The Meme coins that were once considered a joke are no longer just fringe toys.
They are now influencing capital flows, affecting social media sentiment, and even infiltrating political marketing. Marketing teams use them for user activation, and hedge funds are starting to test the waters with small positions. This sector is reshaping market rules in ways no one expected.
The Crazy 2024: Surging Capital and Loosening Regulation
Throughout last year, the total market value of the Meme coin sector ballooned more than fivefold. Entering 2025, speculative funds began to crazily withdraw from mainstream coins and shift to these high-risk alt-Memes.
The US SEC took action in 2025—but not in the way you might think. They classified most Meme coins as “collectibles” rather than securities. What does this mean? Regulatory protection has decreased, but the legal gray area has become even more ambiguous.
The $TRUMP 48-Hour Legend
January 1, 2025...

From Joke to Battlefield: The Wild Growth of Meme Coins
Do you remember those cryptocurrencies that were once just internet jokes? Now, they've grown into a speculative market worth over $60 billion. Meme coins—digital assets originally born from community memes and jokes—are reshaping the liquidity landscape of cryptocurrency, and are even starting to influence political branding and the social media ecosystem.
Honestly, this change has happened so fast it's hard to keep up. Brands have started issuing meme coins for marketing, and some hedge funds are even allocating small positions in these highly volatile assets in hopes of outsized returns. This is no longer some fringe joke.
2024-2025: Crazy Numbers
Last year, the entire meme coin sector’s capital surged by more than 500%. This directly led to a massive influx of speculative capital from mainstream coins into various obscure meme coins at the start of this year.
Even more interesting are the regulatory developments. The US SEC in 20

The BSC chain has changed recently.
In the past, when people mentioned it, their first reaction was "an affordable and convenient hub for altcoins." Now? It has directly turned into a Meme cultivation sect.
I'm not joking. While Western players are still trading classic tokens like $PEPE, $DOGE, and $BONK, Chinese players on BSC have already turned tokens into "foundation building."

An HTTP status code that had been dormant for almost thirty years was recently brought back into the spotlight by Coinbase.
Starting with legacy code from 1997
The story goes back to 1997. That year, the HTTP protocol reserved status code 402, meaning "Payment

Recently, the global crypto community has shown increasing interest in Chinese culture, especially in popular Chinese memes. Solana has officially confirmed its Chinese name "索拉拉," reflecting its growing influence within the Chinese community. This naming initiative aims to showcase the spirit of creators and highlights the shift of influence in the crypto world towards the East.

The operation mechanism of the x402 protocol’s meme coin PING is similar to that of BTC inscriptions, both relying on on-chain data and off-chain arbitration. Despite facing controversies over innovation and free-riding, the experiment with PING may drive the evolution of the x402 protocol and give rise to new protocols. In the future, improvements such as decentralized custody may be realized.

During the National Day holiday, the cryptocurrency market saw dramatic surges and plunges in meme coins, with many investors experiencing significant wealth fluctuations in a short period of time. The prices of meme coins are influenced by narrative dissemination and emotional consensus, diverging from traditional financial logic. The chaos in the market has prompted reflection on regulation and governance in the crypto world. In the future, it will be necessary to establish more transparent community mechanisms and appropriate regulation to prevent investor losses.

After battling fiercely for days in the x402 sector, I opened my eyes this morning—only to see the market had crashed.
To be honest, this drop wasn't unexpected. Ever since the TRUMP incident, liquidity has basically been drained. Those minor rebounds afterward? They were all propped up by sentiment, not a real bull market.
The Death Spiral of Altcoins
Altcoins now are already burdened with debt on their TGE day. Where did those die-hard supporters go? What about the developers who genuinely contributed? They’re all gone. Airdrop hunters are everywhere, VCs are rushing to cash out and run, exchanges are happily taking their cut, and project teams, after holding back for years, just want to cash in quickly—everyone’s desperate to exit, so who’s left to hold the bag?
Are MEMEs a Savior or Poison?
Many people see MEMEs as a hope to counter high FDV VC coins. Indeed, they once became a refuge for retail investors. But if you think about it, zero barriers to entry, mass replication, so-called "fair launches"—can this really last?
There’s none of that VC coin journey from 0 to 1

There’s a guy who never touches meme coins.
It’s not because he missed some big trend—he simply sees things differently from everyone else. What he’s looking at is vision.
Karnika E. Yashwant—everyone in the industry calls him “Mr. KEY.” This guy dropped out of school at 14, and now? He runs several companies, has more than 150 people under him, and his office is in Dubai. He calls it “the future capital of digital freedom.”
Unlike most people who chase market cycles, Mr. KEY never runs after the next big pump. He’s playing a conviction game. The core principle is simple: figure out exactly what you’re buying.
In his own words: “When I buy something, I don’t care how much it’ll go up tomorrow. I just want to know what it’ll be worth in ten years.”
Not getting led by the nose by price swings
In a recent conversation, Mr. KEY shared his thoughts on the market and why most people keep making mistakes.
His

In the past two weeks, the entire Chinese-speaking encryption community has been buzzing about a word.
If you're in the cryptocurrency circle, you must have heard about this matter - from CZ's casual reply at the beginning, to Star following up with discussions, then the Chinese ticker craze of Tron and Solana, and until a few days ago when a certain project party publicly revealed the so-called "listing terms" that sparked controversy, and finally, Jesse's一句话 made everyone quiet down.
What exactly happened behind this? I found a Polish trader named Barry to chat with, who runs a community of several hundred people in Europe. What were these foreigners thinking when they started getting into Chinese memes?
The bewildering moment of the European bros.
Barry was stunned when he first noticed a certain Chinese ticker surging to a market value of 20 million dollars.
"Our group exploded," he recalled, "when it soared to 60 million, 100 million, one

"The time has come."
When Musk threw out these four words on November 4th, along with his old tweet from 2021 "SpaceX is going to send real Dogecoin to the real moon," the crypto world exploded again.
This time it's not a joke. The seemingly insane promise from four years ago now has a timeline - December 2025, the launch window has been set.
From a tweet to a real rocket
Do you remember that crazy night in April 2021? A tweet from Musk caused DOGE to surge nearly 30% in just a few minutes. At that time, everyone thought it was just another "pump and dump game," until a few weeks later when he officially announced: SpaceX is really going to carry out the "DOGE-1 lunar mission," and it will only accept Dogecoin as payment.
The project party is the Canadian company Geometric Energy Corporation. They are going to launch a CubeSat micro-satellite.

These days I've been focused on researching the x402 track, and when I looked up, I found that the market had collapsed again. Forget it, I've been holding in a lot of thoughts and can't keep them to myself.
The market has entered a bear phase early, don't deceive yourself.
Since that wave from TRUMP, liquidity has basically been drained. Those small rebounds afterwards? They are all being supported by emotions, where is the incremental capital coming from.
Altcoins have been in debt since the day they were launched.
What’s the situation with altcoins now? On the day of the TGE, they are already negative assets. In the past, there were believers who held long-term and developers who worked diligently. What about now? Airdrop hunters harvest and then run, VCs are eager to cash out and leave, exchanges are taking a huge cut, and project teams that have struggled for years just want to make a quick profit—everyone is eager to exit, so who will take over?
Is MEME coin a savior or a poison?
MEME initially did seem like a savior, providing retail investors with an option to resist high FDV VC coins. But look at it now, with zero barriers to entry, fake fairness, and assembly line copying, it simply can't last.