Memecoin slump deepens as social sentiment cools

A Santiment report said it is seeing a growing “nostalgia” narrative around memecoins, with traders treating the sector as “permanently dead,” and argued that broad resignation can mark periods when positioning becomes lopsided and price bottoms often form.

The selloff has hit both large, long-running meme tokens and newer Solana-linked names. Dogecoin, which has often been used as a bellwether for meme-token momentum, is down about 32% over the past 30 days, based on market data cited alongside Santiment’s report. Data from CoinMarketCap shows dogwifhat (WIF) is down about 41.70% against the U.S. dollar over the last 30 days, while Bonk (BONK) is down about 46.90% against the euro over the same period. CoinMarketCap also shows Pepe (PEPE) down about 39% versus stablecoins and Shiba Inu (SHIB) down about 31% against USDT over the past 30 days.

Santiment’s core argument rests less on price levels than on crowd behavior. The firm said social media commentary has skewed more bearish than bullish, and described that imbalance as a condition that has historically coincided with rebounds when expectations become one-sided. In a separate weekly market summary, Santiment quantified that tilt by pointing to a bullish-to-bearish comment ratio sitting below 1 and around 0.89 during the recent pullback.

The “contradiction” is that memecoins are losing attention at the same time that the market’s most visible narratives are turning decisively negative, which can reduce incremental selling pressure as fewer traders remain engaged. In the report, Santiment framed the current mood as “collective acceptance” of an “end of the meme era” storyline and called it a capitulation-type signal, adding that markets often move against consensus expectations when pessimism becomes entrenched.

The shift also follows a different tone seen earlier this year. A Jan. 7 Santiment social-volume readout said crowd interest had been rising toward memecoins amid a speculative rally, naming tokens such as DOGE, PEPE and SHIB as examples of well-known meme assets drawing retail attention during that period. The latest framing flips that earlier momentum on its head: instead of “meme season” chatter, Santiment says the dominant discussion is about meme peaks and permanent exhaustion. 

Solana-linked memecoins have been part of that whiplash. WIF’s roughly 41.7% 30-day decline against the dollar illustrates the scale of retracement in the Solana meme complex, while BONK’s roughly 46.9% 30-day drop against the euro reflects how quickly liquidity can evaporate once the trade falls out of favor. Even tokens that have maintained strong cultural presence, such as PEPE and SHIB, show steep 30-day drawdowns in CoinMarketCap conversion data versus liquid benchmarks like USDT.

Report used explicit “pain trade” language to describe how these conditions can set up reversals, arguing that sectors “left for dead” can stabilize when marginal sellers are exhausted and when skeptical positioning dominates. In its words, the firm urged traders to “watch sectors that the crowd has left for dead,” adding that “max pain often marks the bottom.”

The broader crypto market backdrop over the last month matters because meme tokens have tended to behave as high-beta risk assets, amplifying swings in the wider market. The same 30-day window that saw memecoin market cap fall also included a wider pullback that pushed Bitcoin near $60,000 on Feb. 3, according to market data cited in the same report. When the market de-risks, meme tokens often see sharper drawdowns because they are more sensitive to leverage, thinner liquidity, and momentum-driven participation.

For now, the takeaway from Santiment’s signal is not that a rebound is guaranteed, but that the data it tracks—social engagement and the balance of bullish versus bearish commentary—has shifted toward conditions the firm associates with capitulation. Whether that translates into a durable recovery across WIF, BONK, DOGE, SHIB and PEPE will likely depend on whether broader crypto risk appetite returns and whether capital rotates back into the meme complex after a month of heavy losses.