two years has been ridiculously fast.

In 2024, the entire Meme coin sector experienced a capital surge of over 500%. By early 2025, speculative funds began to frantically withdraw from mainstream coins and poured into various alt Meme coins. How crazy was this craze? A certain former president-themed token reached a market capitalization of $27 billion in less than 24 hours after its launch. In the following weeks, over 700 imitation tokens emerged in the market, among which 192 directly used the names of family members, and 67 even had the audacity to use “official” branding.

Who is leading this game?

The total market capitalization of Meme coins is currently around 63.6 billion USD, with daily trading volume reaching 7.6 billion. But there's quite a bit of fluff in this— the top 10 coins account for 90% of the entire market share. Dogecoin alone accounts for 31.59 billion USD, followed by Shiba Inu at 6.29 billion, and PEPE capturing 3.2 billion. What about the rest? Basically, they are just also-rans.

On-chain data can better illustrate the problem. Currently, 60% of the economic activities in the SOL ecosystem revolve around Meme coins. Telegram trading bots account for 26% of application revenue, issuance platforms account for 23%, wallets 18%, and trading applications 14%. Traditional DEX? A mere 4% is left. What does this indicate? Retail investors now prefer to directly rush using bots and issuance platforms, completely bypassing the normal decentralized exchange process.

Data from mid-2025 shows that the BNB chain captured 45% of the trading volume in Meme coin DEXs, while SOL dropped to 25% and Ethereum was left with only 20%. Why? Because everyone is moving to chains with lower transaction fees. Together, SOL, Base, and BNB account for 95% of new Meme coin issuances. Ethereum's market share in this segment has fallen below 5%.

Issuance Frenzy and Survival Crisis

In January 2025, 1.7 million new Meme coins were issued in a single month. Throughout the entire first quarter, the average monthly issuance exceeded 800,000. The platform Pump.fun has issued over 6 million Meme coins since its creation in 2024.

But here is a harsh truth: Less than 1% of new tokens on Pump.fun can upgrade to mainstream DEX trading. In other words, 99% of coins die on the issuance platform. Even more exaggerated, 60% of new tokens do not survive 24 hours, with most losing more than 97% of their peak value in a rapid crash. The survival rate of new coins beyond 6-12 months? Pathetically low.

Now Pump.fun is facing a federal lawsuit, accused of charging nearly $500 million in fees and issuing over 11 million tokens, of which 98% crashed within 24 hours. This is the true picture of this market.

Volatility and Risk

The daily volatility of Meme coins usually exceeds 11.7%, much higher than Bitcoin or mainstream altcoins. Coins like POPCAT have experienced daily fluctuations of up to 53%. Viral spread on social media, a single tweet from an influencer, or a coordinated pump activity can trigger price fluctuations of over 20% within hours.

The U.S. SEC directly pointed out in its regulatory notice in February 2025 that the market risks of Meme币 are higher than most crypto assets. They also classified many Meme币 as collectibles rather than securities, which means that investor protection is significantly reduced.

80% of new tokens have an active lifecycle of less than 24 hours. Price waterfalls driven by bots and whales can amplify hourly volatility by 6 times. BONK is one of the most volatile major Meme coins, with a price fluctuation correlation of 0.72-0.83 with JEETS, PEPE, and BOME.

The Rule of Robots

On platforms like Pump.fun, up to 80% of early trading volume is driven by sniper bots. These bots can complete trades in less than a second after a new coin liquidity event occurs, accounting for over 70% of wallet interactions within the first 10 blocks.

In the peak period of 2024, a single sniper bot earned over $6.8 million in just one month through Pump.fun, with a single trade return rate as high as 2227 times. Complex bots monitor DEX memory pools, analyze new contract deployments, and can predict thousands of issuances monthly. They also use random wallet rotation and interval simulation to disguise themselves as normal trading flows.

The craziest part is that robot-driven trading can create price spikes of 100-500% within minutes, and then quickly crash and reverse when retail investors follow in. Trading volume bots provide fake liquidity for over 100 new tokens every day.

Scams and Security Vulnerabilities

Since 2025, the cryptocurrency sector (including but not limited to Meme coins) has lost over $2.17 billion. Analysts estimate that up to 95% of newly issued tokens may be scams or low-success-rate projects.

