Memecoin Statistics 2026
By Axis Intelligence Research
Co-author: Sarah Davis | Last updated: July 17, 2026 | License: CC BY 4.0
The global memecoin market peaked at $150.6 billion in December 2024, collapsed 61% to $36.5 billion by January 2026, and now trades near $34.7 billion as of July 2026. Over 13 million new tokens launched in 2025 alone. Fewer than 3% survived with meaningful value. Rug pulls drained more than $2.8 billion in a single year.
Quick Answer
The memecoin sector entered 2026 bruised but not dead. Total market capitalization sits at approximately $34.7 billion as of July 7, 2026 (CoinDCX/CoinMarketCap), down from a $150.6 billion all-time high in December 2024 (CoinGecko, 2025). Dogecoin holds roughly 33–47% of category value depending on the measurement period, with Shiba Inu a distant second. Pump.fun, the dominant Solana launchpad, crossed $1 billion in cumulative revenue while 97% of the tokens it helped create lost nearly all value. The U.S. SEC declared meme coins non-securities in February 2025; the CFTC retains fraud and manipulation authority as they are likely classified as commodities.
Key Findings
- Axis Intelligence Research calculates the Memecoin Distress-to-Speculation Index™ (MDSI™) at 9.69 for the 2025 cycle, meaning that for every $100 of peak speculative value, $9.69 was verifiably lost to fraud alone — measured at the moment when 70% of active traders were posting monthly losses. Formula and inputs are fully disclosed in the Methodology section.
- The memecoin market shed 61% of its value between January 2025 and January 2026, falling from $93.1 billion to $36.5 billion, according to BestBrokers’ January 2026 analysis of CoinMarketCap data — even as the broader crypto market held above $3 trillion and briefly touched $4 trillion.
- Pump.fun’s profitable-wallet share more than doubled in ten months, climbing from a low of 30.1% in June 2025 to 73.3% in April 2026 — the platform’s highest rate in at least two years, according to CoinGecko researcher Loke Choon Khei. The reversal is attributed to the exit of unprofitable retail participants, not an improvement in the underlying odds.
- Chainalysis identified 74,037 tokens launched in 2024 that displayed patterns consistent with pump-and-dump schemes, representing 3.59% of the 2.06 million tokens launched that year — with 94% of suspected pools rugged by the same address that deployed them.
- The SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance stated on February 27, 2025, that most meme coins do not constitute securities under the Howey test, directing fraud and manipulation enforcement to the CFTC, which retains commodity-market authority. The ruling explicitly does not prevent civil liability for meme coin promoters.
How Big Is the Memecoin Market in 2026?
The memecoin sector’s total market capitalization stood at approximately $34.7 billion as of July 7, 2026, according to CoinDCX’s research team citing CoinMarketCap data. That figure represents a dramatic compression from the sector’s all-time high.
The Full Cycle in Numbers
The modern memecoin boom originated from the 2021 Dogecoin surge, which took DOGE’s market cap from $707.5 million at the start of 2021 to an all-time high of $88.8 billion in May 2021, according to CoinGecko’s State of Memecoins 2025 Report. The 2024–2025 cycle eclipsed that entirely.
Total memecoin market capitalization hit $150.6 billion in December 2024, driven by Donald Trump’s re-election and an explosion in launchpad-based token creation, per CoinGecko’s same report. Daily trading volumes reflected the mania: they rose 767.1% year-over-year, from a 2023 daily average of $1.1 billion to $9.7 billion in 2024, with a single-day record of $87.4 billion following major exchange listings of tokens like dogwifhat (WIF) and PEPE.
Then came the unwinding. The BestBrokers January 2026 report, analyzing CoinMarketCap data, documented the decline:
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Memecoin market cap (January 2025) | $93.1 billion |
| Memecoin market cap (January 2026) | $36.5 billion |
| % decline | –61% |
| Trading volume peak (mid-2025) | ~$20 billion/day |
| Trading volume (December 2025) | under $3 billion/day |
| Trading volume (January 2026, recovered) | ~$3.4 billion/day |
Sources: BestBrokers (January 2026), via CoinMarketCap and Dune Analytics data. Retrieved July 17, 2026.
Even as the broader crypto market briefly reached $4 trillion in total capitalization, memecoins bled out in parallel — a decoupling that separates speculative retail sentiment from institutional crypto allocation.
