Failure of meme coin this past years

[finaleshot2016]

This is one of the major reasons why I stopped degening to memecoins recently, too saturated, a lot of people making money out of it but there's no substance because the major profit are the insiders. But tbh, it's the easiest way to earn money but pure luck, they can't make money if you aren't the dev or an insider, that's a reality unlike around 2023-2024 it's pure community, people make tokens because it's possible to own a token in this space. To justify things, we are here in crypto, you don't need to follow current economy and be a slave to what already existed, it's innovation and hyped by the people so I think there are advantage and disavantage of memecoins and tbf, the reason why SOL and ETH have massive volumes is because of the newly created tokens each day, those who are still at million mcap that stands strong.

[justinlamode]

-snip-
I have always thought memecoins are sometimes used for people to gamble their money, believing they will become rich over night.

This is the right response because it is completely irresponsible gambling to invest heavily in memecoins and hold. Memecoins are driven by FOMO as many commenters already explained and when that FOMO dies, the price will follow it. Those gamblers that put money in these coins out to understand this and act accordingly. You buy when the hype is starting, and sell at the peak of the hype, that is the only way to make profit from memecoins. One other thing I have noticed too is that memecoins are usually the worst affected during bear market because people dump them rapidly.

[GeorgeJohn]

Actually we have many coins that people Project yearly so it is obvious that not all the coins that you see in the market or you see influencers advertising the project you think about all of them are a good coin, most of the coins does not have a good sponsor and that is why most of them failed to progress

So for the altcoin coins to die on the process that is what to make a good crypto investors that always invest in Bitcoin to take advantage time and make a proper research and also known the sponsors of a coin before investing, so this investigation or research is what makes some people not to invest in meme coin,

Another thing that we have to consider when investing in meme coins, is to have in mind that not all of them that you invest on holy progress, the risk measure in them is on high potential so we don't need venture into them without adequate research.

[M47AK16]

I will not call that failure because by the definition of failure, memecoins do not fit in. They failed to do what if I may ask? There memecoins, designed for fun and nothing more than that. Ordinarily they have no value

Memecoins has their own definition. So maybe we can say that a meme coin is a failure if the meme coin created is not appropriate to what meme coins supposed to be. Original meme coins are for fun but business-minded people use the meme coin as a vehicle to make easy money. Whichever type we are or whichever type of meme coin was that, it has their own set of values.

We can only say that they don't have anymore, once the meme coin got dumped. Like all other trends of altcoins space, memecoins also will end soon for obvious reasons. Because, investors will switch over to new trend once memecoin trend attains its saturation level.

[tygeade]

Memecoins were always terrible investments, just because they are not degening like crazy today doesn't mean they were good before. All these memes had one thing in common, they would skyrocket for a day or two, and then would crash, those who make money on those one or two good days would share their income on social media, and others who want the same amount of return would try their luck with other new memecoins, some would get lucky again, and it would repeat.

Nowadays even that is not happening, because we are seeing it be a terrible thing and not even go up for a day. Just stay away from them, memecoins are never good investments, never were, never will be. So many more people lost money on memecoins than people who made money.

[Ahli38]

This is one of the major reasons why I stopped degening to memecoins recently, too saturated, a lot of people making money out of it but there's no substance because the major profit are the insiders. But tbh, it's the easiest way to earn money but pure luck, they can't make money if you aren't the dev or an insider, that's a reality unlike around 2023-2024 it's pure community, people make tokens because it's possible to own a token in this space. To justify things, we are here in crypto, you don't need to follow current economy and be a slave to what already existed, it's innovation and hyped by the people so I think there are advantage and disavantage of memecoins and tbf, the reason why SOL and ETH have massive volumes is because of the newly created tokens each day, those who are still at million mcap that stands strong.

Yes, that's right. Meme coins are no longer as attractive as they used to be. And most meme coins are now controlled by insiders, where they become the largest holders who have the potential to sell their meme coins in large quantities at one time. This situation has the potential to create pump-and-dump scenario that could harm many people who are not early adopters. In addition meme coins are no longer as attractive as they used to be, where we could still predict which memecoins would pump. The large number of meme coins in circulation and even the unpredictability of market movements have made meme coins very sluggish. I personally prefer to avoid trading or even investing in meme coins for now. But I will try my luck with meme coins that truly have potential or even have no many involvement of insiders in their holders.

[Webetcoins]

Hype and community can go a long way, but not survival. The disappearance of half of the 3.7 million tokens proves that the market now wants something beyond easy liquidity and quick pumps. Pump-and-dumps, rag-pools, political tokens, these events have destroyed trust, and naturally people are now moving away from utility-driven projects.

I think it is the opposite mate. It must be on the past is where we had more utility projects but right now, it is sad that most of them are just about easy-money or hypes. They grow as people may also be liking them. Losing a lot of money like on your example there is only normal right now. That is part of the game and it happens if they got a bit greedy or they don't take their assignments about these high-risk coins very well. Altcoins industry is surviving because of new adaptors of cryptos, bitcoin must be a driving force for convincing new people to adapt cryptos but I am not sure how long such trend will continue.

