“Memomania” 2024 brought huge profits to the creators of startup platforms like Pump.fun, and headlines screamed about the incredible luck of traders, whose profits were measured in hundreds and thousands of percent.
In the fall, amid the third wave of growth in AI-related assets in a year, the segment took a new direction – meme coins inspired by artificial intelligence. The value of many of them grew thousands of times in a short period of time.
In this gudie we talk about the social component of such assets, how new tokens are changing the way we think about money, and which fast-growing projects are worth keeping an eye on.
What is the interest?
If we imagine that Bitcoin was conceived by Satoshi Nakamoto as the first tech meme, then today’s AI-linked tokens could well be considered an evolution of his idea. They are bold, innovative, create new subcultures based on certain values, some of them are useful and almost all of them are hated by TradFi. The crypto world knows about Satoshi’s desire to revolutionize the financial system: increase security, decentralize, add a bit of anonymity and “magic” to the deflationary economic model. And if digital gold suddenly turns out to be an ingenious scam, and the creator comes back and sells all his coins, it is unlikely to change the perception of cryptocurrencies. It’s more about habits and acceptance of new paradigms.
Just five to seven years ago, a large percentage of today’s Bitcoin fans viewed it as a joke or a pyramid scheme. “Money out of thin air” is what the first cryptocurrency has supposedly been teaching the masses for over 15 years. The daunting task of the pioneers was to explain to the masses why Bitcoin needed a consensus mechanism – PoW – and what the algorithm was valuable for. Later, we saw “crypto rally” with the first launches of new tokens, life-changing airdrops, NFTs with primitive creations worth several million dollars each, and finally meme coins.
Some participants in the 2024 crypto market have chosen the path of simplification with Polymarket bets and taps apps in Telegram like Hamster Kombat. But from a broader perspective, all of these trends, as well as meme coins, are based on collective preferences. The blockchain industry is getting noticeably bigger, and users can choose which direction they want to interact.
In September 2024, Murad Makhmudov, a cryptoanalyst and author of the meme-coin supercycle concept, said that the crypto industry is a tokenization industry under the guise of software development. According to him, most users and investors have never been interested in technology, and they come “to make money (70%), have fun (20%), and feel part of something (10%)”. He also believes that in the future, meme coins could become a form of “cults” and communities with an emphasis on organic development and fair distribution of tokens.
In April 2024, the opposite opinion was expressed by a16z Crypto CTO Eddie Lazarin, who, in connection with a possible exodus of developers from the industry, stated that memes are not very interesting from a technical point of view. It is noteworthy that later, with the emergence of agent-based artificial intelligence systems, this fund inspired the creators of the largest AI meme by capitalization – ai16z. And it was Eddie Lazarin who triggered the ~50% rise of the token on November 18, when he replied to an AI agent who tried to contact him on the social network X.
With the emergence of this asset class, meme coins have acquired the missing technological stuffing, attracting investment and ultimately becoming an important part of the idea of the connection between blockchain and artificial intelligence.
What is the value?
In addition to strong emotional and social components, such as the creation of various subcultural communities and the formation of charitable funds, meme tokens are attractive from an investment point of view.
According to Binance analysts, the vast majority of such assets have a market capitalization equal to their FDV. This indicates that their creators will unlock and release all coins into circulation at once, without assuming further issuance and thus dilution of the value of the tokens.
As of January 17, 2025, the market capitalization of the meme coin category on CoinGecko is ~$121 billion, of which new AI memes account for about 8%. Most of the top 10 tokens were created less than two months ago and continue to actively grow with the inherent volatility of the segment.
The rapid growth of AI-related meme coins began in October 2024, when an anonymous developer launched the Goatseus Maximus (GOAT) meme token on the Pump.fun platform. AI agent Terminal of Truths (ToT) publicly endorsed the project, causing the asset’s price to skyrocket. In just two weeks, GOAT’s capitalization exceeded $950 million. The token’s creator sent 1.93 million coins to ToT’s wallet, making the AI agent the first millionaire among autonomous assistants.
