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The year opened with a sitting president launching his own token three days before inauguration and closed with researchers proving that one of the year's “comeback stories” was controlled by a few dozen wallets.
Between those bookends, 2025 turned memecoins from niche absurdity into crypto's most visible, and most embarrassing, corner. A sovereign leader rugpulled his citizens on Valentine's Day, an AI chatbot's fart jokes spawned a billion-dollar token, Dogecoin got two regulated ETFs, and the platform that minted 9.4 million tokens became the year's de facto casino.
What made these ten tokens iconic wasn't quality or innovation, but their capacity to crystallize everything broken about the meme trade. Together they traced a narrative arc from political grift through AI-driven mania, celebrity fiascos, institutional crossover, and late-cycle manipulation.
TRUMP and MELANIA rekindled PolitiFi
On Jan. 17, three days before President Donald Trump's second inauguration, the TRUMP token launched on the Solana blockchain. One billion coins were created, and Trump-linked companies retained 800 million.
Two days later, MELANIA went live, hitting $2 billion in market cap within hours. Together, they created the template for “official” political memecoins and sparked ethics debates about whether a sitting president should monetize his position through crypto tokens.
TRUMP and MELANIA mattered because they formalized political memecoins as a product category. These tokens were endorsed by the principals themselves, with no pretense of utility, just pure monetization of political brand equity.
US lawmakers questioned the conflict of interest, but no enforcement materialized. The precedent stood: if you control enough attention, you can launch a token, keep most of the supply, and let the market decide legality.
As of Dec. 23, TRUMP and MELANIA are down by over 99% since their peaks.
LIBRA turns the trade into a sovereign scandal
On Feb. 14, Argentina's President Javier Milei posted the LIBRA contract address and urged citizens to buy in. The token jumped from $0.000001 to roughly $5.20 in 40 minutes, and hit $4.6 billion in market cap.
However, LIBRA crashed 85% within hours as insiders dumped 70% of the supply. By Feb. 18, the press called it “Cryptogate,” investors filed criminal complaints, and opposition parties pushed for impeachment.
LIBRA mattered because it proved PolitiFi could go catastrophically wrong at the state level. Milei crossed the line with direct endorsement, creating the appearance of official backing while insiders positioned to exit.
The crash destroyed wealth and handed Milei's opponents a scandal. It also killed memecoin risk appetite for months. Regulators cited LIBRA as evidence that celebrity and political endorsements create unacceptable consumer harm.
As of press time, LIBRA is 98.5% down from its peak.
FARTCOIN and the AI meme revival
FARTCOIN emerged in April as a Solana memecoin born from the Truth Terminal AI chatbot, combining fart jokes and internet culture. By June, exchanges called it “the memecoin that took the crypto world by storm.”
FARTCOIN became shorthand for 2025's AI-linked memecoin comeback.
The token mattered because it demonstrated that an AI narrative could revive memecoin mania after the LIBRA lull. It had no utility beyond “an AI made fart jokes, so we made a token.” That was enough. Truth Terminal's autonomy gave speculators a story that felt novel.
The fact that the content was juvenile didn't undermine the trade, as memecoins were about attention arbitrage, and an AI bot spamming fart jokes generated attention at scale.
Post-FARTCOIN, every AI-linked project emphasized its chatbot, even when the AI component was fake. Most collapsed within weeks, but FARTCOIN survived, likely because it was first and absurd enough to become self-referential.
As of press time, FARTCOIN is down by 89.6% since its peak.
PUMP, the casino chip
By early June, Pump.fun was preparing a PUMP token sale that could raise about $1 billion. On July 12, the platform launched PUMP via ICO, positioning it as the native token of Solana's largest meme launchpad.
Through the second half of the year, PUMP traded as a meta-meme: not a joke about a dog or president, but a bet on the “casino” itself, even as some described Pump.fun as a Ponzi-like spectacle of livestreamed pump-and-dumps.
