The recent performance of the memecoin sector in 2025 has been a classic boom-and-bust cycle. On the one hand, the year started explosively, with the memecoin market producing a median return of +1,313% in the first six months of 2025. For a while, it seemed like crypto’s wildest alt season yet.
On the other hand, that early euphoria faded over the following months with deep drawdowns, rapidly declining market share, and quickly disappearing liquidity. In light of these developments, the following two questions are on everyone’s mind: What does the real performance of memecoins look like in 2025, and has “memecoin season” fizzled out, once and for all?
Memecoin Market Cycle in 2025: From Peak Hype to Post-Rally Hangover
On December 9, 2024, the memecoin market cap reached an all-time high of $137.06 billion, marking the highest value the market has ever seen. According to CoinMarketCap data, the 2025 memecoin market was down 70.86% from its late-2024 peak, though it remained highly volatile and experienced high levels of speculative trading for the year. Thus, the performance of the memecoin market in 2025 can be described as a “hype and hangover” cycle with a large spike and crash before tapering off at a lower level.
Source: CoinMarketCap
Early 2025 Hype:
An initial “peak” phase occurs around January 2025, driven in part by geopolitical factors such as election-related memecoins like $TRUMP and $Melania. The market cap of the memecoin sector reached its year-high at $116.7 billion. Trading volume from memecoins increased $64.96 billion, while the average daily crypto market trading volume in Q1 stood at $146 billion.
Market Crash in Q1 & Q2, 2025:
The market witnessed a sharp correction soon after the peak. The memecoin sector’s market capitalization dropped to its lowest level of the first quarter of 2025 at $43.31 billion. And on April 9, 2025, the total memecoin market cap reached its lowest capitalization of $39.93 billion.
July 2025 Mini-rally & Mid-Year Stabilization:
The market settled at a new lower baseline after the significant decline. For example, in July 2025, the memecoin market cap increased by about 67.38% in a month, with the leadership of the top tokens like $BONK. While the season for the whole memecoin market was over, individual tokens can still experience short-term rallies that are primarily driven by hype and speculation.
Current State (Q4):
The mindshare of the memecoin market in the total crypto market shrank from around 20% in late 2024 to approximately 2.5% in October 2025. As of November 6, 2025, the total memecoin market cap is $47.96 billion, down 49.96% YTD (year-to-date), and the daily trading volume is $6.47 billion, 49.45% lower from the start of the year. Thus, November hasn’t been well for memecoins yet. The space has recorded one of the largest weekly losses across all crypto categories, with the sector down 17.7% in the last 7 days.
Top Memecoins by Market Cap
In CoinMarketCap’s Memes category, the biggest memecoins by market capitalization are largely the same names that have been at or near the top of the leaderboard for years now. Here are the five largest memecoins by market cap and estimated price as of November 6, 2025:
- Dogecoin (DOGE) – Market cap ≈ $24.75B, price around $0.1632.
- Shiba Inu (SHIB) – Market cap ≈ $5.29B, price around $0.000008982.
- MemeCore (M) – Market cap ≈ $2.52B, price around $2.42.
- Pepe (PEPE) – Market cap ≈ $2.37B, price around $0.000005634.
- OFFICIAL TRUMP (TRUMP) ≈ $1.62B, price around $8.10.
Together, these five names account for a large portion of the memecoin sector’s total value, even after the broader market’s pullback. As the above statistics clearly prove, DOGE Market Cap is much larger than its nearest rivals in the second place.
Market Dominance Across Meme Sub-Categories
The dominance chart for meme sectors from January 1 to November 5, 2025, shows that Dog-themed coins make up the largest portion, at around 31.5%. 4chan-themed tokens by 27.8% and Elon Musk-inspired memes by 23.7% come in second and third, respectively, and this ranking remains relatively consistent for most of the year. These three categories combined make up over 80% of the meme market.
Source: Coingecko
The rest of the Memecoins sub-categories have single-digit or sub-1% market shares. Solana memes have a market dominance of 6.12%, frog coins 3.07% and The Boy’s Club 2.92%. All meme coins under the broad theme of politics (PolitiFi) amount to a market share of 1.48%, AI memes have a 1.47% share, cat coins 0.99%, and Murad Picks 0.94%. The chart above shows that there is a long tail of smaller memecoins, but they do not pose a threat to the overall dominance of the three main memecoin sub-categories.
