Meme coins never seem to get through a week without some controversy—now Siqi Chen has launched a meme coin called ZERO that pumped and dumped.
TL;DR
- Overall meme coin market continues to decline
- Elon Musk becomes Kekius Maximus
- Mira Dad apologizes and says he will compensate losses
- Yat Sui’s X account gets hacked
- Base meme coins and agents outperform
Intro
Meme coins never seem to get through a week without some controversy—now Siqi Chen has launched a meme coin called ZERO that pumped and dumped. Also, Yat Sui from Animoca Brands’s X account was hacked. With Trump’s inauguration weeks away, will we see a resurgence of PolitiFi coins in early January? Things might get rocky.
Even though the whole market is correcting, MemeFi as a sector is holding up well compared to the other sectors.
7-Day Meme Coin Market Snapshot
The overall meme coin market cap dropped by almost 5% from $101.52 billion to $96.68 billion between Dec. 24 and 31 while the whole market corrects and Bitcoin continues its fight for dominance.
The top meme coins are down about 24% since their peak in early December 2024.
Source: CoinMarketCap
Many degens on Crypto Twitter are calling for an AI Agent supercycle and not a meme coin supercycle. Is this perhaps the time to double down on our favorite memes? (NFA)
The crypto majors, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and XRP continue their decline as the Fear & Greed Index is at 66.
Source: CoinMarketCap
Meme Coin Market vs Other Crypto Sectors
DeFiLlama's Narrative Tracker showed that memes have outperformed all sectors except PolitiFi as the U.S. Presidential Inauguration approaches.
The 30-day trajectory is starting to show an upward trend after the big drop following the meme euphoria, as it’s up about 26%. It might be a bit early to call but the hopium is real!
Source: DeFiLlama
Top 20 Meme Coin Leaderboard
Once again, AI Agents outperform as ai16z takes the lead this week from all the top 20 meme coins by market cap.
Source: CMC Meme Coins Page
Meme Coin Charts: 7-Day Insights
Virtuals Protocol reached a $4 billion market cap and ai16z a $2 billion market cap.
AI agents are catching all the attention at the moment.
Biggest Gainers (Last 7 Days):
- Ai16z (AI16Z): +115.55%
- Gigachad (GIGA): +19.74%
- Goatseus Maximus (GOAT): +5.21%
- SPX6900 (SPX): +4.60%
- Pepe (PEPE): +1%
Biggest Losers (Last 7 Days):
- Popcat (POPCAT): -21.93%
- Brett (BRETT): -19.23%
- Turbo (T|URBO): -18.77%
- Dog (DOG): -16.67%
- Fartcoin (FARTCOIN): -15.06%
Meme Coins by Chain
Solana Memes
- WOULD soars by 345%. Would you?
- ELIZA is up 223% as they pop vinyl reindeer at 2 a.m.
Ethereum Memes
- SPX6900 rises by almost 9% as they take on TradFi.
- PEPE is up about 7% as Elon Musk becomes Kekius Maximus.
Tron Memes
- Sugar Boy spikes another 30% while they claim they are taking over the meme coin game.
- Justin Sun meets up with the creator of Eliza Labs.
Most Tron meme coins have low market caps compared to tokens on chains like Ethereum and Solana, so they are extremely risky until proven otherwise.
SUI Memes
Base
- MOEW goes on a moon mission and is up 330% as the MOEW army keeps getting stronger.
- SIMMI surges by 91% while it claims the future isn’t human.
- Akuma Inu rises by 37% as they keep climbing the ladder.
Bitcoin Runes
- Bitcoin Wizard just announced that WZRD will be migrating from BRC-20 to Runes.
Meme Coin News
Mira Dad apologizes
Siqi Chen, the father behind the MIRA token, has publicly apologized for creating and selling a "test token" called ZERO.
Chen revealed on social media that he launched ZERO on Pump.fun as an experiment to see if anyone would purchase it despite its description warning that it would become worthless.
Chen admitted to panic-selling 40% of the token’s supply, earning 444 SOL, which he later used to repurchase and burn the tokens. He expressed regret for his actions and pledged to personally compensate all wallets that suffered losses due to his experiment.
Kekius Maximus Soars
Elon Musk changed his name on X, formerly Twitter, to “Kekius Maximus.” The name is a mash-up of “Maximus Decimus Meridius” from the film Gladiator and "kek," the Korean version of LOL.
Musk also updated his profile picture to "Pepe the Frog." The name change caused the value of a meme coin named after Musk's new handle to surge by over 900%.
Vitalik Buterin Adopts Moo Deng
Vitalik Buterin has adopted Moo Deng the hippo through Thailand's Khao Kheow Open Zoo’s Wildlife Sponsorship Program.
Moo Deng went viral in September 2024. Her popularity even inspired the creation of the meme coin MOODENG which went on a moon mission.
The zoo announced that Buterin contributed 10 million Thai baht (about 88 ETH, or $292,000) to support Moo Deng and her family for the next two years. Vitalik is very excited to support the zoo and hinted at the possibility of increasing his donation.
What Can You Do Next?
- Keep an eye on PEPE. Elon Musk is shilling hard.
- Meme coins show signs of slowing growth. Make sure to have a diversified portfolio.
- Be careful of scams promoted by influencers and celebrities.
- Remember that meme coins often decline faster when the larger market retraces.
- Consider reinvesting some profits into safer crypto tokens or stables.
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