Key Takeaways
Why are memecoins down?
The memecoin market has been down in the past week due to declining volume and increasing sell pressure.
Will memes gain ground again?
A shift in sentiment across the entire crypto sector could help memecoins regain their lost frenzy.
The memecoin market is down by about 1.4% in the last 24 hours, with the market cap dropping to $52.05 billion. The daily volume was also declining, commanding about $5.45 billion.
Memecoins led the hardest drops across crypto sectors alongside Layer 1s (L1s) and gaming, respectively. This raises the question of whether the memecoin frenzy is truly over for Q4 2025.
Weekly performance of top 10 memecoins
According to CoinMarketCap data, memecoins suffered the most in the past week, with the top 10 by capitalization experiencing double-digit losses.
All of them had dropped by figures between 9.9% and 30%, with SPX6900 [SPX] leading with losses. Shiba Inu [SHIB] lost the least amount of capital among this category.
After dropping more than 10%, Dogecoin [DOGE] was trading at $0.16. Other notable losers in the past seven days were Pepe [PEPE], Pudgy Penguins [PENGU], and Bonk [BONK], which all declined by more than 18%.
Source: CoinMarketCap
The performance of these top 10 memecoins reflected what was really happening for the broader sector.
This contradicts what took place in the last quarter of 2024 when AI memecoins debuted, for instance, Fartcoin [FARTCOIN].
But what was behind this shift in memecoin performance?
Why are memes down?
Memecoins were dropping harder than the entire crypto market, whose market cap reaches $3.25 trillion. Therefore, we can attribute the drop to the overall structure and sentiment of the crypto market.
Additionally, the memecoin volume was dropping very hard, suggesting traders were avoiding these markets. In fact, sell pressure was the dominant side even for those who were still trading the coins in this sector.
As per data from Stalkchain, sales volume exceeded the $1 million mark, while buyers accounted for half, slightly above $500K.
Source: Stalkchain
In this buying and selling contest, two memecoins stood out. The most bought token was FARTCOIN, which was more than 90% down from its ATH of $2.61. The smart money accumulated more than $350K worth of FARTCOIN.
On the other hand, Useless Coin (USELESS) was the most sold by the smart money in the past 24 hours. Similarly, its sell volume was close to $350K as per Stalkchain data, with price declining 21% on the day.
Final take: Is memecoin hype fading?
The market structure showed that memecoins have lost most of their capitalization and are leading the drop overall. They were the weakest in the entire crypto sector, which explained why their capital was fading that fast.
Altogether, the memecoin hype had faded, with capital now rotated to utility-based tokens like the DeFi sector, which was among the best gainers since the October 10th crash.
However, memecoins may regain their ground once sentiment is back.