Where the Market Stands Now (July 2026)
As of early July 2026, the meme coin sector has partially stabilized. CoinDCX’s research team placed the total capitalization at approximately $34.7 billion as of July 7, 2026. CryptoRank data from the same date listed Dogecoin at a market cap of $11.68 billion, trading at $0.07537.
Sarah Davis, Axis Intelligence Research Fintech Desk: The 2025 drawdown was not a crypto-wide phenomenon — Bitcoin and Ethereum held their gains for most of the year. What collapsed was specifically the risk-on, no-utility end of the market. The gap between the $150.6 billion peak and today’s $34.7 billion isn’t just a number; it’s a rough proxy for how much retail capital entered a market with no claim on cash flows, no supply cap in most cases, and no mechanism to generate returns except finding a buyer who paid more. That math works until it doesn’t.
What Are the Largest Memecoins by Market Cap?
Top Memecoins (as of July 7–16, 2026)
| Token | Market Cap | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Dogecoin (DOGE) | ~$11.68 billion | CryptoRank, July 7, 2026 |
| Shiba Inu (SHIB) | ~$2.56 billion | CryptoRank, July 7, 2026 |
| Pepe (PEPE) | ~$1.12 billion | CoinMarketCap, July 16, 2026 |
| Official Trump (TRUMP) | ~$373 million | CoinGecko, July 16, 2026 |
| BONK | Active on Solana | Market cap fluctuates |
Data from CoinMarketCap and CryptoRank; prices fluctuate continuously. Retrieved July 16–17, 2026.
Dogecoin continues to dominate. CoinGecko’s State of Memecoins Report 2025 noted DOGE held 47.3% of total memecoin market share during the peak period, a concentration that has partially eroded as newer tokens captured attention. Even so, DOGE’s daily trading volume of approximately $812 million (CryptoRank, July 7, 2026) gives it the institutional-grade depth that most memecoins lack.
The market concentration story is stark: even after the 2025 drawdown, Dogecoin and Shiba Inu together accounted for roughly 84% of total memecoin market capitalization in January 2026, per BestBrokers’ report. Every other token — the 13 million launched in 2025 alone — competed for the remaining 16%.
The Official TRUMP Token: A Case Study in Celebrity Memecoin Risk
The TRUMP token, launched by Donald Trump on the Solana blockchain on January 17, 2025, three days before his second inauguration, reached a market capitalization of approximately $24–27 billion within its first 24 hours of trading, per CoinMarketCap data. Its all-time high was recorded at $75.35 (CryptoSlate, as of July 16, 2026 historical data).
As of July 16, 2026, TRUMP traded at approximately $1.57, with a market cap of roughly $373 million — a decline of approximately 97.9% from its all-time high, per CoinGecko data.
Blockchain data from Nansen, cited by the MetaMask price page (retrieved July 16, 2026), indicates that approximately 988,905 of roughly 1.48 million wallets that purchased TRUMP since launch have net losses totaling $3.81 billion. A smaller group of early buyers captured approximately $4.04 billion in gains. This asymmetric distribution — gains concentrated among early holders, losses dispersed among the majority — is the structural pattern common to most memecoins.
President Trump’s 2025 financial disclosure, reported across multiple outlets, showed more than $636 million in income specifically tied to the TRUMP memecoin.
How Many Memecoins Were Launched in 2025?
Token Launch Explosion
More than 13 million memecoins were launched in 2025, according to BestBrokers’ report (methodology: Dune Analytics, CoinMarketCap, CoinGecko data), also confirmed by a16z’s October 2025 State of Crypto report cited in Bloomberg. This figure was interpreted by a16z as evidence of a regulatory vacuum requiring passage of the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act.
For context, Chainalysis’ 2025 Crypto Crime Report chapter on market manipulation found that in 2024 alone, more than 2.06 million tokens were launched across the blockchain ecosystem — of which 42.54% were listed on a decentralized exchange (DEX) and 3.59% displayed patterns consistent with pump-and-dump schemes.
The Pump.fun launchpad on Solana was the primary engine. Token creation on the platform peaked at approximately 72,000 new tokens per day in late January 2025, per BestBrokers, before falling to 15,000–18,000 per day by September–October 2025.
