Memecoins didn’t die because the market declined and the narrative faded, according to the president of payment infrastructure company MoonPay, Keith A. Grossman, who said Memecoins will return but in a different form.
Grossman said the real innovation of memcoins is that attention can be converted into a token easily and cheaply through blockchain technology, democratizing access to the attention economy. He continued:
“Before cryptocurrencies, attention could only be monetized by platforms, brands, and a small group of influencers. Everyone else was generating value and giving it away for free. Likes, trends, jokes, and communities created massive economic value.”
He added that this value did not flow back to participants and mostly remained confined to large centralized platforms.
Grossman compared the dismal outlook for memecoins 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 a final crop of companies emerged that turned the niche sector into a cultural phenomenon.
Memecoins were one of the best-performing crypto asset sectors in 2024 and were the top narrative that year among cryptocurrency investors, according to cryptocurrency market data platform CoinGecko.
However, sharp criticism that memes and other social tokens have no value, and several high-profile token collapses eventually led to the market crashing and investors turning away from 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 after several high-profile token collapses and large withdrawals that were described as “rug pulling.”
US President Donald Trump launched memecoin ahead of his inauguration in January 2025, which reached a peak of $75 before collapsing more than 90% to around $5.42 at the time of this writing, according to CoinMarketCap.
Javier Miley, the president of Argentina, backed a social token called Libra in February, which also collapsed, leaving 86% of LIBRA holders with realized losses of $1,000 or more.
The token reached a market cap of $107 million before its collapse, and was described as a huge draw by the cryptocurrency community.
Although Miley tried to distance himself from the token launch, a government investigation was launched into Miley’s involvement, which culminated in lawsuits from retail investors and calls for the impeachment of Argentine lawmakers.
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