In Cryptoland, Memecoin Fever Gives Way to a Stablecoin Boom

"Memecoins, which typically have no purpose beyond financial speculation, were having a moment. The previous year, millions of new memecoins had flooded the market; a few, like Fartcoin, had rocketed to billion-dollar valuations. Pump.Fun, a platform for launching and trading memecoins, had become one of the fastest-growing crypto launchpad businesses ever. Now, the soon-to-be president was getting in on the act."

"The discussion was led by Nagendra Bharatula, founder of investment firm G-20 Group. Bharatula had recently coauthored a paper arguing that memecoins, despite their juvenile spirit, had a place in professional investors' portfolios. In the six months prior, a basket of 25 "bluechip memecoins"-an oxymoron if ever there was one-had outperformed bitcoin by 150 percent, he pointed out. Some of the attendees murmured their approval."

"Since then, the shine has come off the memecoin market. The paper value of Trump's coin, which climbed to a peak of $14 billion two days after its launch, has cratered to roughly $1 billion. Hundreds of thousands of small investors lost their shirts. Pump.Fun's daily revenue, a proxy for the overall appetite for memecoin trading, is barely more than a tenth of what it was in January. The memecoin gold rush has spawned a raft of litigation."

Donald Trump launched a meme cryptocurrency on January 17, shortly before returning to the White House. Memecoins experienced a speculative boom with millions entering the market and some tokens reaching billion-dollar valuations. A conference in St. Moritz featured an oversubscribed memecoin workshop where an investment founder cited a paper showing a 25-memecoin basket outperformed bitcoin by 150 percent over six months. The memecoin market later collapsed: Trump's coin fell from a $14 billion peak to about $1 billion, many small investors lost money, Pump.Fun's revenue plunged, and litigation followed. Attention shifted next toward stablecoins.

Read at WIRED