Memecoins are not dead because the market is down and the narrative has faded, according to the president of payments infrastructure company MoonPay, Keith A. Grossman, who said memecoins will be back but in a different form.
The real innovation of memecoins is that attention can be symbolized easily and inexpensively using blockchain technology, democratizing access to the attention economy, Grossman said. He continued:
“Before crypto, attention could only be monetized by platforms, brands, and a small group of influencers. Everyone generated value and distributed it for free. Likes, trends, inside jokes, and communities created massive economic value.”
However, this value is not returned to participants and remains largely trapped by large centralized platforms, he added.
Grossman compared the dismal outlook on memecoin among analysts to predictions of the demise of social media after the failure of the first generation of social platforms in the early 2000s, before the rise of a final cohort of companies that transformed the niche sector into a cultural phenomenon.
Memecoins were one of the top performing crypto asset sectors in 2024 and were the top narrative that year among crypto investors, according to crypto market data platform CoinGecko.
However, sharp reviews that memecoins and other social tokens have no value and that several high-profile token implosions ultimately caused the market to crater and investors left the narrative.
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Presidential antics and the fall of the memecoin sector
The memecoin market collapsed in the first quarter of 2025 following several high-profile token collapses and significant declines referred to as “rug pulls.”
President of the United States, Donald Trump launched a memecoin before the January 2025 inauguration, which reached a high of $75 before collapsing by more than 90% at around $5.42 as of this writing, according to at CoinMarketCap.
Javier Milei, the president of Argentina, approved a social token called Libra in February, which also crashed, leaving 86% of LIBRA holders with realized losses of $1,000 or more.
The token had reached a market capitalization of $107 million before its collapse and was characterized as carpet traction by the crypto community.
Although Milei tried to distance yourself from the launch of the tokena government investigation was launched into Milei’s involvement, which resulted in prosecution to individual investors and calls for impeachment Argentinian legislators.
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