Several meme token categories rallied in the last hours of 2024, getting a boost from the new gaming and social media persona of Elon Musk. Pepe (PEPE) was among the top gainers, flipping Hyperliquid (HYPE).
The Elon Musk effect caused year-end rallies for Pepe (PEPE) and several categories of meme tokens. Musk’s new gaming and social media persona, Kekius Maximus, brought back attention to several meme categories.
Pepe (PEPE) returned to $0.000020, while Hyperliquid (HYPE) stagnated around $25. This allowed PEPE to move up the charts, next aiming to overtake the position of Bitcoin Cash (BCH). PEPE trading volumes also moved up to $3.3B in the past 24 hours, the highest level in an otherwise slow week.
Frog-themed tokens rallied after Elon Musk selected Pepe the Frog for his new avatar. | Source: CoinGecko
Musk’s new avatar and Path of Exile name also sparked rallies for other tokens in the frog-themed category. As a result, the tokens rallied on average by 10% overnight, to a valuation of over $12B. Even minor tokens expanded, following the effect of PEPE.
The token rallied based on its wide community reach. At the end of 2024, PEPE became the leader in terms of community wealth. According to meme influencer Murad Mahmudov, the PEPE community had the most wallets with a balance over $1,000.
A total of 77,145 holders had over $1,000 worth of PEPE in their wallets, with a trend for long-term holding. PEPE buyers are also active on social media and participate in community-building. PEPE is also widely distributed, as even wallet clusters only hold a small part of the supply.
PolitiFi reawakens in the new year
PolitiFi tokens were one of the categories to slow down substantially following the November 6 US elections. After Donald Trump’s victory, some of the political memes lost their appeal, as traders shifted to other categories.
The revival of frog memes raised the value of PolitiFi tokens, which returned above $500M. The space has been lagging and may bring back the attention of meme communities. The PolitiFi category also benefitted from the rapid gains of Kekius Maximus (KEKIUS), which was added to the list of political tokens.
With Donald Trump’s second inauguration coming soon, the PolitiFi meta-narrative is seen as potentially undervalued. The quick reaction of traders shows even previously obscure tokens are closely watched for their potential to rally. Within hours, tokens like KEKIUS and TRUMPUS lined up among the newly trending AI agents, which are dominating meme trading in December.
Parody tokens emerge as an undervalued category
Parody tokens are a small, but rapidly growing category. This category of tokens showed its ability to react to current events.
At the end of December, CoinGecko noted the category was gaining activity. Parody memes track other successful meme formats.
This category of meme tokens is still small, but also extremely reactive to current events. Musk’s changed avatar sparked a rally for a little-known token named simply Elon. Parody memes are trending based on the success of WOULD, the leading token as of December 31.
Parody memes are catching up to the size of the PolitiFi category, with a total valuation of $571M. This selection of tokens outperformed even the entire collection of Musk-inspired tokens. The one exception is ELONIA, a parody which gained more than 51% in the past week.
The recent meme token rallies happened despite the shift of attention to AI agents. The smaller meme collections surpassed the selection of memes by this year’s top influencer, Murad Mahmudov.
This time around, Dogecoin (DOGE) hardly budged, despite Musk being one of its early backers. DOGE remained unchanged at around $0.31, as its price requires much bigger inflows to spark a rally.
Small-scale, unserious tokens, however, kept driving social media engagement and on-chain activity. The entire meme space made a slight recovery, rising to $109B after recently dipping under the $100B mark. Meme tokens as a whole had one of the highest returns in 2024, with more than 2,100% in total gains. The meme narrative also gained the biggest exposure on social media, based on recent CoinGecko data.
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