Memecoins were ‘most profitable crypto narrative’ in Q1 2024 — CoinGecko

Stellar performance from memecoins eclipse Bitcoin and altcoin gains, according to data from CoinGecko.

The memecoin sector has emerged as the most profitable narrative so far this year, according to a recent report by CoinGecko 

According to the report, Memecoins recorded the highest returns of 1,312.6% on average across the top tokens by market capitalization. Memecoins that were launched in March made it to the top 10 largest memecoins list by market value by the end of the quarter, including Book of Meme (BOME), Brett (BRETT) and Cat in a Dogs World (MEW).

BRETT recorded the highest returns of 7,727.6% by the end of Q3/2024, followed by Dogwifhat (WIF), which witnessed a 2,721.2% growth year-to-date after going viral amid the Solana-based memecoin frenzy.

CoinGecko analyst Lim Yu Qian said,

“Notably, the memecoin narrative was 4.6 times more profitable than the next best-performing crypto narrative of tokenized real-world assets (RWA), and 33.3 times more profitable than the layer 2 narratives with the lowest returns in Q1 this year.”

Related: Ethereum earnings tripled in Q1 2024, reaching $370M

At the time of publication, the total market capitalization of the memecoin sector is $60.93 billion, accounting for approximately 2.32% of the total cryptocurrency market capitalization, according to data from CoinGecko. This is a 176.9% increase quarter-on-quarter.

This surpasses the market capitalization of many mainstream sectors with significant capital and institutional involvement, such as DePIN at $29.98 billion, layer 2 at $32.39 billion, zero knowledge at $18 billion, and RWA at $8.5 billion.

The performance by the memecoins comes on the back of increasing investor interest. According to data from Google, the term memecoins is being searched more than ever before worldwide.

Google Trends’ weekly tracker of a keyword’s popularity revealed that the global interest in the term “memecoin” reached popularity of 88 in March, the second highest over a five-year time frame, just below the peak of 100 reached in the first week of November 2023.

The rising interest in the memecoin sector is also reflected in increased transaction volumes, a growing user base, and robust active communities.

Bitcoin (BTC) surged to record highs in March ahead of its upcoming supply-halving event, surging above $73,800 for the first time ever. It could be argued that this incredible momentum seen from the world’s largest cryptocurrency so far in 2024 has been driving top-down interest for all cryptocurrencies, including memecoins.