In the first quarter of 2025, the cryptocurrency space continued to ride on familiar narratives, with few fresh themes emerging to shake up the scene. According to a recent CoinGecko report, investor attention remained heavily focused on artificial intelligence tokens and memecoins, which together accounted for a dominant 62.8% share of market interest.
AI-related cryptocurrencies topped the charts, pulling in 35.7% of global investor focus, while memecoins followed closely behind at 27.1%. Of the 20 most significant narrative-driven categories tracked this quarter, six were linked to memecoins and five were based around AI.
“We haven’t seen a breakout narrative yet this year—it feels like we’re just looping through the same ideas from past quarters,” said Bobby Ong, CoinGecko’s co-founder and COO, in an April 17 post on X (formerly Twitter). “There’s a bit of fatigue around the repetition.”
Interest in memecoins surged noticeably in mid-January, just before U.S. President Donald Trump’s inauguration, which was preceded by the launch of his official TRUMP token on Jan. 18 and the MELANIA token the following day—both issued on the Solana blockchain.
Despite their popularity, some analysts warn that memecoins may be diverting liquidity away from more utility-driven assets like Solana (SOL), potentially limiting their upward price movement. SOL, which briefly traded above $270 around inauguration week, has since lost nearly 48% of its value, based on TradingView data.
Libra Collapse Sparks Memecoin Decline
The downfall of the Libra (LIBRA) token—a meme project tied to Argentine President Javier Milei—further soured sentiment. The token crashed by 94% within hours, wiping out $4 billion in market cap after insiders reportedly pulled out over $107 million in liquidity.
Following this incident, memecoin launches on Solana’s Pump.fun platform plummeted. The daily number of new token deployments dropped more than 56% from their January highs, falling to 31,000 by the end of Q1. Moreover, the percentage of “graduated” tokens—those gaining traction beyond their initial launch—halved from 1.4% in January to just 0.7%.
While the Libra debacle may have signaled the end of the “political memecoin” era, speculative activity hasn’t disappeared. According to Nansen analyst Nicolai Sondergaard, experienced traders still view memecoins as short-term opportunities. “Memes are more of a fun trade—smart money knows how to exit quickly and isn’t concerned with macroeconomic trends like Bitcoin or Ethereum,” he explained.
One of the most striking examples came at the end of March, when a savvy investor flipped a $2,000 bet on the popular Pepe (PEPE) token into $43 million. Although they missed the exact top, they still walked away with over $10 million in profits, even after PEPE’s 70% drop.
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