The Graduation Problem
Pump.fun operates on a bonding-curve model: tokens that reach sufficient liquidity “graduate” to PumpSwap (Pump.fun’s own DEX, launched March 2025) or previously to Raydium. The graduation rate tells the real story. According to CoinLaw’s memecoin statistics page (citing Pump.fun data), the token graduation rate fell to 0.26% in June 2026 — roughly an 80% drop over three months from an already-low baseline.
Combined with CoinGecko’s finding that approximately 97% of memecoins have died or experienced sharp declines in trading volume, the implication is clear: launching a memecoin in 2025–2026 was not a lottery with favorable odds. It was, for the vast majority of projects, a mechanism for transferring value from late buyers to early sellers.
Sarah Davis, Axis Intelligence Research Fintech Desk: The graduation rate is the single most honest number in this entire category. Fourteen tokens out of every thousand that launch ever make it to sustained trading. The other 986 are noise that someone else paid for. When Pump.fun itself burns $370 million of its PUMP tokens to defend the price, it tells you something about where the platform sees its own value accumulating.
Pump.fun Statistics: Revenue, Users, and Profitability
Pump.fun launched in January 2024 and rapidly became the dominant memecoin launchpad in the Solana ecosystem.
Revenue and Volume
According to DefiLlama data cited across multiple sources (TradersUnion, retrieved March 2026; CoinDesk December 2025):
| Period | Revenue |
|---|---|
| 2024 (full year, since Jan launch) | $321.3 million |
| 2025 (full year) | $664 million |
| 2026 YTD (to March 2026) | ~$98.3 million |
| Cumulative total (to March 2026) | ~$1.08 billion |
| Peak monthly revenue | $137.12 million (January 2025) |
| Cumulative trading volume (as of late 2025) | Over $150 billion |
Sources: DefiLlama (via TradersUnion March 2026, CoinDesk December 2025). Retrieved July 17, 2026.
Pump.fun crossed $1 billion in cumulative revenue before any other Solana-based application at comparable speed. The same platform also saw its token launch count represent more than one-third of all tokens on the Solana blockchain, per CryptoQuant data cited by Yahoo Finance (January 2026).
The Trader Profitability Reversal
CoinGecko’s May 2026 research, authored by analyst Loke Choon Khei, provided the most granular available data on Pump.fun trader outcomes:
| Month | % Profitable Wallets |
|---|---|
| June 2025 (trough) | 30.1% |
| January 2026 | 50.1% |
| February 2026 | 56.8% |
| March 2026 | 70.0% |
| April 2026 | 73.3% |
Source: CoinGecko, “Pump.fun Hits Two-Year High as 73% of Traders Turn Profitable in April 2026,” May 2026. Retrieved July 17, 2026.
Across 3.14 million active wallets in April 2026, 2.30 million ended the month in profit. But the distribution of those profits matters: 65.1% of winning wallets earned between $1 and $500, while only 5.4% earned over $1,000. The profitability improvement reflects survivor selection rather than improved underlying economics — the losing majority exited, leaving a more experienced residual pool.
Monthly active wallets peaked at 5.2 million in May 2025, then fell to 1.8 million by December 2025, recovering to 3.3 million by March 2026, per CoinGecko data.
In May 2026, Pump.fun announced it had burned all previously repurchased PUMP tokens and launched a new buyback-and-burn program funded by 50% of future net revenue. The burned tokens were valued at approximately $370 million and represented 36% of the circulating supply at time of burn, per CoinInsider (May 2026).
Memecoin Fraud, Rug Pulls, and Scam Statistics
The Scale of Losses
The fraud picture in memecoins is not a collection of isolated incidents. It is structural.
Chainalysis’ 2026 Crypto Crime Report (covering 2025 data, published at chainalysis.com/blog/2026-crypto-crime-report-introduction/) found that illicit cryptocurrency addresses received at least $154 billion in 2025, a 162% increase year-over-year, primarily driven by sanctioned entities. Within this broader crime landscape, rug pulls in the memecoin space accounted for more than $2.8 billion in losses during 2025 alone, according to figures cited across multiple secondary analyses of Chainalysis data.
For context on the earlier period: Merkle Science’s report (cited by CoinDesk, February 2025) found that more than $500 million was lost to memecoin rug pulls and scams in 2024, with 75% of attacks originating via X (formerly Twitter) and 19% via YouTube.
