Gushiken Yona
While recent liquidity crunches have led analysts to declare the meme coin sector “dead,” a top industry executive has disputed the diagnosis, calling the narrative “lazy and wrong” and arguing the market is simply maturing.
Key Points
- MoonPay President Keith Grossman reframes the liquidity collapse as a structural maturation that shifts meme coins from speculative gambling to sustainable tokenized attention.
- Market data confirms a severe sector contraction as meme coin dominance drops to 0.034 and major assets like PEPE and BONK lose over 70% of their value.
- Oversaturation and high fraud rates erode investor trust by diluting the attention economy and exposing participants to widespread pump-and-dump schemes.
MoonPay President Keith Grossman addressed the pessimistic market sentiment directly, arguing that the collapse in volume signals a necessary structural shift rather than the death of attention-based assets.
The Argument for Meme Coin Maturation
Grossman disputed the conclusion that declining volume equates to market failure. He acknowledged that meme coin volume on Solana decentralized exchanges (DEXs) has fallen below 15%, but framed this metric as a misleading indicator of the sector’s health.
“It is wrong because it assumes meme coins were only ever about jokes, luck or ‘financial nihilism,’” Grossman stated. “They were not. Meme coins were the first large-scale experiment in turning attention itself into a permissionless, tradeable asset.”
He compared the current downturn to the early “death” cycles of social media, where loud, extractive engagement farming eventually gave way to sustainable value creation. According to Grossman, the market is shedding a specific, exhausted implementation of attention monetization.
“The meme coin era is not over. It just stopped being loud,” Grossman said.
Blockworks co-founder Jason Yanowitz supported this assessment, confirming that meme coins now account for only 12.7% of Solana DEX volume.
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Data Signals Severe Contraction
The optimistic outlook contrasts sharply with recent on-chain data. CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju recently declared meme coin markets “dead” as liquidity evaporates.
CryptoQuant data reveals that meme coin dominance in altcoin markets has dropped to 0.034, matching lows from February 2024 and falling significantly from a peak of 0.109 in November 2024.
Market capitalization figures from CoinGecko and Artemis further illustrate the decline:
- Overall Meme Market: Down 65.9%.
- Pepe (PEPE): Down 81.6%.
- Bonk (BONK): Down 76%.
- Shiba Inu (SHIB): Down 71.3%.
Joao Wedson, founder and CEO of Alphractal, observed that speculative assets on Solana have hit their “worst phase,” while payment-focused altcoins remain resilient.
Meme Coin Oversaturation and Loss of Trust
Market observers cite the low barrier to entry and prevalent fraud as primary drivers for the volume collapse. Trader DeFiApe noted that the ability to launch tokens for under $1 eliminated the “sense of community and HODL,” leaving participants exposed to constant rug pulls.
Statistics support this view. Research by Solidus Labs found that 98.7% of tokens launched on the popular platform Pump.fun exhibited signs of pump-and-dump schemes. Similarly, data from Raydium suggests roughly 93% of liquidity pools display indicators associated with soft rug pulls.
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Analyst Mikko Ohtamaa argued that the sheer volume of assets diluted the available attention economy.
“The world does not have enough attention for 25,000,000 memecoins,” Ohtamaa remarked. “You do not buy meme coins because you invest in them; you buy meme coins because you think it will pump.”
Signal Over Noise
Despite the bearish metrics, proponents maintain that the underlying utility of tokenized attention will endure. The entity known as Book of Ethereum commented that the market is filtering out “zero-sum gambling dressed up as culture.”
“What survives is signal over noise,” Book of Ethereum stated. “Meme coins that treat the chain as a casino fade. Meme coins that respect the chain as infrastructure—and grow alongside its builders—compound.”
Grossman concluded that while the “speed and spectacle” of the previous cycle may be over, the financialization of attention is irreversible. He predicts the next iteration of the market will reward coordination and sustained contribution rather than extraction.
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YONA GUSHIKEN
Yona brings a decade of experience covering gaming, tech, and blockchain news. As one of the few women in crypto journalism, her mission is to demystify complex technical subjects for a wider audience. Her work blends professional insight with engaging narratives, aiming to educate and entertain.