PUMP mattered because it financialized the infrastructure of memecoin creation. Owning PUMP wasn't a bet on any individual token, but a bet on the platform's ability to keep spinning up tokens, attracting volume, and extracting fees.
The ICO raised massive capital while the platform faced legal pressure, with a class-action lawsuit accusing Pump.fun of enabling systematic fraud.
PUMP turned criticism into a trading opportunity: for investors who believed the platform would keep operating despite controversy, buying PUMP was the move.
The token ICO also exposed structural irony. Pump.fun had democratized token launches to absurdity, as anyone could create a coin in minutes with no vetting.
PUMP, by contrast, was a gated ICO that raised nine figures. The platform that lets millions launch tokens without permission required accredited buyers for its own offering.
PUMP holders were betting they'd be closer to the house than the gamblers, which is the only rational bet in a rigged casino. As of Dec. 23, it is not going well, as PUMP trades 57% below its ICO price and nearly 81% since its peak.
YZY shows how bad celebrity drops can go
On Aug. 21, Kanye West launched YZY on Solana with “A NEW ECONOMY, BUILT ON CHAIN” branding. The token's market cap spiked above $2 billion, then crashed more than 60% within hours.
Blockchain analytics flagged suspicious trading patterns and likely insider activity. YZY became the defining 2025 celebrity token fiasco: a big name, an ambitious pitch, a launch grand for insiders and brutal for fans.
YZY combined maximum celebrity wattage with maximum extraction. The “new economy” pitch suggested something bigger, perhaps a token tied to Yeezy products or music rights. Instead, the launch delivered a standard Solana token with no utility, no lock-ups, and no mechanism to prevent coordinated dumping.
Early wallets, likely connected to the launch team, sold into retail demand within hours. Fans who bought at the peak lost up to 70% of their investment immediately. The collapse hardened sentiment against celebrity tokens across the board.
Exchanges started delisting celebrity tokens more aggressively. The narrative shifted from “celebrities are bringing adoption” to “celebrities are using their fans as exit liquidity.”
YZY proved that fame plus blockchain doesn't equal legitimacy. It just means a bigger audience to exploit.
Since its peak, the token is down by 87.6%.
DOGE crosses into ETF land
On Sept. 18, REX-Osprey's DOJE launched as the first US ETF dedicated to Dogecoin. By late November, Grayscale's GDOG spot Dogecoin ETF was listed on NYSE Arca.
DOGE represented the ETF push: the original joke coin was now available through multiple regulated funds, and memecoins had formally joined the ETF era that began with Bitcoin and Ethereum.
DOGE's ETF crossover legitimized the memecoin category in ways that undermined its own premise. Dogecoin started as a parody, using a popular meme at the time.
Two ETFs on major US exchanges meant institutional investors and retirement accounts could now allocate to it through familiar wrappers with regulatory oversight.
That was either ultimate validation, meaning memecoins are real assets now, or ultimate absurdity represented by a joke token has been financialized.
The ETFs also created a valuation floor. Before the ETF, Dogecoin's price relied on retail sentiment and Elon Musk's tweets. Post-ETF, the token had structural bid from funds holding the underlying asset.
It set a precedent: if Dogecoin could get ETFs, other high-volume memecoins might follow. The line between “serious crypto” and “meme garbage” had already blurred.
4 and the BNB Chain meme season
In early October, BNB Chain-based launchpad Four.meme briefly surpassed Solana's Pump.fun in daily protocol fees and token creation.
Days later, Binance highlighted the token 4 as “the main symbol of the meme season on BNB Chain,” noting whales were accumulating as its market cap approached $200 million.
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao's long-running “4” in-joke crystallized into a ticker capturing an entire mini-cycle on a non-Solana chain.
4 proved the meme trade wasn't Solana-exclusive, at least for a few days. Throughout 2025, Solana had dominated memecoin volume. Four.meme and the 4 token showed BNB Chain could host its own ecosystem with comparable velocity.
