Memecoin value sinks to $39.4B, 66% below January peak

Memecoins fell to a 2025 low on Friday as their combined market capitalization dropped to $39.4 billion, down about $5 billion in 24 hours. The NFT market slipped to $2.78 billion, the lowest since April.

The memecoin market stands 66% below its 2025 high of $116.7 billion set on Jan. 27. Trading activity rose roughly 40% over the day despite falling prices.

Large-cap tokens Dogecoin and Shiba Inu posted double-digit weekly losses. Smaller tokens including Pepe, Bonk and Floki recorded steeper declines. Several politically themed coins, including one tied to former U.S. President Donald Trump, also fell for the week.

The slide in memecoins came alongside broader weakness in digital assets. Total cryptocurrency market value declined from about $3.77 trillion on Nov. 1 to $2.96 trillion on Friday, a drop of roughly $800 billion in three weeks. Over the past seven days, Bitcoin fell about 15% and Ether declined around 16%.

NFTs also weakened. The sector’s market value fell from about $4.9 billion a month earlier to $2.78 billion on Friday. Most major collections recorded monthly declines, including Hypurr NFTs from Hyperliquid (-41.1%), Moonbirds (-32.7%), CryptoPunks (-27.1%) and Pudgy Penguins (-26.6%).

Two collections diverged from the trend. Infinex Patrons rose 11.3% over the month, while Autoglyphs eased 1.9%.

As GNcrypto wrote previously, Shiba Inu fell more than 80% from its October 2021 local high and, at that time, traded at $0.00001229 with a $7.24 billion market cap, while whale activity had dropped by over 80% from peak levels. Its ecosystem includes the Shibarium Layer-2, which has processed over 1 billion transactions with TVL around 1.36 million; developers secured $12 million in 2024; and projects such as ShibaSwap and the Shiboshis NFT collection remain in place.