Memes are a game of attention; when attention dissipates, the hype will also plummet.
Written by: 1912212.eth, Foresight News
The long-lasting meme craze surrounding Solana has finally come to an end.
On February 27, during a correction in the cryptocurrency market, the latest price of SOL reached $140, halving from the historical peak created in January.
From the early bome/wif to the subsequent AI concept coins, and finally the emergence of celebrity concept coins, one after another, some made a fortune, some left in despair, and others, unwilling to give up, continued to seek hundredfold opportunities. As market liquidity worsened, not only meme coins but various altcoins also showed lackluster performance, continuously declining.
Some people vented their frustrations on various VC coins, others complained about the rapid fluctuations of meme coins, and some began to reflect on the numerous issues surrounding Solana, which had been widely praised.
Celebrity coins drain market liquidity, insider trading is rampant
After the emergence of the Trump concept coin, countless people were amazed by its enormous wealth effect. At this time, SOL approached $300, setting a new historical high, while Ethereum remained stagnant. Many Ethereum whales even considered switching to SOL, but the subsequent trend of SOL/ETH surprised everyone; ETH did not drop much, but SOL continued to decline, with the SOL/ETH ratio plummeting from 0.09366 to the current 0.05981.
Due to the massive unlocking on March 1 and a series of negative impacts from celebrity concept coins, SOL has now dipped to around $140.
What exactly did the Trump celebrity concept coin bring? Aside from massive exposure, the crypto community soon tasted the bitter fruit. Many teams saw that meme coins made money quickly and quickly launched meme coins related to First Lady Melania Trump, resulting in investor losses amounting to billions of dollars.
The market has grown weary of memes. By late January, no influential celebrity concept coins had emerged. However, some teams were still plotting to harvest market funds. On February 15, the team behind LIBRA leveraged the influence of the Argentine president to launch a meme, ultimately cashing out over $100 million. In contrast, 24 traders on LIBRA lost over $1 million, and 61 traders lost over $500,000. The biggest loser incurred a loss of $5.17 million, having spent $5.6 million to purchase 2.1 million tokens, ultimately selling them for only $430,000.
Solayer developer Chaofan Shou released a relationship diagram of the parties involved in the LIBRA token issuance event and stated that the conspiracy group behind it issued the LIBRA token through advisor Hayden Mark Davis (Kelsier Ventures) and outsourced market-making to an Indian company. Kelsier Ventures and the market maker are also insiders of the Trump lady token MELANIA, ENRON, BOB, RAG, M3M3, and OGME tokens. The main sponsor of LIBRA, KIP Protocol (founded by Julian Peh), facilitated contact with people close to Argentine President Milei, leading to Milei tweeting about the project.
Insider trading is continuously eroding market confidence.
According to Lookonchain monitoring, before LIBRA went live, a whale created two new wallets and transferred funds into them to purchase LIBRA. After LIBRA launched, it immediately used the new wallets to spend $2.02 million to buy 5.08 million LIBRA, quickly selling them for $8.74 million, making a profit of $6.72 million.
Additionally, influencer MrBeast is under investigation for connections to over 50 potential insider trading-related crypto wallets, which collectively gained over $23 million in profits.
The game of promoting celebrity influence and taking over faster than running away has made most market players more cautious amid losses, and the liquidity that has been drained from the market has not returned. Dragonfly partner Haseeb Qureshi stated that the meme coin cycle has ended, comparing the current meme coin ecosystem to a casino, where each "slot machine" is owned by different people, a model that is unsustainable. Haseeb also pointed out that the celebrity token craze has rapidly cooled down or even passed, calling for industry unity against such token projects to completely end this phenomenon.
Pump.Fun sells hundreds of millions of dollars in SOL
As the most dazzling meme launch platform in this round, Pump.Fun's impressive performance has garnered significant market attention. Numerous meme and AI concept coins with market capitalizations in the hundreds of millions or even billions have emerged from it, enjoying a brief period of glory. However, behind its success, the continuous selling of SOL has also sparked considerable controversy.
On December 10, 2024, Pump.Fun's total revenue reached 1,661,078 SOL, approximately $362 million, after which it sold $289.5 million on exchanges and DEX.
As we entered 2025, the Pump team accelerated their coin sales:
On January 2, Pump.Fun.Fun transferred over 290,000 SOL to exchanges, worth $50 million, and a few hours later transferred another 63,170 SOL, worth $13.1 million.
On January 8, Pump.Fun transferred 98,593 SOL to exchanges, worth $20 million;
On January 14, Pump.Fun transferred 122,620 SOL to exchanges, worth $21.75 million;
On January 21, Pump.Fun transferred 116,000 SOL to exchanges, worth $28 million;
On January 29, Pump.Fun transferred 90,000 SOL to exchanges, worth $20.5 million;
On January 30, Pump.Fun transferred 98,000 SOL to exchanges, worth $22.27 million;
On February 7, Pump.Fun transferred over 140,000 SOL to exchanges, worth approximately $26.6 million;
On February 13, Pump.Fun transferred over 148,000 SOL to exchanges, worth $28.17 million;
On February 20, Pump.Fun transferred over 65,000 SOL to exchanges, worth approximately $10.97 million;
On February 26, Pump.Fun transferred over 87,000 SOL to exchanges, worth approximately $12.58 million;
The large amount of SOL earned by the ecological team project being transferred and sold undoubtedly casts a shadow over the price of SOL, and during a poor market, it can also negatively impact the downward trend of SOL's price. On March 1, over $2 billion worth of SOL is set to be unlocked, and its trend is bound to make the market pessimistic.
Essentially, Pump.Fun may not be considered an industry innovation; the one-click meme creation feature has made the crypto industry increasingly resemble a casino, with continuous surges and crashes, constantly consuming market funds and confidence.
Currently, Pump.Fun is building its own liquidity and testing token exchange functions. Due to this factor, another coin that rose based on meme liquidity, RAY, has seen a sharp decline, currently dropping from a high of $8.7 to around $2.4.
Meme declines are significant
Although memes often yield higher returns compared to other sectors during bullish trends, when market liquidity tightens, the declines of memes can be quite severe. The previously popular WIF fell from over $4 to $0.6, BONK dropped from around $0.00006 to about $0.000014, and TRUMP fell from around $70 to about $13. PENGU dropped from around $0.04 to $0.0086.
A host of AI concept coins like AI16Z and FARCTION have also experienced significant declines, with some dropping nearly tenfold from their peaks.
Almost all memes and AI concept coins have quickly been abandoned by the market, with a strong atmosphere of wait-and-see. Perhaps when the speculative sentiment dissipates, the funds willing to return will no longer be the same as before.
Data shows that in February of this year, the number of active addresses on the network dropped to an average of 9.5 million per week, a nearly 40% decrease from the 15.6 million active addresses in November 2024.
The new king of public chains?
The past FUD sentiments directed at Ethereum have now shifted to Solana. With its comprehensive ecological development, Ethereum remains the number one public chain by market capitalization. Solana, with its high performance, has garnered significant attention during this round of meme waves, benefiting from its strong wealth effect. However, from an industrial perspective, Solana has not produced any true industry innovations like DeFi, nor has it received widespread acclaim from both inside and outside the community. The brutal test of PVP is ultimately a zero-sum game, where some are happy and some are sad.
Memes are a game of attention; when attention dissipates, it often leads to chaos. The once-thriving NFT scene was like this, and today's meme scene may be the same.
Solana still has a long way to go.
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