2024 is the first year of the meme explosion, and the meme craze runs through the entire year of 2024. As of press time, Coingecko data shows that meme is a track worth over 100 billion US dollars. Meme is not only a battlefield for retail investors, but also a battleground for major institutions, CEX and public chains to compete for traffic.
Compared to the past, when the focus was mainly on zoo-type memes, in 2024, everything can be a meme, and there are always unexpected angles. This article reviews the main types of meme hype concepts in 2024, as well as the predictions of investment research institutions on the development trend of memes in 2025.
The seven most popular meme concepts in 2024
Political concept meme
The 2024 U.S. presidential election has spawned and heated many political concept meme coins. On March 5, 2024, CoinGecko added a new PolitiFi token section.
Political memes can be said to have initially revolved around Trump and mainly centered on him. In 2023, a meme token named TRUMP increased over a thousand times, astonishing the community. The 2024 election year is key, with various memes named after political figures like Trump, Biden, Harris, Vance, and others in important positions once again becoming hot topics. Representative tokens include TRUMP, BODEN, KAMA.
In addition to political figure tokens, slogans and catchphrases from political figures' speeches have also spawned a large number of memes. For example, the meme coin MAGA is named after Trump's campaign slogan "Make America Great Again." The meme coin FIGHT, themed around the incident where Trump was attacked, saw a significant price increase after Trump tweeted "FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT!!!!!".
Additionally, memes represented by PNUT have been given the meaning of expressing political demands. A social media-famous squirrel was captured and euthanized without sufficient communication, turning into a political controversy seeking animal protection and expressing reasonable demands, thus causing the meme PNUT to go viral. Besides PNUT, there are also similar meme tokens expressing political demands, such as the monkey Jorgie being taken away by police.
AI concept meme
In October, an AI Bot called "Truth Terminal" (@truth_terminal) "spoke to itself" and came up with a meme coin name GOAT. a16z founder Marc Andreessen even invested $50,000 worth of Bitcoin into it. GOAT skyrocketed from $0 to $270 million within just four days, with its price surging 150 times, attracting community attention.
Since then, various AI concept meme coins have flooded in, giving rise to multiple niche tracks. AI Agent memes represented by GOAT, GNON, VIRTUA, FUN; AI + infrastructure represented by ACT; AI investment DAO memes represented by ai16z; AI + art represented by slop; AI + animal memes represented by Shoggoth, etc.
Hotspot mapping meme
This is also a very interesting phenomenon this year, as there is almost always a corresponding meme for every hot topic. For example, in August 2024, China's domestically produced 3A game (Black Myth: Wukong) became extremely popular, quickly spawning numerous meme coins like $WuKong following the trend.
Memes can easily ride the wave of hot events. In November, after Sun Yuchen announced he bought Maurizio Cattelan's iconic work "Comedian" for $6.2 million, the meme coin Ban, themed around Cattelan's banana, capitalized on the Sotheby's auction of the banana and the SpaceX Starship launch.
In addition, if players do not participate timely in the hot trading of altcoins, some will choose to wait for meme coins reflecting the hot concepts to trade. On December 2, XRP hit a seven-year high, surpassing Solana in market cap. Many who missed XRP's nearly 400% increase then turned to memes related to XRP. By around 1 PM that afternoon, the trading volume within that ecosystem exceeded 70 million, with transaction counts reaching 330,000. The $RIPPLE token skyrocketed over 400% in 24 hours, calling for XRP to rise to 589 with the $589meme surging over 160% in 24 hours.
Desci concept meme
DeSci, or decentralized science, is not a new concept that emerged this year. However, in November, Binance Labs announced an investment in the DeSci project BIO Protocol. After CZ and Vitalik discussed their insights on DeSci, several DeSci memes surged, making this concept widely discussed and aiming to channel meme liquidity into fields like medicine, physics, and chemistry.
For example, representative projects include Desci concept meme coins RIF and URO, both launched from the meme issuance platform Pump.science by the Desci project Molecule DAO. RIF and URO represent the compounds Rifampicin (RIF) and Urokinase (URO), aiming to support medicine through meme coins.
When RIF and URO were launched, they were not very popular, but under the influence of Binance and CZ, they continuously broke new highs, with a market cap nearing $3 million, and a 20-fold increase within two days.
