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Executive Summary

• Meme coins have maintained momentum in 2025, highlighted by the launch of  US President Donald Trump and his wife Melania’s own meme coins — TRUMP and MELANIA — and witnessed exponential price surges shortly thereafter. 
• Meme coins have become an important part of the cryptocurrency space. We could conclude their significance as tools in community engagement, capital raising, and user acquisition goes beyond purely acting as an investment vehicle.
• Community Engagement: Key opinion leaders or publicly known figures can use meme coins to draw support to themselves and allow the community to unite through owning the token. However, the longevity of these recent tokens remains to be seen, and may depend on the continuous support from the celebrity.
• Capital Raising: Common sources of income for meme coin creators include coin offerings, capital gains in trading, and trading fees. For example, TRUMP was reported to have generated nearly $100 million total in trading fees for the entities linked to the launch. However, meme coins have also received negative attention, mainly related to the ‘pump-and-dump’ schemes that investors need to be cautious about.
• On-Chain Adoption: Meme coins allow decentralised apps (dapps) to onboard new users by catching the trend of meme coin launches. 
• The launch of TRUMP and MELANIA revived the hype around meme coins — to a new level. While the community still needs to navigate through issues like volatility and the longevity of these tokens, the recent meme coin hype has surely put crypto on the global stage again and is expected to encourage more on-chain participation.

1. Introduction

Meme coin activities surged in January. One of the key events was US President Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, launching their own meme coins, TRUMP and MELANIA, respectively. 

Both meme coins soared exponentially shortly after launch. In particular, TRUMP soared to a peak market cap of US$14.5 billion within two days of launch, once flipping SHIB to be the second-largest meme coin by market capitalisation. MELANIA also almost reached $2 billion at its peak shortly after launch. Both meme coins also hit a new record — surpassing the $800 million market cap within an hour of launch, much faster than DOGE (1,467 days) and SHIB (288 days). 

The impact extended beyond the meme coin category. The Solana ecosystem, which was the first chain to support the above meme coin launches, saw a massive surge in activities. In particular, decentralised exchange (DEX) volume on Solana reached $36 billion on 18 January, taking up 74% share out of all chains. In January 2025, DEX volume on Solana took up 46% share, exceeding Ethereum’s 15%.

2. Significance and Implications 

During this meme frenzy period, we could conclude that the significance of  meme coins as tools in community engagement, capital raising, and user acquisition is beyond purely acting as an investment vehicle.

2.1 Community Engagement

The TRUMP and MELANIA launches coincided with Donald Trump’s inauguration as the 47th US President, potentially acting as a way to engage his supporters and the community. This reflects one of meme coins’ significance as a community engagement tool, where key opinion leaders or publicly known figures can draw support to themselves and provide a way for the community to unite through owning the token. 

This phenomenon was already seen in 2024, when celebrity tokens were once popular. JENNER and MOTHER were some of the first in the category to launch on Solana, representing media personalities Caitlyn Jenner and Australian rapper Iggy Azalea, respectively. Both tokens spiked in price after launch, leveraging the advantages of having an existing fanbase and the marketing power associated with the public figures. 

Similar to TRUMP and MELANIA, most of these celebrity tokens hit an all-time high in price within a few days after launch. The value of a meme coin, at least initially, may not be associated with its utility. Instead, it acts as a collective symbol of community support. 

The price action of meme coins is heavily associated with the events that happen on the linked accounts of celebrities or in the communities. The most notable meme coin could be DOGE, which links with Elon Musk. 

However, most meme coins trade much lower than their all-time highs soon after the hype dies down. For instance, TRUMP and MELANIA are trading at -73% and -89%, respectively, from their all-time highs (at the time of writing). 

Vitalik Buterin tweeted about the celebrity meme coin culture in June 2024, mentioning that the projects should serve a “public-good goal” and explore mechanics beyond purely being a trading token. In other words, meme coins should develop their own utility — for example, being used in purchases and providing token holders with access to exclusive events, etc. Recently, Trump also announced that the TRUMP token can be used to purchase merchandise, including sneakers, watches, and fragrances. The longevity of these recent tokens remains to be seen and may depend on the continuous support from the celebrity.