[noorman0]

-snip-
Loss of trust!
 Repeated rug pulls and the sheer volume of dead tokens have eroded confidence.

Are there still people who half-believe that "meme coin trading" is an investment activity, or are they actually aware of the reality?
The motivation of most meme traders is no longer profit-oriented, but rather the "lucky" ones who manage to exit before the LPs withdraw their money. Essentially, they aren't trading in the first place, since meme volatility can be addictive.

[fullfitlarry]

-snip-
Loss of trust!
 Repeated rug pulls and the sheer volume of dead tokens have eroded confidence.

Are there still people who half-believe that "meme coin trading" is an investment activity, or are they actually aware of the reality?
The motivation of most meme traders is no longer profit-oriented, but rather the "lucky" ones who manage to exit before the LPs withdraw their money. Essentially, they aren't trading in the first place, since meme volatility can be addictive.

Perhaps they are aware of the reality that meme coins doesn't have a use case in crypto sphere. However, if they can make a lot of money from it then why not? So that's where greedy investors or maybe smart investors come in, as they know how to take advantage of meme coins.

And then make a lot of money in return. And that's why there are still meme coins up in this time and I don't think that meme coins will die down because of this kind of investors. It's like gambling and so they like to take that big risk.

[ultrloa]

-snip-
Loss of trust!
 Repeated rug pulls and the sheer volume of dead tokens have eroded confidence.

Are there still people who half-believe that "meme coin trading" is an investment activity, or are they actually aware of the reality?
The motivation of most meme traders is no longer profit-oriented, but rather the "lucky" ones who manage to exit before the LPs withdraw their money. Essentially, they aren't trading in the first place, since meme volatility can be addictive.

Unfortunately there is since if you look at the meme coin groups you can see that there are still lots of people take the risk for investing on early presale phase of those tokens or rather buy when those shitcoin newly listed on exchange.

Unfortunately many still believe that one of those meme coins will bring them a huge profit that's why even if majority of them losing still they try to be consistent and hope that one day their life will be change if there's one meme coin out there will have a huge bullish run. But for me I don't buy that sentiments anymore since I know meme coin is so risky and provably what come first is we lost a lot of money rather than those profits they aim would came. They better invest on more reliable altcoins or Bitcoin rather than trying to hit some luck on meme coins.

[Nahl]

-snip-
I have always thought memecoins are sometimes used for people to gamble their money, believing they will become rich over night.

This is the right response because it is completely irresponsible gambling to invest heavily in memecoins and hold. Memecoins are driven by FOMO as many commenters already explained and when that FOMO dies, the price will follow it. Those gamblers that put money in these coins out to understand this and act accordingly. You buy when the hype is starting, and sell at the peak of the hype, that is the only way to make profit from memecoins. One other thing I have noticed too is that memecoins are usually the worst affected during bear market because people dump them rapidly.

Agree with you that trading meme coin is similar too gambling because the chart or technical analysis won't work to predict the prices of movement of meme coin because if meme coin pumped rapidly it only based from hype, narrative, and the communities even some of traders who focus on meme coin has been says that in meme coin the trader should have 90% intuition and 10% skill and the most important too to became an success trader in meme coin world you have two option that became an the dev or the insiders

[Futurexxx]

Just think of it that most of the memes have no utility at all. Even if it gets a huge hype from the platforms and the community of it, it will remain as a meme. And later on, that's where things are going to change from its development. The devs are going to be stagnant and if they're able to make some money out of it, the development won't happen anymore because even them, they understand what the market needs and these coins if made just a memecoin, they'll be ending it with a memecoin as well. What utility they need? as a payment? as a rewards, etc? we already have got a bunch of those coins that have the same utility as them.

Meme coin or shit coin as most folks here calls it has never been something to invest heavily on because they falls more than they rise, and with the rate at which they are much in the market, it is clear to see that they are created for gambling purposes, so once the hypes that surrounds any of them dies, gambler on meme coin moves to the next one because they knows that the token is dead and buried, it will be only ignorant once that will still be holding unto an asset that is already gone. So treating meme coin like gambling is the only way forward because it has the capacity to do the unthinkable and makes you a whole lot of money, but putting what you can easily afford to lose is the best way to gamble on them.

[jossiel]

Memecoins were always terrible investments, just because they are not degening like crazy today doesn't mean they were good before. All these memes had one thing in common, they would skyrocket for a day or two, and then would crash, those who make money on those one or two good days would share their income on social media, and others who want the same amount of return would try their luck with other new memecoins, some would get lucky again, and it would repeat.

Nowadays even that is not happening, because we are seeing it be a terrible thing and not even go up for a day. Just stay away from them, memecoins are never good investments, never were, never will be. So many more people lost money on memecoins than people who made money.

