Memecoin accounts for nearly 31% of the interest of cryptocurrency investors in 2024, surpassing even AI tokens, according to CoinGecko's research.
The year 2024 witnesses a strong rise of memecoin in the cryptocurrency sector, attracting significant attention from investors despite its high speculative nature and volatility.
According to CoinGecko's report on December 23, a reputable cryptocurrency data aggregation platform, nearly one-third of the total visits to token categories on this platform from the beginning of the year to December 21 focused on memecoin and related trends. Specifically, this figure reached nearly 31%, outperforming other sectors, including artificial intelligence (AI), which previously led the trends in 2023.
Analysis by Lim Yu Qian, a research analyst at CoinGecko, indicates that significant interest somewhat reflects the highly speculative investment trend, with little emphasis on fundamental factors. This raises questions about the sustainability of growth and potential risks for investors.
Although the cryptocurrency market in general has seen significant recovery this year, with Bitcoin up 123%, memecoin has emerged as a unique phenomenon, attracting both seasoned traders looking for quick profits and new investors entering the market.
The top cryptocurrency categories by traffic share from January 1 to December 21. Source: CoinGecko The rise of diverse memecoin trends
The dominance of memecoin is not only reflected in the overall numbers but is also distributed across many smaller trends. The 'main story of memecoin', including prominent projects and general trends, accounts for about 15% of interest, an increase of more than 6% compared to 2023.
In addition, 4 other memecoin trends also made it into the 'Top 20 Highlights' about cryptocurrency in 2024. Memecoin on the Solana blockchain ranked 4th with nearly 8% of attention, followed by memecoin on Base, Coinbase's blockchain, in 11th place with over 2% market share. Memecoin trends combined with artificial intelligence and cat-inspired memecoin also attracted a certain amount of interest, accounting for about 1.5% and 1.2%, respectively, ranking 15th and 16th.
Diversity shows that memecoin is not just a passing trend but is developing into a rich ecosystem, integrating with many other technologies and trends. This also creates a complex market, requiring investors to have a deep understanding and good risk assessment skills. With the total market capitalization of memecoin currently reaching 113.2 billion USD, led by Dogecoin (49.3 billion USD) and Shiba Inu (13.8 billion USD), the influence of this asset class in the cryptocurrency market is undeniable.
Although AI-related tokens have dropped from the leading position in 2023 to second place after memecoin, interest in this field has still grown significantly, accounting for nearly 13% of total visits on CoinGecko, compared to over 11% the previous year. The general 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 potential for widespread application of this technology.
The 7 largest AI coins by market capitalization. Source: CoinGecko
The event of the X account operated by the AI 'Truth Terminal' promoting the memecoin GOAT, pushing this token's value to 1.3 billion USD, is a clear testament to the power of AI agents. However, tokens related to AI agents only occupy a small portion of the 44.8 billion USD AI crypto market, currently led by Near Protocol and Internet Computer.
