The year 2025 proved to be a pivotal, and often bewildering, period for the cryptocurrency market. It began with an unprecedented event: a sitting president launching his own digital token just days before his inauguration. It concluded with researchers uncovering that one of the year's much-touted "comeback stories" was largely orchestrated by a handful of wallets. In between these dramatic bookends, memecoins shed their status as niche, often absurd, digital curiosities, transforming into crypto's most visible and, at times, profoundly embarrassing, sector.
During these twelve months, we witnessed a sovereign leader seemingly orchestrating a rugpull on his own citizens on Valentine's Day. An AI chatbot's whimsical fart jokes somehow gave birth to a billion-dollar token. Even the venerable Dogecoin found itself packaged into two regulated Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). The very platform that enabled the creation of millions of these tokens effectively became the year's default digital casino. What made these ten specific tokens truly iconic wasn't their inherent quality or groundbreaking innovation. Instead, it was their uncanny ability to encapsulate everything flawed and sensational about the memecoin phenomenon, collectively charting a narrative arc from political exploitation and AI-driven frenzy through celebrity missteps, surprising institutional acceptance, and, ultimately, late-cycle market manipulation.
TRUMP and MELANIA: The Rebirth of PolitiFi
On January 17, just three days prior to President Donald Trump's second inauguration, the TRUMP token made its debut on the Solana blockchain. A staggering one billion coins were minted, with companies reportedly linked to Trump retaining a substantial 800 million. Mere days later, MELANIA, a companion token, burst onto the scene, soaring to a $2 billion market capitalization within hours. These tokens swiftly established the blueprint for "official" political memecoins, igniting intense ethical debates about the appropriateness of a sitting head of state monetizing their public office through cryptocurrency.
While the TRUMP token later plummeted by over 90% from its January 2025 peak of approximately $75, falling to below $5, and MELANIA crashed by over 99% from its peak of around $14 to $0.10 by late 2025, their significance was undeniable. They formalized political memecoins as a legitimate, albeit controversial, product category. These tokens, with no pretense of utility, simply leveraged political brand equity for direct monetization. Despite queries from US lawmakers regarding potential conflicts of interest, no enforcement actions were taken. This inaction set a troubling precedent: commanding sufficient public attention could empower individuals to launch a token, control a majority of its supply, and let the market determine its legality.
LIBRA: A Sovereign Scandal Unfolds
Valentine's Day, February 14, saw an extraordinary development as Argentina's President Javier Milei publicly shared the LIBRA contract address, explicitly encouraging citizens to purchase the token. The token's value skyrocketed from a mere $0.000001 to roughly $5.20 in a blistering 40 minutes, reaching a market capitalization of $4.6 billion. However, this meteoric rise was short-lived. LIBRA crashed by 85% within hours as insiders reportedly offloaded 70% of the token's supply.
By February 18, the incident was widely dubbed "Cryptogate" by the press, investors initiated criminal complaints, and opposition parties pushed for impeachment. The LIBRA saga underscored the catastrophic potential of PolitiFi at a state level. Milei's direct endorsement created an illusion of official backing, while those with insider access positioned themselves for a rapid exit. The ensuing crash decimated investor wealth and handed a significant scandal to Milei's political adversaries. It also severely dampened risk appetite for memecoins for months. Regulators subsequently cited LIBRA as stark evidence that celebrity and political endorsements in the crypto space could lead to unacceptable consumer harm. As of the end of the year, LIBRA remained 98.5% below its peak.
FARTCOIN and the AI Meme Comeback
Emerging in April, FARTCOIN was a Solana-based memecoin with origins as peculiar as its name suggests: it sprang from the Truth Terminal AI chatbot, blending crude humor with internet culture. By June, crypto exchanges were hailing it as "the memecoin that took the crypto world by storm," and FARTCOIN quickly became synonymous with 2025's unexpected AI-linked memecoin resurgence.
This token demonstrated that a compelling AI narrative could reignite memecoin fever following the LIBRA-induced lull. Its appeal had no intrinsic utility beyond the quirky story of "an AI making fart jokes, so we made a token." This narrative, combined with Truth Terminal's perceived autonomy, offered speculators a novel story to latch onto. Although FARTCOIN eventually declined approximately 90% from its peak, the fact that its underlying content was juvenile did not hinder its initial success. Memecoins, at their core, are about capturing attention, and an AI bot generating fart jokes achieved this at scale. Following FARTCOIN's rise, nearly every AI-linked crypto project began emphasizing its chatbot, even when the AI component was superficial. While many of these later projects collapsed rapidly, FARTCOIN endured, likely due to its first-mover advantage and its sheer absurdity making it self-referential.