You've made a good summary on how it goes with the memecoins. I think that the experienced ones or those who have tried investing on them and have seen the reality understands what actually is happening with the memes.

We've thought that the money is in there but it's not for the majority but only to the developers and early investors that had a good call from them.

They're typical pump and dump altcoins and that's why if someone likes to ride that kind of volatility, be careful and if you love your money, you'd definitely have to stay away from them.

[Cyber_warrior]

The meme‑coin scene has basically hit a perfect storm. Over the past year more than 3.7 million tokens have gone belly‑up, with roughly half of those disappearing in the first quarter of 2025 alone  That’s a staggering number of projects that never found any real traction beyond a quick pump on platforms like Pump.fun, which has spawned millions of low‑effort coins and now sees massive outflows as investors pull back 

If you check most of this meme coins, they are just created by scammers, they have no real use case. Just imagine a coin without use case, no road map and other things, you should know that even if the price increases, it’s going to dump again, the price won’t be at the top for long.

Most meme coins are just pump and dump coins, when they are pumped by the team, they expect people to invest in the coin, and they crash everything on people that invested. Creating a coin isn’t something difficult, so people keeps on repeating the same thing continuously that’s why you going to see different meme coins in the market, and they are shitcoins, they owned by scammers.

[TastyChillySauce00]

Massive sell‑offs and liquidations The broader crypto market slumped, wiping out about $500 billion in value in just three days and blowing out $1.7 billion in leveraged positions  When the tide turns, meme coins being the most speculative get hit hardest.

This is to be expected. Massive sell off will eventually happen and meme coin will eventually become zero.

People buy meme coin just to profit from it, not a person that I know holding meme coin just because the want to hold meme coin forever and thinks the meme coin worth the price, they just want to flip and make profit.
There will be a time when the meme coin lost its hype and people dumping their bag until there will be no liquidity left and if there is any it will have huge slippage basically dead meme coin.

[uneng]

There were still high expectations towards memecoins in 2025. I remember seeing lots of tokens being launched and discussions here about them. I think it had to do with the fact investors hoped for an altcoin run after Bitcoin massive increasements in price. However, it didn't happen as expected, and now investors are already getting aware memecoins aren't going to perform like they did in previous ATH cycle of 2021.

For me, it's not a surprise at all, because as we have been seeing, hypes don't last for more than one cycle in this market. Since memecoins were already a thing in 2021, investors should be suspicious about their performance in 2024 and 2025. The market is constantly looking for new trends, even to speculate over, so to repeat the same schemes is never a smart decision.

[gunhell16]

To this day, many meme coins still end in failure. Despite this, thousands of new meme coins are created daily in this industry, so it is not surprising that many people are still fascinated by them.
Many people continue to take a chance and are willing to gamble, hoping they might earn huge profits by investing in meme coins.

However, this is also where rug pull scenarios frequently happen, with many people getting carried away by the hype surrounding these coins. That is why many long-time members of the crypto space constantly remind others to be cautious when investing in the new meme coins that appear, as they are also the main tools used by scammers.

[taufik123]

-snip-
Many people continue to take a chance and are willing to gamble, hoping they might earn huge profits by investing in meme coins.
-snip-

It's better to gamble live in a casino than to have to lose more money on memecoins, Because a lot of losses happen to myself.
Losing thousands of dollars because of too FOMO and believing in memecoin devs that just take investors' liquidity pretty ruthlessly,
but continue to give encouragement to keep buying them.

Huge profits at the beginning, but then losing it all pretty quickly, is sad and leaves a lot of people out of memecoins except those who do take advantage of the memecoin market to trap more people for higher profits.

[justdimin]

In short, the fallout is a mix of market‑wide crashes, high‑profile scams, tightening regulation, and a growing demand for substance over hype. If a meme coin can adapt add utility, improve transparency, maybe even get a regulated listing like BONK’s Swiss ETP it might survive the shake‑out. Otherwise, it’s likely to join the graveyard of the millions that never made it past the meme stage.

Adapting an utility itself is too late in my view, while being created, devs must have plans for its utility in mind. Just choosing a catchy names or logo alone will not decide the fate of memcoins. Transparency and regulations are good still when a memecoin is created for certain purposes and/or for solving a problem and the project is real and in development, I guess no one could stop that memecoin reaching the moon. But in reality, we have all altcoins just for hype reasons.

Even one or two memecoins with real utility, due to the failure of large number of other memecoins, they also join the list of failed projects. When the entire industry itself not doing good, you cannot expect one or two perform well under the shadow of bad names.

[nomenclatur]

The current rise of meme coins isn't surprising; on the contrary, crypto exchanges are becoming saturated because meme coins no longer attract many investors. Investors are likely more attracted to mainstream Bitcoin coins, such as seasonal meme coins, which no longer attract as many investors as when they first launched, and many investors are likely exiting due to significant losses.