Will technological narrative become the main theme of hype? Looking back at 2024 memes and looking forward to 2025 with seven popular concepts

Author: flowie, ChainCatcher

Editor: Nian Qing, ChainCatcher

2024 is the first year of the meme explosion, and the meme craze lasts throughout 2024. As of press time, CoinGecko data shows that meme has exceeded 100 billion US dollars. Meme is not only a battlefield for retail investors, but also a battleground for major institutions, CEX and public chains to compete for traffic.

Compared with the past, which mainly focused on zoo-type memes, it can be said that in 2024, everything can be memes, and there are always angles you can’t think of. This article reviews the main types of meme hype concepts in 2024, as well as investment research institutions’ predictions for meme development trends in 2025.

The seven hottest meme hype concepts of 2024

political concept meme

The 2024 U.S. election gave birth to and heated up many political concept meme coins. On March 5, 2024, CoinGecko added the PolitiFi token section.

It can be said that political memes first and mainly revolve around Trump. In 2023, a Meme token called TRUMP increased by more than a thousand times, stunning the community. In the critical year of the 2024 election, various memes with the same names as Trump, Biden, Harris, Vance and other political figures in important positions have once again become a hot spot for speculation. Representative tokens include TRUMP, BODEN, and KAMA.

In addition to politician tokens, a large number of memes have been derived from the slogans and golden phrases used by politicians in their speeches. For example, the Meme coin MAGA is named after Trump’s campaign slogan “Make America Great Again”. The price of the Meme coin FIGHT, which was themed after Trump’s attack, rose sharply after Trump posted “FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT!!!!!”.

In addition, memes represented by PNUT have also been given the meaning of expressing political demands. An Internet-famous squirrel was captured and euthanized without adequate communication, which later turned into a political controversy seeking animal protection and expressing reasonable demands. The meme PNUT with the same name as the squirrel exploded. In addition to PNUT, there are also a number of meme tokens similar to expressing political demands such as Jorgie the monkey who was taken away by the police.

AI concept meme

In October, an AI Bot called "Truth Terminal" (@truth_terminal) "talked to itself" and came up with the name of a meme currency, GOAT. Marc Andreessen, the founder of a16z, also gave it $50,000 worth of Bitcoin. GOAT is in In just 4 days after its creation, it soared from 0 to 270 million U.S. dollars, and the price skyrocketed 150 times, attracting the attention of the community.

Since then, various meme coins integrating AI concepts have been flying all over the world, and many subdivided tracks have been derived. AI Agent meme represented by GOAT, GNON, VIRTUA, FUN, etc.; AI+ infrastructure represented by ACT; AI investment DAO meme represented by ai16z; AI+ art meme represented by slop; AI+ represented by Shoggoth and others animal memes.

hotspot mapping meme

This is also a very interesting phenomenon this year. Every time there is a hot topic, a meme that reflects it appears. For example, in August 2024, China's domestic AAA game "Black Myth: Wukong" became extremely popular after its release. Soon, a large number of meme coins such as $WuKong were born on major chains to follow this hot spot.

Memes can also easily catch up with hot-button events. In November, after Justin Sun announced that he had purchased Maurizio Cattelan’s iconic work “Comedian” for US$6.2 million, a Meme Banner with Cattelan bananas as the background hit Sotheby’s Auction bananas, interact with bananas, launch of Space X starship.

In addition, if they do not participate in hot altcoin transactions in time, a group of players will choose to wait for meme coins with hot concepts to trade. On December 2, the XRP currency price hit the highest level in seven years, and after its market value surpassed Solana, many people missed it. After XRP’s nearly 400% increase, it turned to XRP-related memes. As of about 1 p.m. that day, the 24-hour transaction volume on the ecosystem's internal chain reached more than 70M, and the number of transactions reached 330,000. $RIPPLE, which has the same name as Ripple, soared by more than 400% in 24 hours, calling for XRP to rise to 589 The $589meme surged over 160% in 24 hours.

D esci concept meme

DeSci, decentralized science, is not a new concept born this year. But in November, Binance labs announced its investment in the DeSci concept project BIO Protocol. After CZ and Vitalik discussed Desci insights, multiple DeSci memes skyrocketed and the concept was widely discussed, and they are committed to investing meme liquidity in fields such as medicine, physics, chemistry, etc. .

For example, representative projects include the Desci concept meme coins RIF and URO, both of which come from the meme coin issuance platform Pump.science launched by the Desci project Molecule DAO. RIF and URO represent the compounds rifamycin (RIF) and urolithin (URO) respectively. Aims to support medicine with meme coins.

RIF and URO were not very popular when they were first launched. However, driven by Binance and CZ, they continued to break new highs. The highest market value was close to 3 million US dollars, and the increase reached 20 times in two days.