As of January 17, 2025, the token’s price is in correction at ~$0.36 from a high of $1.21.
Thanks to GOAT, the interest in AI agents has increased significantly. Since then, many protocols related to them have been launched. And after the publication of the Franklin Templeton report dated January 14, 2025, AI tokens showed strong growth on the wave of Bitcoin return to the $100,000 level. In the document, experts of the investment company predicted a “revolution” in content creation with the participation of agents based on artificial intelligence.
Such projects are usually represented by a website, a token and an autonomous AI account in X. The largest by capitalization at the time of writing is AI16z. Despite the name, the project is not directly linked to the AI6z fund, although earlier the co-founder of the venture capital firm Mark Andriessen mentioned the token, which provoked a rise in popularity.
The project is positioned as a DAO run by the AI agent Eliza. It can “read links, PDFs, audio and video, remember conversations and summarize them for easy browsing.”
Zerebro is one of the most viral AI agents. It creates music that is popular on streaming platforms.
On December 21, Zerebro’s founder announced the launch of ZerePy, a Python-based service for agent systems. Version v1 simplifies the process of deploying personalized AI and helping users publish content on social platforms. Future updates will focus on expanding functionality, integrating more platforms, and enabling blockchain.
Another project published on the Top Hat Lunchpad on the Solana network – kwantxbt – is doing quite well in the direction of technical analysis.
It is enough to enter in the Telegram channel the address or ticker of the token you are interested in, and in less than five seconds the AI agent will provide entry points to the position and a forecast of the next price movement. The service is free in its initial phase. Their token KWANT has a capitalization of ~$16 million.
The two most experienced projects, which started in 2023 – Turbo and CorgiAI – stand out in the top ten meme coins. Turtle and Dog, the typical heroes of meme-coins, managed to find themselves among the young and progressive agency systems after a long time.
The experience of Turbo (TURBO) is particularly interesting – the startup is considered the first token generated entirely by AI. In April 2023, the developer created a token using GPT-4 and with an investment of $69. Its capitalization reached ~ $930 million on December 19, 2024.
According to CoinGecko, the sub-sector of startup platforms for launching AI agents is teeming with new projects. Virtuals Protocol’s VIRTUAL token is in first place with a market capitalization of ~$3.8 billion. The record-breakers in terms of growth over 30 days were the ARC and MAX AI tokens.
The Ava AI project with token AVA has shown a momentum of more than 1000%. It represents the first AI artist released on Holoworld’s generative storytelling platform. The startup aims to connect brands with content creators in a new realm of marketing using artificial intelligence. According to Holoworld’s website, the platform has over one million registered customers and has created around 700,000 pieces of work.
Well, the strangest – yet very popular – meme in the AI sphere is Fartcoin. The project, which embodies free speech in an exaggerated form, highlights the values of the modern blockchain industry. Perhaps its popularity and connection to the AI sector is due to the fact that the coin was created by the Terminal of Truths agent. The token ranks second in the AI meme ranking with a capitalization of ~$1.25 billion.
Another flywheel of hypergrowth in the price of AI tokens was the Binance Alpha platform launched in December. From December 18-20, 2024, Binance added five coins to the platform each day. Within 24 hours, customers of the exchange were able to explore the details and buy tokens with a quick-buy feature. Most of the introduced assets were related to AI memes, which sparked another wave of growth in the segment.
In early January, Binance Futures listed the first batch of coins after screening on the Alpha protocol. GRIFFAINUSDT, AI16ZUSDT, ZEREBROUSDT joined the open contracts of the centralized exchange.
Conclusions
The emergence of the AI-related meme coin segment has once again demonstrated the joint capabilities of the blockchain industry and artificial intelligence. This synergy has given the assets the missing technology and novelty, opening up new avenues of development in art, media, commerce and entertainment. With their light and sometimes funny presentation, they are a good advertisement for the whole industry and simply bring new opportunities for self-expression.
These coins allow you to get rich quickly with a minimal investment, or lose it all just as quickly. Perhaps their social and cultural impact will be felt a little later, but for now they are helping to spread the crypto idea around the world and change the public perception of what money can be.