Memecoins
Most popular story in the second quarter
After the highs of the first quarter of 2024 (Q1), the cryptocurrency market experienced a retracement during the second quarter (Q2). Despite this, Memecoins remained the reigning market champion over the last three months.
Total Cryptocurrency Market Cap Falls 14% in Q2
On Tuesday, CoinGecko released its Q2 2024 Cryptocurrency Industry Report. In the report, the cryptocurrency tracking website revealed that the total market capitalization declined over the last quarter.
The total cryptocurrency market capitalization has fallen by 14.4%, or $408.8 billion, over the past three months. The cryptocurrency market closed the second quarter with a market capitalization of $2.43 trillion, unable to generate new historical peaks (ATH).
By comparison, the total cryptocurrency market capitalization reached $2.9 trillion in March. During the first quarter, the market climbed 64.5%, doubling the growth in the third quarter of 2024.
In absolute terms, this quarter’s growth (+$1.1 trillion) was almost double that of the previous quarter (+$0.61 trillion). This growth was largely driven by the approval of US spot Bitcoin ETFs in early January, which propelled BTC to a new all-time high in March.
Additionally, CoinGecko noted that the cryptocurrency market cap was outperformed by the S&P 500, which saw a 3.9% increase. As a result, the correlation between the total cryptocurrency market cap and the S&P 500 dropped from 0.84 in the first quarter to 0.16 in the second quarter.
Cryptocurrency volatility remained elevated in the second quarter, with an annualized volatility of 48.2% for the total cryptocurrency market cap. At the same time, Bitcoin (BTC) and the S&P 500 recorded volatility of 48.2% and 12.7%.
Memecoins continue to dominate the market
Despite the market decline, Memecoins stay the most popular story in the second quarter. According to CoinGecko’s web category tracker, the sector topped the ranking with a 14.3% market share.
Over the past quarter, Memecoins have emerged as the most popular and profitable token. The sector has generated massive returns in Q1 2024, with an average return of 1,313% for the top tokens.
Tokens like Dogwifhat (WIF) and Book Of Meme (BOME) have become market sensations, fueling the memecoin frenzy. These tokens have generated returns of over 2,000% and 1,000%.
This quarter, the market experienced a Celebrity Memecoin FrenzyPublic figures like Iggy Azalea, Caitlyn Jenner and Andrew Tate have joined the industry amid controversial launches, hacks and scam allegations.
Additionally, PolitiFi memecoins have seen a surge in popularity. Last week, these tokens outperformed most categories in the cryptocurrency market after the failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
Of the top 15 stories, 4 were memecoin-related, with Solana and Base memecoins recording a share of 8.44% and 4.61%. cat themed tokens outperformed the industry’s reigning first-quarter champions, dog-inspired tokens.
This quarter, feline-inspired tokens have made it into the top 15. The category has seen remarkable performance this cycle, with tokens like Cat in a Dogs World (MEW) and Popcat (POPCAT) increasing by over 200%.
Similar to Q1, real-world assets (RWA) and artificial intelligence (AI) were the second and third most popular sectors. RWA recorded a market share of 11.3%, while AI tokens recorded a market attention share of 10.9%.
Featured image from Unsplash.com, chart from TradingView.com