Original title: Memecoin Market Map - a $120B Asset Class
By Eli Nuss
Compiled by: Scof, ChainCatcher
Memecoin has been the best performing sector in the crypto market over the past year. Today, Memecoin’s total market capitalization has exceeded $100 billion, surpassing the sum of DeFi, DePin, games, and the metaverse.
As this asset class continues to grow in size and diversity, we seek to map the market to identify opportunities.
We analyzed the best performing Memecoins in each quarter of this year, and the results confirmed our conjecture - Memecoin has dominated the market in each quarter. In the first quarter, $POPCAT, $WIF, $MOG, and $MYRO were the best performers;
In the second quarter, $PONKE, $SPX, $TURBO, $GIGA, $WOJAK, $BRETT and $MOG performed outstandingly; in the third quarter, $SPX, $GIGA, $FUD and $MUMU led the way.
When trying to develop a methodology for the Memecoin market, one thing that became very apparent is that understanding the "meta" (cultural trends and trends) is critical. While this is true in cryptocurrencies in general, it is particularly important for Memecoin, more than any other category. Below is an expanded timeline designed to highlight some of the important Meta changes and emerging trends.
Until 2021, the Memecoin market was pretty much all Doge. Then, Shiba Inu was launched as the first true “Dogecoin killer”, and people naturally flocked to it in hopes of replicating Doge’s success. This mentality of people looking for the “next XX” is the root of the formation of Meta. Shiba Inu’s success gave rise to various Memecoins related to dogs and Elon Musk, and in 2021 became the first real Memecoin Meta. Then, in 2023, the launch of Pepe coin led to a large number of Memecoins related to frogs and “boys club”, while Bonk and Wif coins launched later in the same year established Solana as the dominant Memecoin chain, eventually forming pump.fun. In the first quarter of 2023, the Memecoin market broke out into the first widespread frenzy, with new Metas appearing almost every week or even every day. After reaching a local high in March, the market slowed down slightly in the summer. As Bitcoin begins to breakout, market enthusiasm is rekindled and new Metas continue to emerge, including @truth_terminal's $GOAT, $MOODENG (cute Hippo Coin), and $PEANUT.
Nowadays, there are too many Metas emerging in the Memecoin market. We try to break down the market according to different categories.
As you can see, Dogecoin remains the dominant sector of the Memecoin market, driven primarily by Doge. A few weeks ago when we started compiling this data, the Sentient AI category was almost non-existent, and the Martyr category was not significantly represented (although we have to respect the OG coin $Harambe). This is enough to prove how quickly the Memecoin market evolves.
Not surprisingly, Dogecoin’s dominance has been gradually declining since Pepecoin was launched.
It seems that this trend will continue, as new Metas will continue to emerge and different sectors will be pushed to the forefront.
Looking at the changes in market capitalization across categories, there are several interesting trends.
For example, Crypto Culture Memecoins (such as $bitcoin) received some attention in 2023, especially when relatively little new capital entered the market at that time. But as new capital was injected at the end of the year, Crypto Culture gradually gave way to broader Internet culture (such as $giga, $npc, etc.).
As mentioned before, the rapid rise of $GOAT and $PEANUT is also quite surprising. While it may be too early to classify them into new categories, it is clear that there are many AI-related memecoins with market caps reaching nine figures.
In addition, celebrity tokens and politically-related Memecoins that emerged earlier also saw small growth, but most of them have since cooled down.
Over time, Memecoin has the potential to become a fractal of the entire crypto market, with Dogecoin being similar to Bitcoin (BTC). Some "cult coins" will have loyal community support and exist for a long time, but most Memecoins may be short-lived like NFTs in 2021.
Still, it’s clear that the opportunity to be first into the new Meta is huge.
I expect that the fastest growing categories in the future will be Internet culture and self-aware AI. Internet culture is already widely recognized and has a rich cultural heritage, which gives them a clear advantage over other categories. Self-aware AI combines the most exciting technology with the most volatile asset class, and they may continue to dominate the Memecoin market in the future.
As for open market space, there is always room for new animal species - there are many animals currently missing from the market, especially some exotic animals (such as tigers, giraffes, zebras, etc.). As for entirely new Memecoin categories, existing fan culture (such as superheroes, sports, etc.) may be tokenized in creative ways.
