Memecoins have become the sole crypto market sector that was making money in the first five months of 2025. That’s the finding of a new study examining the performance of different segments within crypto. During a time when almost every other sector was struggling, memecoins saw an average profit and loss (PnL) of +33.08%, beating all other sectors in the market. The data paints a different, more bearish picture—one where memecoins are the outlier even as the rest of the market remains decidedly bearish.

The explosion of memecoin creation and trading activity has been one of the more remarkable and controversial crypto trends of 2025. The catch, of course, is that despite their high-risk status memecoins haven’t been able to stop investors from flocking to them. This has led to a completely different dynamic in the crypto world.

Memecoin Profitability and Market Dominance

Memecoins’ profitability is most shocking in contrast with other sectors. Second best performer Real World Assets (RWA) had -7.95% PnL. Layer 2 and Restaking projects had an even tougher time, with 93.86% and 91.38% of projects in the red, respectively. In many ways, this no-value study is a reflection of how speculative memecoins are today. Yet even with their volatility, some investors have outperformed by taking advantage of the dislocation.

The data shows that memecoins’ rate of profit-making is much higher than other leading industries. Memecoins have a three-month average return of 18.82%. This is 117% higher than AI’s 8.69% and a staggering 207% higher than Layer 2’s 6.14%. This just shows the skewed returns, though, but highly risky returns, that memecoins have provided during this time frame.

While their legendary profitability can often tempt investors, memecoins are incredibly dangerous assets. The research goes on to show that memecoins have a whopping 81.18% loss rate. This is actually the second-lowest failure rate of any industry sector. All in all, investors should treat memecoins with skepticism, not hype. While the upside is real, there’s a very real possibility of downside loss.

Proliferation of New Meme Tokens

The memecoin market has seen a recent surge in the establishment of new tokens. That’s an average of 36,405 new meme tokens daily created on Pump.fun. As of the time of writing on June 11, 2025, Pump.fun has tracked the launch of 5,897,541 new meme coins. During the first half of 2025, creators created more than 800,000 meme tokens per month. On average, they created an incredible 1,117,943 new meme coins PER MONTH!

When, in January 2025, 1.7 million meme tokens entered a new blockchain’s seed round, the media was puzzled. This insulated atmosphere set the stage for an explosive year of memecoin activity. February 2025 was particularly brutal with an increase of 1,140,175 new tokens just that month alone. March wasn’t far behind with 823,401 tokens, while April and May brought in 1,001,077 and 897,553 tokens each. This record setting wave of new memecoins exemplifies the heightened enthusiasm and speculative mania that has come to envelop this segment of the market.

The daily rate of creation of these new meme tokens has reached an all-time high. It exploded 3.5 times, increasing from an average of 10,417 new tokens per day in 2024 to an astronomical 36,405 in 2025. This meteoric rise demonstrates the overwhelming popularity and accessibility of memecoins. That’s powering their monopoly over the crypto market.

Market Implications and Future Outlook

Memecoins took over the entire cryptocurrency space in H12025. This trend is certainly promising, but it begs some key questions regarding the long-term health and direction of the market. Although memecoins have certainly delivered lucrative opportunities to profit, their inherently risky speculative characteristics and danger-fueled market environment require caution.

Collectively, this trend points to a dangerous change in investor sentiment, towards a stronger focus on short-term profit and speculative investment. Whether this trend will hold for the rest of 2025 is still up in the air. Today’s data shows that memecoins are a powerful trend within the crypto world.