PUMP: The Casino Chip of the Meme Economy
By early June, Pump.fun, a prominent Solana meme launchpad, was preparing for a PUMP token sale anticipated to raise approximately $1 billion. On July 12, the platform officially launched PUMP via an Initial Coin Offering (ICO), positioning it as the native token of Solana's largest hub for meme token creation. Throughout the latter half of the year, PUMP traded as a meta-meme: it wasn't a joke about a dog or a president, but rather a direct bet on the underlying "casino" itself. This occurred even as some observers critically described Pump.fun as a Ponzi-like spectacle rife with livestreamed pump-and-dump schemes.
PUMP's importance stemmed from its financialization of the very infrastructure of memecoin creation. Owning PUMP wasn't about a specific token's joke or community, but a wager on Pump.fun's continued ability to facilitate new token launches, attract trading volume, and extract fees. The ICO successfully raised substantial capital, even as the platform itself faced legal challenges, including a class-action lawsuit alleging it enabled systematic fraud. Intriguingly, PUMP transformed criticism into a trading opportunity. For investors who believed the platform would persist despite its controversies, buying PUMP was seen as a strategic move.
The irony was palpable: Pump.fun had famously democratized token launches to the point of absurdity, allowing anyone to create a coin in minutes with minimal vetting. Yet, its own native token, PUMP, was offered through a gated ICO, demanding accredited buyers for a nine-figure raise. Holders of PUMP were essentially betting on being closer to the "house" than the average gambler, a seemingly rational position in what many perceived as a rigged game.
As of December 23, this bet had not paid off well, with PUMP trading 57% below its ICO price and nearly 81% down from its peak.
YZY: A Celebrity Token Fiasco
On August 21, Kanye West launched YZY on Solana, accompanied by bold branding promising "A NEW ECONOMY, BUILT ON CHAIN." The token's market capitalization briefly surged past $2 billion, only to crash by more than 60% within a matter of hours. Blockchain analytics quickly flagged suspicious trading patterns and probable insider activity. YZY became the quintessential celebrity token fiasco of 2025: a prominent name, an ambitious marketing pitch, and a launch designed for significant gains for insiders, but brutal losses for loyal fans.
The "new economy" promise suggested something grander, perhaps a token integrated with Yeezy products or music rights. Instead, the launch delivered a standard Solana token devoid of utility, without any lock-ups, and lacking mechanisms to prevent coordinated dumping. Early wallets, likely connected to the launch team, rapidly sold their holdings into retail demand within hours of the launch. Fans who purchased at the peak faced immediate losses of up to 70% of their investment. This collapse solidified a negative sentiment across the board regarding celebrity tokens. Crypto exchanges became more aggressive in delisting such tokens. The prevailing narrative shifted dramatically from "celebrities are fostering adoption" to "celebrities are exploiting their fans as exit liquidity." YZY starkly demonstrated that fame combined with blockchain technology does not automatically equate to legitimacy; it simply means a larger audience to potentially exploit. Since its peak, the token has fallen by 87.6%.
DOGE Crosses into ETF Territory
September 18 marked a significant milestone as REX-Osprey's DOJE launched, becoming the first US ETF exclusively dedicated to Dogecoin. By late November, Grayscale's GDOG spot Dogecoin ETF was also listed on NYSE Arca. DOGE thus spearheaded the ETF push, signifying that the original "joke coin" was now accessible through multiple regulated funds. This development formally ushered memecoins into the ETF era, a financial innovation previously reserved for major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Dogecoin's ETF crossover ironically legitimized the memecoin category in ways that subtly undermined its foundational premise. Dogecoin began as a playful parody, utilizing a popular internet meme of its time. The availability of two ETFs on major US exchanges meant that institutional investors and even retirement accounts could now allocate capital to it through familiar, regulated financial products. This development was either the ultimate validation, suggesting memecoins had become legitimate assets, or the ultimate absurdity, where a joke token had been fully financialized. Crucially, these ETFs also established a valuation floor. Before their arrival, Dogecoin's price largely swayed with retail sentiment and the influence of Elon Musk's tweets. Post-ETF, the token benefited from a structural bid from funds holding the underlying asset. It set a powerful precedent: if Dogecoin could secure ETFs, other high-volume memecoins might realistically follow. The once clear line between "serious crypto" and "meme garbage" had, by this point, become irrevocably blurred.