Turning an inside joke from crypto's most influential entrepreneur into a tradable token was one of the peak moments of 2025 for memecoins.
The BNB meme season also highlighted how chain-specific these cycles had become. Each ecosystem developed its own launchpads, influencers, and narrative cycles.
4's rise meant memecoins were no longer a single trade but a multi-chain phenomenon, with each chain competing for attention and fees. The token's drawdown since its peak is 92.8%.
MOTHER keeps celebrity tokens alive
On Nov. 5, reports confirmed Iggy Azalea had joined Thrust, a new Solana-based celebrity token launchpad, as creative director, with plans to migrate her MOTHER memecoin to the platform.
Thrust marketed itself as an effort to make celebrity tokens less predatory by introducing clearer legal terms and smart contract controls.
MOTHER was not a success story, but a masterclass in failing forward. Launched in 2024, it followed the same boom-and-bust pattern as other celebrity coins, leaving plenty of late buyers holding heavy bags as liquidity thinned and prices cratered.
What makes it stand out in 2025 isn't that it treated investors better, as it didn't, but that Azalea managed to spin the whole episode into a branding asset.
She kept promoting the token even as holders went underwater, then parlayed that notoriety into a creative-director role at Thrust, positioning herself as the “professional face” of celebrity coins. It's still a classic celebrity memecoin story with pump, dump, and bagholders.
The quirky twist is how effectively the artist leveraged a controversial token to advance her own career, while the people who bought MOTHER remained stuck with their losses.
MOTHER proved you can rug your fans and turn it into a resume line.
PIPPIN as the last big “rigged” meme
In early December, research showed PIPPIN had roared back after a huge 2024 crash, with fresh inflows and aggressive social campaigns.
By mid-December, analyses showed PIPPIN up roughly 400% for 2025, while on-chain data suggested a few dozen wallets controlled close to half the supply, implying coordinated market manipulation.
PIPPIN arrived at year-end as the archetypal late-cycle, heavily gamed memecoin. The 2025 revival looked organic: social engagement spiked, new wallets appeared, trading volume surged.
However, on-chain forensics revealed the truth: a small group coordinated the comeback, accumulated supply at depressed prices, and marketed the token as a genuine resurgence to lure new buyers.
By the time the manipulation became public, the coordinating wallets had already begun to exit. PIPPIN became shorthand for “if it looks too good in memecoins, check the wallet distribution.”
The token captured a year-end realization: the most successful memecoins of 2025 weren't the ones with the best memes, but the ones with the best-coordinated manipulation.
GIven the recent episode of price manipulation, PIPPIN is down by just 12% since its peak.
What the ten tokens proved
These ten tokens traced memecoin evolution from political controversy through AI mania, celebrity fiascos, institutional crossover, and late-cycle manipulation.
TRUMP and MELANIA showed political figures could monetize brands directly through tokens with no legal consequences. LIBRA showed sovereign endorsement could turn a memecoin into a national scandal.
FARTCOIN showed that an AI narrative could revive speculation after crashes, and PUMP showed that the platform layer could financialize the casino itself.
YZY showed celebrity tokens could destroy wealth at scale with no accountability, while DOGE showed even joke tokens could cross into regulated ETF products.
4 showed memecoins were now multi-chain infrastructure plays, and MOTHER showed some celebrities were trying to build something less predatory.
PIPPIN showed the smartest operators weren't the loudest, but the ones quietly coordinating supply.
What 2025 settled is that memecoins aren't going away. They generate too much volume, too many fees, and too much attention for platforms to abandon them. They've crossed into regulated products, state-level politics, and multi-billion-dollar market caps.
What 2025 left unresolved: whether memecoins can exist without structural extraction, whether celebrity and political tokens can avoid becoming scams, and whether the sector's reputational damage will trigger a regulatory crackdown.
blockchainreporter.net
beincrypto.com
cointelegraph.com