This week saw a curious mix of a controversial celebrity-driven meme coin, AI agent coins and even XRP meme coins rule the meme hivemind.
TL;DR
- The Hawk Tuah girl catches flak after allegedly dumping her meme on followers
- The AI revolution is integrating into crypto markets
- Meme coins show signs of slowing growth
- XRP meme coins arrive at the party
- Pump.fun records its highest monthly revenue
- Normies are here and aping dino coins
Intro
This week saw a curious mix of a controversial celebrity-driven meme coin, AI agent coins and even XRP meme coins rule the meme hivemind.
HawkTuah Gets Blowback
Internet It girl Haliey Welch this year turned her Hawk Tuah catchphrase fame into minor celebrity status this year and began targeting the crypto space during this year’s Bitcoin Nashville event. Since then, her PR team rebranded her as the Queen of Memes, and this culminated in her launching her own meme token $HAWK on Thursday.
The coin went as high as a $500m market cap before dumping to $25m at present. Crypto sleuth Coffeezilla accused Welch and her team of insider trading on an X Space, and this soon spawned a number of hilarious anti-Welch coins like Straight Tuah Prison, Talk Tuah Lawyer and FawkTuah.
Blockchain data from Bubblemaps and DexScreener indicated 80-90% of Hawk Tuah's supply was controlled by insiders and snipers who bought large amounts at launch. However, Welch stated her team hadn't sold tokens and attempted to prevent sniping.
AI Agents Are Rising
The AI infrastructure is being built right in front of our eyes as we see a shift from your usual Pump.fun launches to projects like Virtuals, which allow users to create, own, and monetize AI agents. Man vs Machine, who is going to win?
Source: Forbes
Most people, myself included, were sidelined for the XRP rally, and the true believers were well rewarded. The cope is real! As one would expect, meme coins like ARMY on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) gained massive traction. Will it last, though?
7-Day Meme Coin Market Snapshot
The overall meme coin market cap is slightly up by about 1%, rising from just over $120 billion to almost $122 billion.
The majority of top meme coins started the week with a dip and then continued with a steady rise.
Source: CoinMarketCap
Bitcoin mostly went sideways but then jumped 2% as MicroStrategy sold shares to buy another $1.5 billion BTC.
We used to always refer to the crypto majors as Bitcoin, Solana and Ethereum, but welcome to the most hated rally. XRP is up 91.75% over the last seven days and now ranks third in top crypto tokens by market cap.
Source: CoinMarketCap
Meme Coin Market vs Other Crypto Sectors
DeFiLlama's Narrative tracker shows that memes have not gained back momentum. What happened to the Supercycle?
The 30-day trajectory for meme coins dropped but is still up about 160%.
Source: DeFiLlama
Top 20 Meme Coin Leaderboard
While still performing well, meme coins are no longer the center of attraction, with normies finally arriving and aping “dino coins” like ADA, IOTA and HBAR.
Source: CMC Meme Coins Page
Meme Coin Charts: 7-Day Insights
Our favorite hippo, MOODENG, is up 76% as America’s No.1 crypto exchange placed it on their listings roadmap.
Biggest Gainers (Last 7 Days):
- Act I: The AI Prophecy (ACT): +28.11%
- Peanut the Squirrel (PNUT): +22.09%
- Shiba Inu (SHIB): +17.30%
- Brett (BRETT): +15.33%
- Pepe (PEPE): +6.62%
Biggest Losers (Last 7 Days):
- Mog Coin (MOG): -10.98%
- Popcat (POPCAT): -7.67%
- dogwifhat (WIF): -4.27%
- Goatseus Maximus (GOAT): -3.82%
- Bonk (BONK): -3.42%
Meme Coins by Chain
Solana Memes
- Pump.fun recorded its highest monthly revenue ever of $82.8 million in November, a 207% increase from its October monthly revenue.
- ACT was the No.1 performer of meme coins on Solana from the top 20 coins ranked by market cap over the last seven days.
Ethereum Memes
- CatSlap (SLAP) is up 43% as they keep on slapping.
- Shiba Inu soars after a burn rate spike of over 7400%.
- MOG gets listed on America’s No.1 crypto exchange’s listing roadmap.
Tron Memes
- Tron Bull (TBULL), the first meme coin of Tron’s mascot, is up 15%.
- SunPump’s livestreaming feature goes live.
SUI Memes
- The top performer from the top 20 Sui meme coins by market cap was Super Suiyan, rising 158%. But with a market cap of just over $3 million, it’s still a very high-risk play.
- Controversial MemeFi went up another 18% over the last seven days. Are the fudders rekt?
Base
Attention has shifted to Base chain, starting with BRETT and now the rise of AI agent meme coins like Virtuals Protocol, Luna, AIXBT and LUM.
US politicians are also aping tokens on Base.
- Ski Mask Dog (SKI) is up 400% over the last week.
- AEROBUD rises 173% as they donate to help animals.
Bitcoin Runes
- DOG is up 3% while the cult keeps growing.
- BDC surges by 4% as they chant Billy to billies.
Meme Coin News
AI Agents Taking Over
AI agent meme coins like VADER and TNSR combine AI and cryptocurrency trends and have become a hot topic in the bull market. These coins leverage AI agents capable of autonomous tasks, integrating them into blockchain ecosystems.
As new tokens flood the market, the total valuation of AI Agent tokens now stands at $5.9 billion, with Google and OpenAI also entering the AI Agent space.
Virtuals Protocol allows users to create, own, and monetize AI agents across many virtual environments, with over 1,000 tokens created every day. AI Agent tokens created on the platform now have a combined market cap of $1.8 billion.
AI Agent tokens represent fractional ownership and governance rights over specific AI agents within the Virtuals Protocol ecosystem. How long will the hype last?
XRP Meme Coins
XRP soared 92% in the last seven days and meme coins on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) network are seeing even bigger gains as the ecosystem attracts users from other blockchains.
ARMY surged from under $1 million to a $90 million market cap in days, then crashed, stalling currently at $34 million. Early traders saw massive gains, with one turning $478 into $100K profit and $400K unrealized gains.
Other meme coins like BEAR and MAG also gained traction, joining ARMY in the top 10 XRP Ledger meme coins by market cap.
XRP itself hit a seven-year high, becoming the third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap. Despite the hype, XRP meme coin trading volumes lag behind blockchains like Solana, and some traders remain skeptical about the ecosystem's sustainability.
So first DYOR before blindly aping into these high-risk tokens.
What can you do next?
- Stay alert as the AI revolution integrates into crypto markets.
- Keep an eye on meme coins as they show signs of slowing growth.
- XRP meme coins may be in the spotlight, but be careful.
- Remember that meme coins often decline faster when the larger market retraces.
- Consider reinvesting some profits into safer crypto tokens or stables.
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