Written by: flowie, ChainCatcher
Editor: Nianqing, ChainCatcher
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. 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 memes were mainly focused on zoos, in 2024, everything can be memed, and there are always angles you can't imagine. This article reviews the main types of meme hype concepts in 2024, as well as investment research institutions' predictions on the development trend of memes in 2025.
Seven popular speculation concepts for memes in 2024
Political concept memes
The 2024 U.S. election has spawned and heated many political concept meme coins. On March 5, 2024, CoinGecko had already added a PolitiFi token section.
Political memes can be said to have first revolved around Trump and are primarily centered on him. In 2023, a meme token named TRUMP increased over a thousand times, astonishing the community. The 2024 election year, a critical year, is seeing various political figure-themed memes named after Trump, Biden, Harris, Vance, and other important political figures becoming hot speculation topics again. Representative tokens include TRUMP, BODEN, KAMA.
In addition to political figure tokens, slogans and quotes from political figures' speeches have also given rise to many memes. For example, the meme coin MAGA, named after Trump's campaign slogan 'Make America Great Again'. A meme coin named FIGHT, themed around the incident where Trump was attacked, saw a significant price increase after Trump tweeted 'FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT!!!!!'.
Moreover, memes represented by PNUT have also been imbued with the meaning of expressing political demands. A famous squirrel was captured and euthanized without sufficient communication, which turned into a political controversy seeking animal protection and expressing reasonable demands, leading to the explosive popularity of the meme PNUT named after the squirrel. Besides PNUT, a series of similar political demand-expressing meme tokens like Jorgie the monkey, who was taken away by the police, also emerged.
AI concept memes
In October, an AI Bot called 'Truth Terminal' (@truth_terminal) 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 4 days of its creation, with a price surge of 150 times, attracting community attention.
Since then, various meme coins integrating AI concepts have flooded the market, leading to multiple sub-tracks. AI Agent memes represented by GOAT, GNON, VIRTUA, FUN; AI+ infrastructure represented by ACT; AI investment DAO memes represented by ai16z; AI+ art memes represented by slop; and AI+ animal memes represented by Shoggoth, among others.
Trending mapping memes
This is also a very interesting phenomenon this year, as there are almost always memes reflecting hot topics. For example, in August 2024, after the release of the Chinese-made AAA game (Black Myth: Wukong), it became extremely popular, and soon after, a large number of meme coins like $WuKong emerged following that trend.
Memes can easily ride on the heat of trending events. In November, after Sun Yuchen announced the purchase of Maurizio Cattelan's iconic work 'Comedian' for $6.2 million, a meme coin named Ban, themed around Cattelan's banana, capitalized on the Sotheby’s auction of bananas and the SpaceX Starship launch interaction with bananas.
Furthermore, if players have not timely participated in the hot trading of altcoins, some will choose to wait for meme coins related to hot concepts. On December 2, XRP's price hit a seven-year high, surpassing Solana's market cap. Many missed XRP's nearly 400% rise and turned their attention to related memes. By around 1 PM that afternoon, the 24-hour trading volume within that ecosystem exceeded 70M, with transaction counts reaching 330,000. The $RIPPLE token, sharing the same name as Ripple, surged over 400% in 24 hours, while the $589meme, calling for XRP to rise to 589, surged over 160% in 24 hours.
Desci concept memes
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 in popularity, leading to widespread discussion of the concept, which aims to channel meme liquidity into fields such as medicine, physics, and chemistry.
For example, the Desci concept meme coins RIF and URO come from the meme coin issuing platform Pump.science launched by the Desci project Molecule DAO. RIF and URO represent the compounds Rifampicin (RIF) and Urokinase (URO), aiming to support medicine through meme coins.
RIF and URO were not very popular when they first launched, but under the influence of Binance and CZ, they kept breaking new highs, with a market cap nearing $3 million and a price increase of 20 times within two days.