Fully Diluted Market Capitalization Change
Artemis’ data from Jan. 1, 2025, to Nov. 6, 2025, reveals a mass capitulation across the memecoin market, with nearly all memecoins experiencing significant downturns in their fully diluted market capitalization. The Memecoin sector as a whole had a decrease of -72.2%. PepeCoin (-71.98%) and CorgiAI (-71.63%) recorded the highest losses in terms of their fully diluted market capitalization. Other tokens such as Gigachad, BOOK OF MEME, and Official Trump also showed considerable declines, ranging from -69.4% to -60.9%.
Source: Artemis Analytics
However, based on the chart above, not all memecoins were impacted as heavily. Dogecoin and Fartcoin had relatively small drawdowns, -31.7% and -12.7% respectively. These numbers show that some memecoins are faring better than others in the overall bearish market.
Top Gainer Memecoins of 2025
According to CoinMarketCap’s data, the year’s biggest memecoin rockets have included a mix of micro-caps such as GIGGLE and GOHOME, alongside RIZZMAS, BOB, USELESS, EGL1, 市久人生, SIREN, YEE, and NOICE. In this list, only two Memecoins, GIGGLE and GOHOME, crossed the multi-million-percent threshold for truly otherworldly returns of than 98,000X and 71,000X, respectively.
Source: CoinMarketCap
All ten of the top gainers took small pools of liquidity and turned them into colossal percentage moves, but their absolute market caps remain tiny in comparison to the sector’s giants. That’s the key contrast between “biggest by size” and “biggest by percentage move”, and also what defines the 2025 memecoin landscape overall: a few entrenched blue chips at the top and a long tail of highly reflexive micro-caps that can still become parabolic in the right narrative environment.
The Rise of Narrative-Driven Memecoins in 2025
New themes are taking shape in the Memecoin sector this year. Political and culture-driven tokens such as OFFICIAL TRUMP (TRUMP) or ecosystem-specific memes on Solana and Base, in particular, are infusing new sources of volatility and liquidity. For example, Satellite DOGE-1 is a Solana-based memecoin associated with SpaceX’s proposed lunar mission.
On 3 November 2025, Elon Musk replied to a Dogecoin thread on X by writing the simple phrase “It’s time” and linking to a video, bringing attention back to his years-old promise to “put a literal Dogecoin on the literal moon”.
It’s time 😀
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 3, 2025
After Musk’s X post, the price of DOGE-1 soared from a low of around $0.000282 to above $0.001196 within hours, a surge of over 300% in a market that had been drifting lower for weeks.
Enduring Cultural Impact:
Elon Musk’s example perfectly highlights the two sides of the 2025 memecoin narrative. On the one hand, there are the large-cap blue chips like DOGE, SHIB, MemeCore, PEPE, and TRUMP that sit at the top of the market-cap rankings. On the other hand, it only takes one three-word reply from Musk to see a much smaller Doge-themed token on Solana shoot into a multi-hundred-percent melt-up.
Memecoins maintain a lasting cultural impact, and a “resilient community” continues to back the sector. Consequently, a new catalyst or meme-centric narrative (potential return of political themes) could spark future, if likely less robust, waves of hype in the future. Hence, ”Memecoin season” may have cooled overall, but as long as celebrities and viral narratives exist, the space will continue producing sudden outliers like DOGE-1 alongside its more established giants.
Has Memecoin Season Fizzled Out?
The 2025 data shows that the peak of “Memecoin season” in late 2024 and early 2025 has passed, but this doesn’t mean the end of Memecoins as a whole. Capital has rotated into a narrower set of stronger narratives, led by old favorite coins such as DOGE and SHIB, as well as MemeCore, PEPE, TRUMP, and more, while thousands of smaller tokens quietly disappear from the radar. Returns have largely normalized, fully diluted valuations have compressed, and the sector’s share of the overall crypto market has shrunk, but Memecoins remain one of the most reflexive, volatile corners of crypto.
Hence, has “Memecoin season” fizzled out? In its pure, everything-pumps phase, yes. But in a deeper sense, not at all. The market is still maturing, with capital more selective, traders more careful with position sizing, and increasing emphasis on basic legitimacy, audits, liquidity, and even lightweight utility such as staking or DeFi integrations. This is a more selective, but still highly speculative, Memecoin cycle. So, it is quieter than the first half of 2025, but always one new narrative, political token, or celebrity tweet away from sparking the next pump.
Key Takeaways
How would you assess the performance of the memecoin sector in 2025?
The memecoin market in 2025 started with extremely high returns in the first 6 months, before going into a period of aggressive correction and rotation, becoming a much more selective but still highly speculative market.
Has memecoin season fizzled out?
memecoin season hasn’t completely ended, but it has shifted from broad, uncontrollable hype to a more selective, utility-aware phase.