In the Meme coins issued in 2025, less than 15% have undergone any form of smart contract auditing. Among those SOLMeme coins that have been audited, over 25% are marked as having centralized token distribution risks. Over 91% of new Meme coins on the Base chain have at least one security vulnerability.

Automated sandwich attacks and front-running have led to market manipulation in over 35% of low liquidity funding pools. Security incidents related to cross-chain bridging have already caused holders to lose over $190 million before September 2025.

A case of a certain former president-themed token illustrates the issue more clearly: 80% of the token supply was controlled by related parties, resulting in over $350 million in sales and platform fees, but the market value quickly plummeted after reaching a peak of $27 billion.

Who is playing this game?

A survey of American investors shows that about 31% of them reported first encountering cryptocurrency through Meme coins. Younger investors are more active, but most have very small positions, often accounting for less than 1% of their total portfolio.

On the contrary, certain whales may control 20-50% of the circulating supply of a single token. A large number of retail investors enter the market during the mid-term after observing short-term gains, directly exposing themselves to the risk of price reversal.

In 2025, only 21% of the top 100 Meme coins implemented cross-chain mechanisms, with over 13 million wallet addresses interacting with multi-chain bridges. However, the wallet retention rate for multi-chain projects is 17% lower than that of single-chain counterparts.

Topics and Trends

Animal-themed Meme coins (such as DOGE, Shiba Inu, BONK, WIF) will have a total market value exceeding $30 billion in 2025, dominating the entire brand sector. The frog and amphibian theme, led by PEPE, will see daily trading volume surge to over $1.7 billion in July 2025.

Political satire-type Meme coins pushed the trading volume of SOL to $26 billion during major political events in the United States. Coins associated with popular culture can experience daily price peaks of 300-600% during trending tags on platform X.

Interestingly, ultra-deflationary tokens with a burn mechanism account for about 21% of this year's best-performing issues. However, those tokens lacking practical utility and only promising “10x returns” also make up 17% of the daily trending issues, typically fading away within a few weeks after a surge.

By April 2025, less than 10% of the top 100 Meme coins will retain their original themes from the first quarter, with trends changing at an astonishing rate.

Future Prediction

Institutions have provided price predictions: the average price of Meme coin is expected to be $0.0226 in 2025, rising to $0.0278 in 2026 (an increase of 23%), $0.0379 in 2027, stabilizing at $0.0501 in 2028-2029, $0.0572 in 2030, and possibly reaching $0.0811 in 2031—an increase of over 250% compared to 2025.

But these predictions are based on the premise of: application popularization, token utility enhancement, and gradual market maturity. In reality, most Meme coins do not last even 72 hours.

The Power of Social Media

The mention volume of Meme coins related tags is expected to increase by about 53% from January 2024 to 2025. X, Reddit, Discord, and TikTok are the main driving platforms for sentiment. Many projects have Discord or Telegram group members exceeding 50,000 to 100,000.

But there is also a lot of fluff in this. Comment bots and fake accounts exaggerate participation metrics, masking genuine interest. Some projects hold “Meme contests”, AMAs, or NFT giveaways to stimulate viral spread.

Historical Review

During the bear market of 2023-2024, the price of Meme coins dropped by as much as 85%, with over 60% of coins failing to survive for six months. However, between the first and second quarters of 2024, the market value surged by over 550%, surpassing most other crypto sectors.

In early 2024, the top five Meme coins accounted for over 40% of all cryptocurrency speculative trading volume. The annual trading volume surged to over $35 billion. Dogecoin's market capitalization remained above $10 billion throughout the year, while PEPE and FLOKI recorded over 100 times returns from issuance to peak.

By the end of 2024, over 30% of leading Meme coins have added community governance features to enhance resilience. But this does not change the fact that most new coins are still flash in the pan.

Final Advice

The Meme coin sector achieved an average return rate of +1313% in the first half of 2025, becoming the only profitable segment in the cryptocurrency market. Before the third quarter, the average profit and loss was +33.08%.

But behind these numbers is the harsh reality that 95% of new coins may involve scams, 98% of tokens collapse within 24 hours, and 80% of early trades are controlled by bots.

If you still want to play, strict due diligence, on-chain analysis, and community signal monitoring are not optional – they are essential for survival. Otherwise, you are very likely to become a victim among those 98% of collapse cases.