TikTok concept memes
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, looking very calm. It became very popular among young people, with related videos gaining over 20 million views in just two months.
With the popularity of CHILL GUY, a meme coin named CHILLGUY also emerged on the Solana chain. Celebrities like Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele and Elon Musk helped promote this meme coin, causing $CHILLGUY to grow by 7000% in just five days, reaching a peak market cap of over $500 million.
The demographic using TikTok overlaps significantly with those investing in cryptocurrencies and meme coins, both consisting largely of Generation Z and Millennials, which may make TikTok a generator of meme coin creativity.
In addition to CHILLGUY, other TikTok concept meme coins like MOODENG, APPLE, WAIT, HUZZ, and GRIDDY have also garnered considerable attention.
Zoo memes
Zoo memes remain one of the easiest narratives to spread and the most resilient. After Doge, new stars like Neiro and MOODENG were born this year.
Neiro is a new pet adopted by the owner of Doge, named after it, which went viral the night of Trump's Bitcoin conference speech, overshadowing the Trump-themed NSYB (never sell your bitcoin) meme, and sparked a debate over upper and lower case memes.
The prototype of MOODENG is a baby hippo influencer born in Thailand. The popularity of MOODENG has also driven the crazy phenomenon of Zootopia on the Solana chain, with various animals like penguin PESTO, elephant TOTO, monkey GEORGIE, beaver BOBR, and frog omochi becoming hot topics for speculation.
Under the dominance of Doge, cat culture meme themes have also become a new speculation direction, giving rise to memes like MEW that oppose the 'dog' concept, and cat-themed memes like MIGGLES, which were popularized by a Coinbase promotional video.
Additionally, the PNUT meme mentioned earlier, which expresses political demands, also belongs to the animal-themed meme category.
Celebrity memes
Celebrity memes remain an important direction in trading memes. This year, aside from meme hotspots created by Trump and Musk, some artists, including entertainment stars, have also started issuing coins, becoming a trend and gaining significant attention.
Earlier this year, the BOOK OF MEME (BOME) issued by Pepe Meme artist Darkfarm went viral across social platforms, increasing 20 times within three hours of launch, and surpassing a market cap of $1 billion within three days, while Doge took 4 years to break the $1 billion market cap.
By mid-year, several celebrities released tokens, such as Caitlyn Jenner, the transgender parent of the Kardashians, releasing JENNER, and female rapper Iggy Azalea releasing MOTHER, both achieving hundreds of times in rise, causing celebrity memes to sweep through the crypto community once again.
However, celebrity memes usually have a very short lifespan. These meme coins have also been criticized for trying to make quick money. Vitalik has expressed dissatisfaction with the experiments of celebrities issuing MEME coins.
2025 meme trend predictions: larger scale, AI memes may lead the way
Both Messari and DWF Labs believe the popularity of memes will continue into 2025. Messari mentioned three aspects that will drive further 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, apps like Moonshot and Pump.fun continue to lower the entry barrier and simplify the trading process, likely attracting more retail participants.
Additionally, 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-scale meme coin craze will emerge in 2025, stating that tokens issued by AI agents will lead this wave.
In addition to the narratives that AI brings to memes, the Web3 ecosystem incubator Nomos Labs has mentioned more technologies that empower the development of memes, such as attempts to link with NFTs, and integrate with 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 with the grounding of technological narratives can meme coins perhaps escape the fate of short-term speculation.'
The practicality of memes may further highlight in 2025. The venture capital firm MV Global stated that decentralized science (DeSci) is expected to achieve significant growth in 2025, driven by practical meme coins.
However, meme king Murad, who exploded in popularity in 2024, has a different viewpoint. He believes that in a bull market, practicality may instead become a constraint, while purity will make meme coins perform better. However, he also mentioned that future meme coins may indeed add DeFi functionalities, evolve into investment DAOs, or even create fashion and lifestyle brands.