4 and the BNB Chain Meme Season
In early October, the BNB Chain-based launchpad Four.meme briefly eclipsed Solana's Pump.fun in terms of daily protocol fees and new token creation. Days later, Binance itself highlighted the token 4 as "the main symbol of the meme season on BNB Chain," noting significant whale accumulation as its market capitalization approached $200 million. What started as Binance founder Changpeng Zhao's long-running "4" in-joke solidified into a tradable ticker that captured an entire mini-cycle on a non-Solana blockchain.
The rise of 4 demonstrated that the memecoin trade was not exclusively confined to Solana, at least for a brief, intense period. Throughout 2025, Solana had largely dominated memecoin trading volume. However, Four.meme and the 4 token proved that BNB Chain could also host its own vibrant ecosystem with comparable velocity. Transforming an inside joke from one of crypto's most influential entrepreneurs into a marketable token was undoubtedly one of the peak memecoin moments of 2025. This BNB meme season also accentuated how chain-specific these cycles had become, with each ecosystem developing its own launchpads, influencers, and narrative cycles. The ascent of 4 signaled that memecoins were evolving beyond a singular trade into a multi-chain phenomenon, with each blockchain vying for attention and transaction fees. The token's drawdown since its peak registered at 92.8%.
MOTHER Keeps Celebrity Tokens in the Limelight
On November 5, reports confirmed that Iggy Azalea had joined Thrust, a new Solana-based celebrity token launchpad, as its creative director, with plans to migrate her MOTHER memecoin to the platform. Thrust marketed itself as an initiative to make celebrity tokens less exploitative, aiming to introduce clearer legal terms and smart contract controls. Despite these efforts, MOTHER was not a success story in the traditional sense, but rather a masterclass in what some might call "failing forward."
Originally launched in 2024, it followed the familiar boom-and-bust trajectory of many other celebrity coins, leaving numerous late buyers holding substantial losses as liquidity dwindled and prices plummeted. What made MOTHER stand out in 2025 wasn't an improved experience for investors, as it arguably wasn't. Instead, it was Azalea's remarkable ability to spin the entire controversial episode into a personal branding asset. She continued to promote the token even as holders faced significant losses, then shrewdly parlayed that notoriety into a creative director role at Thrust, positioning herself as the "professional face" of celebrity tokens. It remained a classic celebrity memecoin narrative, complete with a pump, a dump, and a cohort of bagholders. The unique twist lay in how effectively the artist leveraged a contentious token to advance her own career, while the individuals who bought into MOTHER remained stuck with their losses. MOTHER, in essence, demonstrated that one could weather criticism for a questionable token launch and even turn it into a commendable line on a resume.
PIPPIN: The Last Big "Rigged" Meme of the Year
As 2025 drew to a close, early December saw research confirming that PIPPIN had experienced a remarkable resurgence following a significant crash in 2024. This revival was fueled by fresh capital inflows and aggressive social media campaigns. By mid-December, analyses revealed that PIPPIN was up approximately 400% for 2025. However, on-chain data painted a less organic picture, suggesting that a mere few dozen wallets collectively controlled close to half of the token's supply, strongly implying coordinated market manipulation.
PIPPIN arrived at year-end as the archetypal late-cycle, heavily gamed memecoin. Its 2025 revival, superficially, appeared organic: social engagement soared, new wallets emerged, and trading volume surged. Yet beneath the surface, the centralized control by a few large holders meant that its trajectory was far from a grassroots phenomenon, serving as a stark reminder that even in a seemingly vibrant market, manipulation remained a persistent threat. The token surged dramatically, spiking over 1,000% from near-zero levels to a significant peak by December, all fueled by these concentrated holdings.
Conclusion: A Year of Unforgettable Lessons
The wild ride of memecoins in 2025 offered a compelling, if often discomfiting, look into the rapidly evolving world of digital assets. From tokens intertwined with political power to those born from AI-generated humor, celebrity endorsements, and even institutionalized joke coins, the year laid bare the raw forces of market speculation, community fervor, and sometimes, outright manipulation. While these tokens might be remembered more for their dramatic pumps and subsequent crashes than for any intrinsic value, their stories collectively etched a memorable chapter in crypto history, defining a period when the absurd became mainstream, and the speculative became truly scandalous.
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