The market crashed, but the billion-dollar circus rolls on

The market crashed, but the billion-dollar circus rolls on

Opinion by: Igor Zemtsov, chief technology officer at TBCC

Following “Libragate,” memecoin prices crashed, with their market cap falling nearly 60% from 2025’s highs. But meme tokens, dead? They’ve got more lives than a cat on caffeine.

Despite the chaos, memecoins were still holding a $47.9-billion market cap as of March 10. It’s not exactly spare change. Meanwhile, degens are still out here “buying the dip” like it’s a Black Friday sale, convinced that absurdly named tokens like Unicorn Fart Dust, Fartcoin and Buttcoin will print them a 100x profit before year’s end.

Some call it irrational. Others call it degeneracy. But when has that ever stopped anyone in crypto?

Down bad, but not dead yet

Sure, memecoins aren’t exactly outshining Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) or Solana (SOL) right now. They’ve been getting absolutely obliterated. Prices have tanked, liquidity has dried up, and traders who thought they’d be sipping cocktails on a yacht by now are busy coping in Telegram groups.

Let’s not pretend this is the first time memecoins have been pronounced dead. Every time the world writes them off, they somehow claw their way back — sometimes with an even more absurd rally than before.

After all, logic has never been crypto’s strong suit. If it were, we wouldn’t have seen billion-dollar valuations for fart-themed tokens in the first place. And if human nature tells us anything, it’s that people will always chase the next big hype cycle — especially when it comes wrapped in humor and the promise of overnight riches.

Memecoins are down bad right now. But dead? Not a chance. The moment another ridiculous trend takes hold, the money will come flooding back. Because in crypto, what goes down eventually goes way back up — often in the most unexpected, meme-fueled ways.

Better marketing than serious crypto startups

Forget white papers, roadmaps or security audits. Memecoins don’t need any of that. All it takes is a viral meme on X, a 10-minute token launch, and within a few weeks, it could be sitting at a $50-million market cap. Meanwhile, legitimate projects spend years developing products, hiring developers and raising funds, only to watch their tokens struggle to gain traction.

Recent: Solana revenue slumps 93% from January high after memecoin bubble bursts

For memecoins, community is everything. The bigger it is, the better the pump. It’s not just the kind that retweets project updates 10 times daily, but one that fully embraces the joke. These communities don’t just speculate — they believe. And when enough people buy the meme, the token pumps.