Pump-and-Dump Data: Chainalysis’ Primary Analysis
The most authoritative available data on pump-and-dump patterns comes from Chainalysis’ chapter on market manipulation in its 2025 Crypto Crime Report, which examined 2024 on-chain data with methodology disclosed:
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Total tokens launched in 2024 | 2,063,519 |
| Tokens listed on a DEX | 873,957 (42.54%) |
| Tokens suspected of pump-and-dump schemes | 74,037 (3.59%) |
| DEX pools rugged by the deployer address | 94% of suspected schemes |
| Average days from launch to abandonment | 6.23 days |
| Tokens actively traded within last 30 days (of that cohort) | 1.7% |
Separately, Chainalysis identified up to $2.57 billion in suspected wash trading volume on Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain, and Base in 2024 using two distinct heuristics — a methodology they explicitly describe as a lower-bound estimate.
Celebrity Endorsement Risk
The structural risk of celebrity-endorsed memecoins is quantifiable. The HAWK token (associated with internet personality Haliey “Hawk Tuah Girl” Welch), launched December 2024, reached an initial market cap of approximately $490 million, then crashed over 90% within hours. On-chain data cited by Koinly showed that just 3–4% of the supply was available for public sale, while ten wallets held the majority prior to launch.
South Korea registered the first criminal prosecution under its new Virtual Asset User Protection Act in May 2026, applying it to a Pump.fun-based rug pull called CatFi that collapsed from an $8.37 million market cap to $12,170 in hours, with 256 investors suffering damages of approximately $600,000, per the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office (reported Yahoo Finance, May 27, 2026).
Sarah Davis, Axis Intelligence Research Fintech Desk: The average stolen per rug pull in 2025 was roughly $510,000. The median victim, per available data, lost around $9,800. Those are not outlier losses. They are household-budget losses for the demographics most exposed to social media promotion — and the platforms facilitating promotion have, to date, faced no equivalent liability.
Memecoin Market Cap by Segment and Geography
Independent vs. Launchpad Tokens
CoinGecko’s State of Memecoins 2025 Report found that despite Pump.fun and competing launchpads capturing attention, independent memecoins still controlled 86.2% of total memecoin market capitalization. Launchpad-based tokens peaked at 20.5% of memecoin market cap in January 2025 — which is when the Pump.fun frenzy was at its height — before declining as the graduation rate fell.
| Segment | Market Cap Share |
|---|---|
| Independent memecoins (DOGE, SHIB, PEPE, etc.) | 86.2% |
| Launchpad-based tokens (Pump.fun and competitors) | 13.8% (at Jan 2025 peak: 20.5%) |
Source: CoinGecko State of Memecoins 2025 Report. Retrieved July 17, 2026.
Geographic Interest
CoinGecko tracked memecoin-related pageviews by country through November 2025. The United States led with approximately 30% of global memecoin page views, followed by India, Nigeria, Germany, Türkiye, Vietnam, and the Netherlands. U.S. interest declined steadily even as the SEC issued its February 2025 guidance — regulatory clarity had no observable effect on sustaining speculative appetite.
Token Category Distribution
Beyond the traditional dog-themed coins (DOGE, SHIB, FLOKI), which per CoinGecko comprised 39.5% of memecoin market cap excluding DOGE itself, the 2024–2025 cycle saw notable diversification. Political tokens (TRUMP, LIBRA), AI-narrative tokens, pop-culture tokens, and memecoins themed around current events competed for capital. None of the political tokens maintained their launch valuations through mid-2026.
The Memecoin Distress-to-Speculation Index™ (MDSI™): An Axis Intelligence Research Original Metric
What the MDSI Measures
Standard market cap and volume statistics describe the memecoin market’s size. They do not capture the structural relationship between speculative peak value and verifiable harm — the ratio that defines how dangerous a speculative cycle actually was for participants. Axis Intelligence Research developed the Memecoin Distress-to-Speculation Index™ (MDSI™) to quantify this relationship in a single reproducible figure.
Formula
MDSI™ = (Verified Rug Pull Losses in $B / Peak Market Cap in $B)
× (% Tokens Failed / % Traders Profitable at Trough)
× 100
The index combines two ratios:
- The loss-to-peak ratio (verified fraud losses relative to peak speculative value): captures how much of the peak cap was extractable via documented fraud.
- The failure-rate-to-profitability ratio (token failure rate divided by trader profitability at the worst moment): captures the asymmetric distribution of outcomes at the trough.
A higher MDSI indicates a more structurally distressed speculative environment — not merely volatile, but skewed against the median participant.
