Memes pump again, though still losing mindshare to AI projects

Meme tokens pumped across all categories, as the crypto market recovered. Both older established memes and new AI-generated tokens rallied and reached new all-time highs. 

Meme tokens had another rally after the year-end drawdown. The meme market as a whole recovered above $124B in total valuation, with all assets posting vertical rallies. 

This time, the meme expansion is happening at a moment when the narrative is slowing down. The social media presence of memes is displaced by AI agent tests. As a result, the mindshare of memes has gone down to levels not seen since April, according to Kaito’s data. 

Memecoin mindshare the lowest since last April.

Things rotated fast. pic.twitter.com/VNyIEESJwx

— Kaito AI 🌊 (@_kaitoai) January 3, 2025

Meme tokens, however, are already highly liquid and watched by whales and market-makers. The recent rally showed most blue chip memes remained highly reactive, waiting for the right sign to resume their price action. 

Meme mindshare has been falling off a cliff since November, being replaced by AI. At the end of 2024, the AI mindshare had expanded above 60% as of January 2, while memes moved back into their niche communities. At the end of November, AI and memes had equal weight in mindshare, though there was also some overlap with AI-inspired meme tokens. 

Cults are back, despite lower social media hype

The trend of memes has not broken, and the market is still near its all-time high capitalization. However, searches have bucked the trend and shifted downward, as attention is coming mostly from insider communities. 

The effect of communities boosted SPX6900 (SPX), the most prominent cult token. SPX rallied by 36% in the past day, rising to a new all-time high of $1.36. The rally also happened with the highest volumes in the past three months. 

The token is one of Murad Mahmudov’s selections and hinges on a wide community of holders. However, SPX is also controlled by connected wallet clusters, controlling a significant part of the supply. 

Gigachad (GIGA), one of the more widely distributed tokens, also peaked at $0.09, performing in a similar way based on its cult status. 

Mahmudov considers SPX and GIGA as the potential leaders for this cycle, though skeptics also see it as a form of shilling. The expectation is that the cults can outperform and become lasting communities, similar to DOGE and SHIB. 

#SPX6900 and $GIGA are the DOGE and SHIB of this cycle.

Many people need to See it happen before they can Believe.

But all of the money will be made by those who Believe it *before* they see it happen. pic.twitter.com/KiKst0BFVt

— Murad 💹🧲 (@MustStopMurad) January 3, 2025

The common feature of those memes is they rallied despite the perception that most of the older memes had lost their appeal. Among cult tokens, FARTCOIN once again decided to defy all predictions, rising to $1.53. FARTCOIN is still considered an AI meme, despite not being linked to the new wave of AI agent tokens. 

Cults and forgotten tokens often rally in spite of all logic, leading buyers to hold in the hope of a breakout. Some categories failed to take off, despite showing signs of recovery, including PolitiFi and the recently hot parody tokens. 

AI agent tokens slide, despite near-record mindshare

At the same time, the Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL) broke its climb, setting an all-time high at $5.05, then sliding to $4.38. The recent spike in interest mostly hinged on the potential for profit-taking from top AI agent platforms. 

AI16Z also fell from its peak above $2.42, returning to $2.12. The platform narrative is still among the most promising ones for the longer term, though after the all-time highs, traders are returning to memes. 

Both AI16Z and ZEREBRO are also counted as meme tokens, part of the overlapping narratives. Most tokens were in the green, though AI16Z was the week’s winner with more than 151% gains.

AI agents are competing in their own mindshare leaderboard. Often, the token’s performance goes against the mindshare. Truth Terminal is among the biggest losers on X, followed by ZEREBRO, but this did not prevent the recent token rallies. AI16Z was the AI agent with the fastest-expanding mindshare as of January 3. 

AI16Z gains exposure with its ELIZA framework, as well as X content production. In addition to being a speculative token, AI16Z also aims to become an information and community hub. For now, AI16Z lags behind other AI agents with only around 90K followers on X.

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