T ik T ok concept meme

Around October 2024, an emoticon package ChillGuy spread virally on TikTok. The emoticon package is an anthropomorphic character wearing a sweatshirt, jeans and sneakers, with his hands in his pockets. He looks very calm and is very popular among young people. Like it, the related video received more than 20 million views in just two months.

With the popularity of CHILL GUY, the meme coin CHILLGUY with the same name was also born on the Solana chain. Celebrities such as El Salvador President Nayib Bukele and Musk also made the meme coin popular by retweeting CHILL GUY elements. $CHILLGUY became popular in just five days. It has grown by 7,000% over time, and its total market value exceeded US$500 million at its peak.

The people who use TikTok and the people who invest in cryptocurrencies and meme coins may be highly overlapped. They are all Generation Z and Millennials, so TikTok may become a creative generator for meme coins.

In addition to CHILLGUY, there are also TikTok concept meme coins such as MOODENG, APPLE, WAIT, HUZZ, and GRIDDY, which have received considerable attention.

zoo meme

The zoo meme remains one of the most viral and resilient narratives. Following Doge, rising stars such as Neiro and MOODENG were also born this year.

Neiro is a meme with the same name as the new pet adopted by the original owner of Doge. It went viral on the night of Trump’s Bitcoin conference speech, overwhelming the Trump-themed NSYB (never sell your bitcoin) meme, and triggering a meme debate between upper and lower case letters.

The prototype of MOODENG is an Internet celebrity baby dwarf hippopotamus born in Thailand. The popularity of MOODENG has also led to the Zootopia phenomenon on the Solana chain. The penguin PESTO, the baby elephant TOTO, the monkey GEORGIE, the beaver BOBR, and the frog Omochi all have their own products. Animals have become a hot spot for speculation.

With Doge taking the lead, the cat culture meme theme is also a new direction of speculation, with the birth of MEW and other cat-concept memes that resist "dogs", and the cat-themed meme MIGGLES, which was popularized by the Coinbase promotional video.

In addition, memes that express political demands such as PNUT mentioned above are also animal-themed memes.

celebrity memes

Celebrity memes are still a direction that cannot be ignored in trading memes. This year, in addition to Trump and Musk, the two meme hot spots, coin issuance by some artists, including entertainment stars, has also become a trend and has received great attention.

At the beginning of this year, BOOK OF MEME (BOME) released by Pepe Meme artist Darkfarm swept all social platforms. In just three hours after it went online, it increased 20 times, and its market value exceeded US$1 billion in three days. Doge’s market value exceeded US$1 billion in just three days. for 4 years.

In the middle of the year, many celebrities released tokens, including Kardashian’s transgender stepfather Caitlyn Jenner’s JENNER and female rapper Iggy Azalea’s MOTHER, which all achieved hundreds of times of increase, allowing celebrity memes to once again sweep the crypto community.

However, celebrity memes usually have a very short lifespan, and these coins-issuing memes are also criticized for making quick money. Vitalik once expressed that the country is very dissatisfied with the experiment of celebrities issuing MEME coins.

Meme trend prediction in 2025: larger scale, AI ****meme

may be the leader****

Messari and DWF Labs both believe that Meme’s popularity will continue in 2025. Messari mentioned three aspects that will drive the continued growth of memes.

In terms of infrastructure, some high-throughput chains provide sufficient block space so that meme transactions do not need to bear high fees.

In terms of user experience optimization, applications such as Moonshot and Pump.fun continue to lower entry barriers and simplify transaction processes, which are expected to attract more retail participants;

In addition, the attributes of meme coins as a speculative outlet, similar to gambling, may continue to attract users seeking entertainment and profit in the current macro environment.

Bitwise also predicts that there will be a larger Meme coin craze in 2025 than in 2024, and said that tokens issued by AI agents will become the leader of this craze.

In addition to AI empowering meme narratives, Web3 ecosystem incubator Nomos Labs also mentioned more technologies to empower the development of memes, such as attempts to link with NFT and combine with payment scenarios and DeFi. Nomos Labs believes that technological empowerment will be an important aspect of Meme coin in the next stage. “In the long run, as long as the technical narrative is implemented, Meme currency may finally be able to escape the fate of short-term speculation.”

The utility of meme may also be further highlighted in 2025. Venture capital institution MV Global said that driven by practical meme coins, decentralized science (DeSci) is expected to achieve significant growth in 2025.

However, Murad, the popular meme betting king in 2024, has a different view. He believes that in the bull market, practicality may become a constraint, which will purely make Meme coins perform better. However, he also mentioned that Meme coins in the future may indeed add DeFi functions, develop into DAO investments, and even create fashion and lifestyle brands.