2.2 Capital Raising

Meme coins can also be used as a capital raising tool, leveraging blockchain’s decentralisation, global accessibility, and the power of virality of social platforms. Meme coin launchpads have also made it easy for anyone without technical knowledge to launch new tokens. 

Some common sources of capital inflow for meme coin creators include: 

• Coin offering: Selling tokens to investors pre-launch 
• Trading: Capital gain via potential token appreciation (depending on unlock and vesting schedule) 
• Trading Fee: Transaction fees on exchanges when providing liquidity to the token 

Meteora, a decentralised finance (DeFi) liquidity layer on Solana that enabled the launch of TRUMP, allows liquidity providers to claim fees from permanently locked liquidity, as well as swap fees. According to DefiLlama, Meteora generated around $60 million in fees on 20 January, which coincided with TRUMP and MELANIA’s trading. TRUMP was also reported to generate nearly $100 million total in trading fees for the entities linked to the launch. 

Recently, Elon Musks’s father, Errol Musk, also reportedly plans to raise as much as $200 million from his meme coin project, Musk It (MUSKIT). This shows that meme coins are gradually being treated as a way of capital raising, and this trend may extend to encourage other large entities or communities to participate in crypto and create their tokens. 

On the other hand, meme coins have also received a fair share of negative attention, mainly related to ‘pump-and-dump’ schemes, where insiders sell their holdings at inflated prices, subsequently leaving the project and creating losses for other investors. 

There are also accusations around a meme coin’s insider holdings and unlock schedules (for example, Trump and his affiliates allegedly own 80% of the TRUMP meme coin, which will be a potential risk to investors if the insiders decide to sell their holdings). Another concern is a conflict of interest – for example if a political leader is considering raising capital with meme coins and the token allocation is not transparent enough, foreign buyers can purchase the token and potentially exert “influence” on the leader. 

Overall speaking, investors need to be cautious about the meteoric rise and lack of utility of most meme coins, and perform research on token allocation and unlock schedules. 

2.3 On-Chain Adoption 

Meme coins in general can also be a way to bring more users on-chain. The launches of TRUMP and MELANIA, which seemingly represent an endorsement of crypto from a key global figure, have quickly caused a surge in on-chain participation from new users. 

Meme coin launchpad Moonshot was featured on the TRUMP website as a way to purchase the meme coin. The platform acquired 285,000 new users in the week after TRUMP launched (18–24 January 2025), much higher than its track record (daily average of 880 new users for December 2024 before Trump launched the tokens). According to Chainalysis, 47% of TRUMP/MELANIA wallets had an age of 0 days, which reflects that most users created the wallets to purchase the meme coins. 

In addition, meme coins help facilitate on-chain adoption, as most meme coins launched since last year have been through on-chain launchpad protocols instead of centralised exchanges. According to Dune, out of all new tokens appearing on DEXs, Solana took up 81% share in 2024 and 95% in January 2025, which can be mainly attributed to the popularity of meme coins and launchpads on Solana. 

Decentralised apps (dapps) like Pump.fun, Moonshot, Meteora, and Jupiter have witnessed various meme coins’ exponential market cap rise and helped to attract users. According to The Block, DEX-to-CEX spot trading volume rose to an all-time high of 20% in January 2025. This reflects the importance of platforms — including launchpads, DEXs, and wallet providers — to catch the trend of meme coin launches. 

3. Conclusion

The launches of TRUMP and MELANIA revived the hype around meme coins to a new level, potentially opening up ways of capital financing, community engagement, as well as accelerating crypto onboarding. Crypto is oftentimes driven by market sentiment, and we expect capital to continue to switch between crypto narratives, as well as new and old tokens, resulting in the price fluctuation of these meme coins. While the community still needs to navigate through issues like volatility and the longevity of these tokens, the recent meme coin hype has surely put crypto on the global stage again. We see this as a start of more on-chain crypto participation from global figures and stakeholders.

Read the full report: From Trading to Broader Adoption: The Significance of Meme Coins

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Authors

Crypto.com Research and Insights team

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