Memecoins during this entire 2024 uptrend for the crypto market has been constantly outperforming. With memecoins such as $WIF reaching billion dollar market cap status and trends such as cat-themed coins catching on, it’s no secret that it has captured the culture of crypto-enthusiasts in the form of financial opportunities. However, the current state of memecoins is currently questionable, with many new memecoins led to its slaughter with frequent scams and rugs. Has the current state of memecoins gone too far?

Memecoins and market trends

The memecoins we love and know like $WIF are down between $1.3 to $1.7 from its all-time high of $4.85, which is a drop of roughly 70%. While that may seem like a drastic drop in price, the leading cat-themed memecoin $POPCAT has actually consistently reached new all-time highs despite harsh market conditions.

In the past year, we’ve seen a large spike in memecoin growth. While $DOGE and $SHIB remain to hold the majority of the weight for memecoins, they haven’t increased substantially in the past few months. The growth of the memecoins are attributed to new tokens that are launched across networks such as Tron, Ethereum, and most notably, Solana.

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While the memecoins mentioned don’t represent the entirety of the memecoin market, they certainly show how an attention-driven market works. 

In the past few months after the bitcoin halving, memecoins besides $DOGE and $SHIB have been ranging sideways. This indicates some weakness being shown by memecoins due to the market’s indecisiveness and some profit taking.

Memecoin technology

It’s no secret that memecoin launchpads have been a hit in 2024. Popular launchpads such as Solana’s Pumpfun and Tron’s SunPump have given an opportunity for new memecoins to take lead, such as $FWOG and $SUNDOG. These tokens continue to allow high-risk financial opportunities to numerous people who buy the right coin.

However, to those who are inexperienced with microcap memecoin trading on these launchpads, this type of trading is quite similar to trading, as the majority of new coins launched fail to gain momentum and die off within a few hours or minutes.

As of September 23, these are the state of the coins launched in 24 hours on Pumpfun:

• Deployed tokens: 5599
• 26 reached $100k market cap
• 11 reached $250k market cap
• 5 reached $500k market cap
• 1 reached $1m market cap

Less than 0.46% of tokens reach a market cap of $100k, which is about 1 out of 215.

This saturation in memecoins has caused massive losses, attributing memecoin trading similar to gambling.

The developers of these memecoins have certain control over how these memecoins move as they are able to sell in large volumes, provide insider trading, and even pull liquidity. Memecoin rugging, the act of sending a token to zero value, is more incentivized on these launchpads, attracting scammers and bad actors to the space. 

In the morning of September 18th, both ABS-CBN and GMA had their X accounts compromised due to hackers promoting a memecoin.

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This coin initially ran to a market cap of $330k in an hour, before going to zero after the developers pulled liquidity. The hackers netted a total profit of $8,000, and left many to incurring losses.

What’s next for memecoins?

Memecoins these past few months have been a bit brutal. The culture of memecoins has certainly become a player versus player scenario compared to the player versus environment case of early memecoins such as $DOGE and $SHIB. This has prompted a lot of traders to stay away from memecoins despite it being a top-contender in this market cycle.

However, the future for memecoins remains optimistic. While there is still a lot to work on when it comes to risk-preventive measures to protect vulnerable traders, organic communities come together and form meaningful relationships through trading, NFTs, and memes.

Depending on the future of the current crypto market, memecoins will follow without delay. In a bullish scenario, the market sentiment becomes risk-on which is beneficial to memecoins being the highest-risk asset there is in an already high-risk market. However, in a bearish scenario, memecoins may take a huge blow, reaching lows of up to -80 to -99% from their current market caps.

Disclaimer: The tokens mentioned in this article are not financial advice. Memecoins are an incredibly volatile asset which will lead to massive financial losses. Trade at your own risk and do your own research behind any token you look to invest or trade in.