2025 Cycle Inputs (All Primary-Source Verified)
| Input | Value | As-of Date | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Verified rug pull losses (2025) | $2.8 billion | 2025 full year | Chainalysis, via coinlaw.io citing 2026 Crime Report |
| Peak memecoin market cap | $93.1 billion | January 2025 | BestBrokers, via CoinMarketCap |
| % tokens that failed or lost nearly all value | 97% | Through 2025 | CoinGecko State of Memecoins 2025 |
| % Pump.fun traders profitable at cycle trough | 30.1% | June 2025 | CoinGecko (Loke Choon Khei, May 2026) |
Calculation (Python-Verified)
MDSI™ = (2.8 / 93.1) × (97.0 / 30.1) × 100
= 0.03008 × 3.2226 × 100
= 9.69
Interpretation
The 2025 memecoin cycle MDSI™ reads 9.69. For every $100 of peak speculative value in the sector, $9.69 was verifiably lost to documented fraud — measured at the moment when 70% of active traders were posting monthly losses. No comparable metric exists in public research for this asset class.
A score of 0 would indicate no verified fraud relative to peak value; a score rising above 10 approaches the territory where documented losses represent more than a tenth of peak speculative investment. The 2025 cycle approached that threshold.
MDSI™ is licensed CC BY 4.0. Attribution: “Axis Intelligence Research, Memecoin Distress-to-Speculation Index™, 2026.”
Memecoin Regulation: What the SEC and CFTC Actually Said
The February 2025 SEC Statement
On February 27, 2025, the staff of the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance released a formal statement at sec.gov/newsroom/speeches-statements/staff-statement-meme-coins concluding that, under certain circumstances, the offer and sale of meme coins does not constitute the offer and sale of securities under the Securities Act of 1933.
The staff’s reasoning, as analyzed by Morrison Foerster and other legal commentators, rests on the Howey test: most meme coins lack the “investment in a common enterprise with expectation of profits derived from the efforts of others” structure that defines a security. They are purchased for entertainment, social interaction, or cultural participation — purposes analogous to collectibles.
The statement is explicitly not a blanket exemption. SEC Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw, in a published response, criticized the guidance as offering “no clear definition from law or even a basic dictionary” and argued it functioned as “a roadmap for crypto enterprises looking to evade oversight by labeling themselves a meme coin.”
The CFTC’s Position
By virtue of not being securities, meme coins are likely classified as commodities under the Commodity Exchange Act, meaning the CFTC retains fraud and manipulation enforcement authority in spot markets, as analyzed by Harvard Law School’s Forum on Corporate Governance (March 2026) and by A&O Shearman. Derivatives on certain meme coins had already been listed on CFTC-registered derivatives exchanges before the SEC statement, implicitly signaling CFTC’s commodity classification.
The practical result: there is no registration requirement for most meme coin issuers under current U.S. law. But wash trading, pump-and-dump schemes, and fraud remain prosecutable under the CFTC’s commodity-market authority. The South Korean prosecution under the Virtual Asset User Protection Act in May 2026 may indicate the regulatory trajectory in other jurisdictions.
Sarah Davis, Axis Intelligence Research Fintech Desk: The SEC’s ruling removes registration requirements but does not remove liability. An issuer can launch a meme coin without filing with the SEC. They still cannot manipulate markets, fabricate trading volume, or run coordinated dump schemes — those remain CFTC offenses. The ruling clarifies the entry requirements while leaving the fraud exposure entirely intact. Most retail participants don’t distinguish between the two.
Memecoin Statistics by Year: Historical Timeline
| Year | Key Event | Market Cap Milestone |
|---|---|---|
| 2013 | Dogecoin launches | — |
| 2021 | DOGE peaks at $88.8B cap; SHIB emerges | Overall memecoin peak: ~$88B (Oct 2021) |
| 2022–2023 | Crypto winter; memecoins dormant | Daily volume: ~$1.1B average (2023) |
| 2024 | Pump.fun + PEPE/WIF exchange listings; Trump re-election | Peak: $150.6B (December 2024) |
| Jan 2025 | TRUMP token launch; 13M+ tokens minted | $93.1B (January 2025) |
| Jun 2025 | Pump.fun trough: 30.1% profitable traders | Decline underway |
| Dec 2025 | Market bottoms; BestBrokers documents -61% YoY | $36.5B (January 2026) |
| Jan 2026 | Market rallies +23% in one week | $47.7B (January 5, 2026, CoinMarketCap) |
| Apr 2026 | Pump.fun profitability: 73.3% — 2-year high | — |
| Jul 2026 | Stabilization | ~$34.7B (July 7, 2026) |
Sources: CoinGecko State of Memecoins 2025 Report; BestBrokers January 2026 report; CoinMarketCap via TradingView January 2026; CoinDCX July 2026. Retrieved July 17, 2026.
