Meme coins have shown a noticeable decrease recently. Once they were among the most popular and sought-after assets in the world of cryptocurrencies. While large-cap and more substantiated cryptos, like Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, have been doing more or less well, meme cryptos, like DOGE, SHIB, PEPE, FLOKI, etc, are struggling to keep up with them.
The momentum that usually fuels their meteoric price increase is currently fading as investors are turning their heads and attention towards large-cap assets.
The Notable Rise of Meme Coins in 2020-2023
The parabolic rise of meme coins took place in 2020-2021, when the world was struck with the Covid-19 pandemic. 2020 saw the emergence of Shiba Inu, whose enigmatic creator Ryoshi was inspired by the success of Dogecoin. Copying the successful strategy of Satoshi Nakamoto, Ryoshi took a Japanese-sounding pseudonym to hide his true identity and, just like Satoshi, he left a few years later, leaving his creation in the hands of the keen community.
In the same year, thanks to Elon Musk, also appeared Floki Inu (later rebranded as Floki; it was named after Musk’s pet Shiba Inu puppy) and BabyDoge.
Dogecoin was on the peak of its rise in 2020-2021, when Musk tweeted particularly frequently about it. At the end of April 2021, Tesla CEO took part in the Saturday Night Live TV show for the first time in his life, becoming one of the hosts, and he shilled Dogecoin, telling millions of viewers about it. On May 8, the DOGE price skyrocketed to an all-time high and hit $0.7376. That was quite a price surge for a coin that was created as a joke on Bitcoin without any other specific purpose.
PEPE appeared in April 2023, coming out of the hands of an anonymous group of developers who got their inspiration not from a Shiba Inu dog or Elon Musk but from the iconic meme of Pepe the Frog. The coin got quickly listed on major exchanges, including Binance, and helped many short-term traders to become millionaires.
However, SHIB began positioning itself as a “Dogecoin killer” and quickly began to expand into something much more than just another meme coin. The developers created a large ecosystem with its own dex (ShibaSwap), other utility tokens – BONE and LEASH – and then eventually launched a layer-2 solution Shibarium. BONE and LEASH are being actively used on it. They also released a smartphone game and are working on their own Metaverse.
In late October 2021, SHIB soared to a historic price peak at $0.00008845. Currently, SHIB is trading 80% below this level. So is Dogecoin.
Meme Coins in Decline Throughout 2024
Still, as 2024 arrived and gained speed, the marvelous excitement that surrounded meme coins began to fade away. The prices of DOGE, SHIB, PEPE, and smaller meme coins began not only to stagnate but to go further down from their all-time highs.
Dogecoin, which seemed to have reached the status of a mainstream asset thanks to Elon Musk, has failed to regain momentum it had during earlier Musk’s endorsements. Shiba Inu is following suit, sinking into red, despite the developers announcing new big partnerships and their leader Shytoshi Kusama beginning to appear in public (wearing a mask and a hood though, which makes him completely unrecognizable). The same fate is befalling Floki and Pepe. The majority of meme coins are built on Ethereum, however some were created also on the BNB Chain (BabyDoge), and recently developers of meme tokens turned their attention towards the Solana chain.
Market Sentiment Shift and Upcoming Presidental Elections
Among the major reasons for the current meme coins’ decline is a wide shift in the market sentiment. Crypto investors are opting for different strategies, acting more carefully. All the more reason for this behavior is the upcoming elections of the US president scheduled for November 5. The outcome is likely to bring significant changes into the regulation of the crypto space.
Investors’ attention is shifting to well-established assets, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, since they have not only clearer use cases and strong fundamentals but are also serving as basis for the spot ETFs approved by the SEC at the start of the year. Investors consider meme cryptocurrencies to be risky (in the crypto field which is quite risky and volatile already), while BTC and ETH seem to keep their recently gained highs.
The approaching of the elections and the active participation of Elon Musk in their preparation on the side of Donald Trump is not helping Dogecoin to regain its recent big losses either. DOGE, SHIB and other meme coins have been traditionally moved upwards thanks to social media trends and hype, rather than actual adoption in the real world. Aside from this, Elon Musk’s ability to push DOGE price with his tweets seems to be fading in a big way recently.
Many observers are looking forward to the result of the elections to see how it will reshape the cryptocurrency landscape and how this will impact not only the prices of Bitcoin and other crypto behemoths but also meme cryptos.
