Return to fundamentals: Some views on memecoin narrative

Author: The DeFi Investor Translation: Shan Oppa, Golden Finance

This year, the altcoin started out with no doubt. According to dexu.ai, no cryptocurrency narrative has achieved positive price performance since the beginning of 2025.

So, why is the market falling? Looking back, I think there are several reasons:

1. Trump 's inauguration became a "news selling" event (all those who wanted to buy because of Trump's victory actually bought it long before the inauguration).

2. The launch of US Bitcoin reserves is slower than most people expected .

3. There are many macroeconomic uncertainties now .

But perhaps the most important reason is:

Thousands of low-investment meme coins have poured into the market over the past few months. Issuing platforms like Pumpdotfun make it easy for anyone to launch new currencies.

And this is obviously unsustainable in the long run.

In the previous bull market, we only had a few thousand tokens. And now liquidity spreads over millions of different tokens. In the last 30 days alone, we have seen four major meme coins releases:

• $TRUMP – down 76% from the all-time high (ATH).

• $MELANIA – down 90% from its all-time high.

• $CAR – down 95% from the all-time high.

• $LIBRA – down 93% from its all-time high.

These currencies all reached a multibillion-dollar market capitalization at their peak.

While I have no problem with meme coins like DOGE or FARTCOIN, these celebrity meme coins like I mentioned are negative for cryptocurrencies as some insiders earn hundreds of millions of dollars through retail investors. The release of $TRUMP coins has led many celebrities to believe that insider trading is now legal.

Fortunately, I believe there is still hope.

One thing that makes me optimistic is that DeFi has successfully subverted memes in narrative thinking for the first time recently.

According to Dexu.ai, Meme Coin is the fourth worst-performing cryptocurrency narrative in the past 30 days.

The sentiment about meme coins on X seems to have turned negative as well. More and more people are beginning to realize how celebrity meme coins extract wealth from retail investors.

In addition, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has just announced a new cyber division aimed at combating fraud in areas such as cryptocurrencies.

Hopefully this ends that crime season where every celebrity launches a new junk coin and sells it to fans.

I still believe that there will be many policy announcements supporting cryptocurrencies in the coming months. But there is still a big difference between encouraging innovation and tolerating scams. We need more innovation than more celebrities to deceive their supporters.

I expect that the practical season will finally arrive as we finally start getting more regulatory clarity about cryptocurrencies in the United States and other major countries.

Cryptocurrency won't disappear.

The past few months have been tough, but we have experienced worse moments.