Memecoins account for nearly 31% of the interest from cryptocurrency investors in 2024, surpassing even AI tokens, according to a study by CoinGecko.
2024 witnesses a strong rise of memecoins in the cryptocurrency realm, attracting significant attention from investors despite their highly speculative nature and volatility.
According to the report on December 23 from CoinGecko, a reputable cryptocurrency data aggregator, nearly one-third of total traffic to token categories on this platform from the beginning of the year until December 21 focused on memecoins and related trends. Specifically, this figure reached nearly 31%, surpassing other areas, including artificial intelligence (AI), which once led the trend in 2023.
Analysis by Lim Yu Qian, a research analyst at CoinGecko, indicates that significant interest somewhat reflects a highly speculative investment trend, with little focus on fundamental factors. This raises questions about the sustainability of growth and potential risks for investors.
Although the cryptocurrency market in general has shown significant recovery this year, with Bitcoin rising 123%, memecoins have still emerged as a unique phenomenon, attracting both seasoned traders looking for quick profits and new investors entering the market.
The rise of diverse memecoin trends
The dominance of memecoins is not only reflected in the overall figures but also distributed among many smaller trends. The 'main story about memecoins', including notable projects and general trends, accounts for about 15% of interest, increasing more than 6% compared to 2023.
Additionally, 4 other memecoin trends have also made it into the '20 most notable stories' about cryptocurrency in 2024. Memecoins on the Solana blockchain ranked 4th with nearly 8% of attention, followed by memecoins on Base, Coinbase's blockchain, in 11th place with over 2% market share. Memecoin trends combined with artificial intelligence and cat-inspired memecoins also attracted a certain amount of interest, accounting for about 1.5% and 1.2%, respectively, ranking 15th and 16th.
The diversity shows that memecoins are not just a passing trend but are evolving into a rich ecosystem, intertwined with many other technologies and trends. This also creates a complex market, requiring investors to have extensive knowledge and good risk assessment skills. With a total market capitalization for memecoins currently at $113.2 billion, led by Dogecoin ($49.3 billion) and Shiba Inu ($13.8 billion), the influence of this asset class in the cryptocurrency market is undeniable.
Although AI-related tokens have dropped from the top position in 2023 to second place behind memecoins, interest in this field has still grown significantly, accounting for nearly 13% of total traffic on CoinGecko, compared to over 11% the previous year. The overall story about AI along with 5 related trends accounts for a total of about 15.5% of attention. Notably, AI agents – systems that autonomously perform tasks – also attracted 1.17% of interest, demonstrating the widespread application potential of this technology.
The event of the AI-operated X account 'Truth Terminal' promoting the memecoin GOAT, pushing the token's value to $1.3 billion, is a clear testament to the power of AI agents. However, AI agent-related tokens only account for a small portion of the $44.8 billion AI crypto market, currently led by Near Protocol and Internet Computer.