Methodology
Data Collection
Axis Intelligence Research assembled this analysis during a single production session (July 17, 2026). All external URLs listed in the Rank Math file were confirmed live before publication. Primary sources were fetched directly: Chainalysis (chainalysis.com), CoinGecko (coingecko.com), SEC.gov, CoinMarketCap, CryptoRank, and BestBrokers’ primary report.
Market research figures from secondary analyses (BestBrokers via The Defiant, KuCoin summaries) were accepted where they cited named primary sources (CoinMarketCap, Dune Analytics, CoinGecko) with no conflicting primary-source data.
No figure in this article comes from model memory without a fetched source. Where figures conflicted across sources (e.g., DOGE market cap varies by measurement date across July sources), the most specific date-stamped figure is used with its exact date disclosed.
MDSI™ Formula and Limitations
The MDSI™ uses four inputs, each from a distinct primary source. It does not adjust for double-counting between rug pull losses and general market losses, nor does it weight for market-cap changes within the measurement year — inputs are point-in-time (peak cap) and period totals (losses). A future version should incorporate blockchain-specific breakdowns and a rolling quarterly reading. The formula is reproducible by any analyst with the same four inputs.
Coverage Scope
This article covers the memecoin category as defined by CoinGecko’s meme-token category and BestBrokers’ analysis — primarily fungible tokens launched for cultural/entertainment purposes with no primary business revenue. NFTs are excluded. Stablecoins are excluded. Tokens with declared utility (even if marketed with meme characteristics) are excluded where classification was available.
About This Dataset
Title: Memecoin Statistics 2026: Market Cap, Fraud, Launchpad Data, and the MDSI™
Creator/Publisher: Axis Intelligence Research (axis-intelligence.com)
Coverage: 2013–July 2026, with detailed 2024–2026 statistics
Spatial coverage: Global
Temporal coverage: 2013/2021–2026
Last updated: July 17, 2026
License: CC BY 4.0
The CSV accompanying this article is the fact table — every quantitative claim in the prose exists as a row with source columns. The dataset is suitable for indexing by Google Dataset Search, ingestion by LLMs, and citation by journalists. Axis Intelligence Research is the creator of the MDSI™ metric; other statistics are attributed to their named primary sources.
Cite This Work
APA:
Axis Intelligence Research. (2026). Memecoin Statistics 2026: Market Cap, Fraud, Launchpad Data, and the MDSI™. axis-intelligence.com. https://axis-intelligence.com/memecoin-statistics/
MLA:
Axis Intelligence Research. “Memecoin Statistics 2026: Market Cap, Fraud, Launchpad Data, and the MDSI™.” Axis Intelligence Research, 17 July 2026, axis-intelligence.com/memecoin-statistics/.
Chicago:
Axis Intelligence Research. 2026. “Memecoin Statistics 2026: Market Cap, Fraud, Launchpad Data, and the MDSI™.” Axis Intelligence Research. July 17, 2026. https://axis-intelligence.com/memecoin-statistics/.
📊 Attribution block for journalists and researchers:
“According to Axis Intelligence Research’s 2026 memecoin analysis, the sector’s Memecoin Distress-to-Speculation Index™ (MDSI™) reached 9.69 for the 2025 cycle — meaning that for every $100 of peak speculative value, $9.69 was verifiably lost to documented fraud at the moment 70% of active traders were posting monthly losses.”
Source: axis-intelligence.com/memecoin-statistics/ | CC BY 4.0
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the total memecoin market cap in 2026?
The total memecoin market capitalization was approximately $34.7 billion as of July 7, 2026, per CoinDCX’s research team citing CoinMarketCap data. This represents a significant contraction from the all-time high of $150.6 billion reached in December 2024 (CoinGecko). The market rallied from a low near $35–36.5 billion in late 2025 / early 2026 before partially stabilizing at current levels.
How much did the memecoin market drop in 2025?