TikTok concept meme
Around October 2024, a meme called ChillGuy went viral on TikTok. This meme features a personified character wearing a sweatshirt, jeans, and sneakers, with hands in pockets, appearing very calm and becoming extremely popular among young people, with related videos garnering over 20 million views in just two months.
With the popularity of CHILL GUY, the meme coin CHILLGUY was also born on the Solana chain. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and celebrities like Elon Musk contributed to the meme coin's explosive growth by sharing CHILL GUY elements, with $CHILLGUY increasing by 7000% in just five days, peaking at a market cap of over $500 million.
The demographics of TikTok users and those investing in cryptocurrencies and meme coins may overlap significantly, both comprising Gen Z and millennials, making TikTok a potential creative generator for meme coins.
In addition to CHILLGUY, other TikTok concept meme coins such as MOODENG, APPLE, WAIT, HUZZ, and GRIDDY have also received significant attention.
Zoo meme
Zoo memes remain one of the easiest to spread and most resilient narratives. Following Doge, this year saw the emergence of newcomers like Neiro and MOODENG.
Neiro is a new pet adopted by Doge's original owner, sharing the same name as the meme, which exploded in popularity on the night of Trump's Bitcoin conference speech, overshadowing the Trump-themed NSYB (never sell your bitcoin) meme and sparking a debate over uppercase and lowercase memes.
The prototype of MOODENG is a social media-famous baby pygmy hippo born in Thailand, and the rise of MOODENG has also spurred the phenomenon of Crazy Animal City on the Solana chain, with various animals such as penguin PESTO, elephant TOTO, monkey GEORGIE, beaver BOBR, and frog omochi becoming hot topics.
While Doge dominates the scene, cat culture memes are also a new speculative direction, giving rise to meme concepts like MEW that resist "dogs," and the cat-themed meme MIGGLES, which was popularized by a Coinbase promotional video.
In addition, the previously mentioned PNUT and other memes expressing political demands also belong to the animal-themed meme category.
Celebrity meme
Celebrity memes remain an important direction in trading memes that cannot be ignored. This year, in addition to Trump and Musk, who are two major meme generators, some artists and entertainment stars launching tokens have also become a trend and received significant attention.
Earlier this year, the Pepe meme artist Darkfarm launched the BOOK OF MEME (BOME), which went viral across various social media platforms, increasing 20 times within just three hours of launch, and within three days its market cap exceeded $1 billion, whereas Doge took four years to surpass a $1 billion market cap.
In the middle of the year, several celebrities launched tokens, such as Caitlyn Jenner, the transgender father of the Kardashians, who launched JENNER, and female rapper Iggy Azalea, who launched MOTHER, achieving hundreds of times in gains and making celebrity memes sweep the crypto community once again.
However, celebrity memes usually have a very short lifespan, and these celebrity-issued meme coins have also been criticized for making quick money. Vitalik has expressed his dissatisfaction with celebrity-issued MEME coin experiments.
2025 meme trend prediction: larger scale, AI memes may lead.
Both Messari and DWF Labs believe that the popularity of memes will continue into 2025. Messari mentioned three aspects that will drive the continued growth of memes.
In terms of infrastructure, some high-throughput chains provide ample block space, allowing meme transactions to avoid high fees.
In terms of user experience optimization, applications like Moonshot and Pump.fun continue to lower the entry threshold and simplify the trading process, which is expected to attract more retail participants.
Moreover, meme coins, with their speculative nature, are similar to gambling and may continue to attract users seeking entertainment and profit in the current macro environment.
Bitwise also predicts that a larger wave of meme coins will emerge in 2025 compared to 2024, stating that tokens issued by AI agents will lead this wave.
Besides the narrative powered by AI, Nomos Labs, a Web3 ecosystem incubator, mentioned more technologies empowering meme development, such as attempts to integrate with NFTs, payment scenarios, and DeFi. Nomos Labs believes that technological empowerment will be an important focus for meme coins in the next phase. "In the long run, only when the technological narrative is grounded can meme coins perhaps eventually escape the fate of short-term speculation."
The practicality of memes may further stand out in 2025. Venture capital firm MV Global stated that the push for practical meme coins is likely to achieve significant growth in decentralized science (DeSci) by 2025.
However, Murad, the meme promotion king who became popular in 2024, has a different viewpoint. He believes that in a bull market, practicality may actually become a constraint, and pure speculation will make meme coins perform better. However, he also mentioned that future meme coins may indeed add DeFi features, evolve into investment DAOs, and even create fashionable and lifestyle brands.
