Established Memecoins Soar as Traders Grow Frustrated with PumpFun Games

Memecoins are leading the altcoin rally again, but for now, traders are increasingly focusing on established tokens that trade on leading centralized exchanges such as Coinbase and Binance, as opposed to new pair “trench” trading.

Some of the week's leading altcoins include PNUT, up 82%; PEPE, up 40%; and MOODENG, which soared a whopping 220% in the same timeframe.

While there have not been any clear catalysts fueling these rallies, the common denominator between these tokens is that they trade on centralized exchanges, ensuring decent liquidity and a lack of competition from what onchain traders call PVP coins. Some also refer to them as vampire coins, functioning similarly to the way DeFi protocols vampire attack competitors.

PVP Coins

PVP, short for player-vs-player, coins are often rehashed or even blatant copies of tokens that are relatively new and command attention and volume.

However, the bar for PVP tokens has fallen drastically, and given the memecoin sector’s lower overall volumes compared to their peak in January, this often results in both coins fading into irrelevance, and most traders losing their money.

Previously, one of the PVP coins would usually “win” a specific narrative and trade significantly higher. But in the current environment, the only people winning are the token creators and insiders, taking the already volatile and extractive memecoin space and amplifying its dynamics.

The surge in established memecoins comes as crypto traders move further out along the risk curve following Bitcoin’s rally above $100,000, and Ethereum-based memes in particular may be seeing renewed life after ETH’s 25% rally to $2300.

PumpFun metrics are up over the last week as traders re-enter the space, with daily active addresses and PumpSwap volumes increasing. However, the environment itself has changed, and the average “successful” memecoin now barely reaches a $5 million valuation before swiftly trending towards zero.

There have been some exceptions to this rule, such as Housecoin, Gork, and Pwease, but these have been few and far between compared to most of 2024, which was an arguably healthier environment despite lower volumes and fewer participants.

One memecoin trader known as Jack posted about the change in environment, saying, “I’ve seen like 7 coins top at 1m today with top 5 traders all cooking $500k+ this is getting a bit ridiculous lads, we need a hard reset.”