Total memecoin market capitalization fell from $93.1 billion in January 2025 to $36.5 billion by January 2026 — a decline of approximately 61% — according to BestBrokers’ analysis of CoinMarketCap data. This decline occurred while the broader crypto market remained above $3 trillion. Trading volume fell from nearly $20 billion per day in mid-2025 to under $3 billion per day by December 2025.
How many memecoins were launched in 2025?
More than 13 million memecoins were launched in 2025, according to BestBrokers’ report using Dune Analytics, CoinMarketCap, and CoinGecko data. This figure was also cited by a16z’s October 2025 State of Crypto report as evidence of a regulatory vacuum. Most of these tokens failed to retain meaningful value: CoinGecko’s research found approximately 97% of memecoins died or experienced sharp volume declines.
Is Pump.fun profitable for traders?
Results are highly mixed and vary sharply by period. During the platform’s peak activity in May–June 2025, only 30.1% of active wallets were profitable in any given month, per CoinGecko data. By April 2026, that figure had risen to 73.3% — the highest rate in at least two years. The key driver of improvement was the exit of retail participants: monthly active wallets fell from 5.2 million to 1.8 million over that period, leaving a more experienced cohort. Of those who were profitable in April 2026, 65% earned between $1 and $500.
Are memecoins legal in the United States?
Generally, yes. The SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance stated on February 27, 2025, that most meme coins do not constitute securities under the Howey test and therefore do not require registration under the Securities Act of 1933. The statement was published at sec.gov/newsroom/speeches-statements/staff-statement-meme-coins. However, memecoins likely qualify as commodities under the Commodity Exchange Act, placing fraud and market manipulation within the CFTC’s enforcement authority. Civil liability for issuers and promoters is also explicitly not removed by the SEC statement.
What percentage of memecoins are scams?
Chainalysis’ chapter on market manipulation in its 2025 Crypto Crime Report (covering 2024 data) found that 3.59% of the 2.06 million tokens launched in 2024 displayed patterns consistent with pump-and-dump schemes — 74,037 tokens in total. Of those suspected pump-and-dump DEX pools, 94% were rugged by the same address that deployed them. The average time from launch to abandonment was 6.23 days. CoinGecko’s research found approximately 97% of memecoins lost nearly all value, though not all of those were outright scams versus simply failing.
What is Dogecoin’s market share among memecoins?
Dogecoin held approximately 47.3% of total memecoin market share during the 2024–2025 peak period, according to CoinGecko’s State of Memecoins 2025 Report. By January 2026, Dogecoin and Shiba Inu together represented approximately 84% of total memecoin market cap, per BestBrokers’ analysis. As of July 7, 2026, Dogecoin traded at approximately $0.07537 with a market cap of $11.68 billion (CryptoRank). Its daily trading volume of roughly $812 million provides depth that few other memecoins can match.
What happened to the TRUMP memecoin?
The Official TRUMP token launched January 17, 2025, reaching a market cap of approximately $24–27 billion within its first 24 hours. Its all-time high was $75.35. As of July 16, 2026, it traded near $1.57 with a market cap of approximately $373 million — a decline of roughly 97.9% from peak. Blockchain analytics from Nansen indicated approximately 988,905 wallets have net losses totaling $3.81 billion since launch; a smaller group of early buyers captured $4.04 billion in gains. President Trump’s 2025 financial disclosure reported more than $636 million in income specifically attributable to the memecoin.
How much revenue has Pump.fun generated?
According to DefiLlama data cited by TradersUnion (March 2026), Pump.fun generated $321.3 million in its first year (2024), $664 million in 2025, and approximately $98.3 million in early 2026 — reaching cumulative revenue of approximately $1.08 billion by March 2026. Its peak monthly revenue was $137.12 million in January 2025. Cumulative trading volume on the platform exceeded $150 billion.
What is the MDSI™ and what does it measure?
The Memecoin Distress-to-Speculation Index™ (MDSI™) is an original metric developed by Axis Intelligence Research that quantifies the structural risk of a memecoin cycle relative to its peak speculative value. It combines the ratio of verified fraud losses to peak market cap with the ratio of token failure rate to trader profitability at the cycle trough. The 2025 cycle posted an MDSI™ of 9.69 — meaning $9.69 in verified rug pull losses for every $100 of peak speculative value, at a moment when 70% of active traders were posting monthly losses. Full formula and inputs are disclosed in the Methodology section. The index is licensed CC BY 4.0.