Political memecoins are going down. The focus shifted to what would please the audience – beautiful, often humorous, images of animals.
Memecoins, modeled after US election candidates that once traded with market values of hundreds of millions of dollars, are now failing to attract attention.
Tokens bearing the names of Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris declined along with the broader crypto market.
Since then the focus has shifted back to what makes audiences happy – beautiful, often humorous, images of animals.
The trend comes as Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., assured followers, fans and potential investors that his family would launch a new crypto project — one he hinted at that would have more staying power than memes.
Investors hoping to ride former President Trump's ups and downs in the attention economy have been burned before.
Nero Token Hits $300m
Multiple memecoins have cropped up depicting a Shiba Inu called Nero.
At the top of the pack is the Neiro token on the Ethereum blockchain. After launching on July 31, it hit a market cap of nearly $300 million earlier this week.
Nero soared to a market value of nearly $300 million in less than a week.
Memecoins are tokens with no function or use that trade solely on popularity and sentiment. This year, memecoin trading exploded on Solana as the dogwiphat token rose to a $4.5 billion market cap.
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There is no guarantee that recent attention will be retained. Few memecoins can attract attention for more than a few weeks.
Investors get burned
The market shift has come in recent weeks as several memecoins linked to US presidential candidate Donald Trump have fired investors.
In June, former pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli announced that he co-founded memecoin DJT with Donald Trump's youngest son, Barron Trump.
campaign insiders said News DJT had no family connection at the time. The token declined by 92% mid-Tuesday Accusations Internal selling.
Then on Wednesday, Restore the Republic, a token rumored to be connected to Donald Trump Jr.'s crypto project, soared to a market value of $155 million.
It crashed 95% on Thursday after the former president's son Warned “Fake Tokens Claiming to Be Part of Trump Project.”
Who is Nero?
Nero is the newly adopted dog of Japanese kindergarten teacher Atsuko Sato.
Sato previously owned another Shiba Inu called Kabosu, whose image was used for Dogecoin – the original memecoin. Cabosu died in May. Sato said in a X post She will not accept any Nero token.
Nero's popularity has spurred several animal-themed memecoins. Among them is a token styled one of Sato's pets – a cat named Ginnon.
Another is a token named after a three-month-old Shiba Inu named Fuku, seen with Nero at Satos. Blog posts.
Dozens of animal-themed tokens have hit multi-million dollar market values in the past week.
Political memecoins will come
The worst performer among established political memecoins is Boden, a comic token modeled after President Joe Biden.
After hitting a market value of $650 million in April, it now trades at around $6.5 million.
Tokens on the other side of the political spectrum are not faring much better.
MAGA, a token modeled after Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, is down 80% from its June peak market value of $775 million.
New memecoins like KAMA, which played against Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, also failed to hold their ground.
KAMA is down 50% in the last fortnight.
There is Tim Craig News' Edinburgh-based DeFi correspondent. Reach out with tips at [email protected].
Related TopicsMemeCoin Ronald TrumpJoe Biden