Elon Musk hyped meme coins are soaring in value — and analysts say they’re here to stay

Other investors say there is potential for meme coins to be combined with artificial intelligence and become an entirely new type of currency. One recent AI generated meme coin, GOAT, hit a market cap of $800 million in November just weeks after launching.

Cryptocurrency analyst at GSR Research, Toe Bautista, warns the overwhelming majority of bets on meme coins are complete speculation — but also sees how people are engaged and interested in crypto culture, which had a strong year in 2024, with values of the most popular crypto currencies soaring, including Bitcoin briefly being worth over $100,000 per coin. 

And coin watchers say this is testament to the relevance of memes and crypto — and expect digital currency to surge in the coming months with the election of Donald Trump, who has been the most pro-crypto president of all time.

And there are quite a few mind-numbing stories to illustrate the point — one person who invested just $66 in Kekius Maximus saw their investment balloon to almost $3m. They sold off $201,000 worth and held onto $2.85M, according to Cointelegraph.com

Within hours of Elon Musk changing his X handle to ‘Kekius Maximus’ on New Year’s Eve — a reference to an previously obscure cryptocurrency – its value rocketed 4,800% to hit a market cap of $380 million.

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“I think we are only going to see more and more sophisticated investors… crypto is the best performing asset class in the world and meme coins have been the best performing subsection,” Parmentier said. 

“But with enough time and effort someone can come into big money with a new coin launch,” he explains. “It provides real agency to the average investor.”

Some skeptical financial gurus have called meme coins a Ponzi scheme, arguing they have no underlying value and attract people with little financial experience who then lose their money. 

Laurent Parmentier, a partner at crypto investment fund Stratos, which has gotten backing from Andreessen Horowitz, told The Post a fund they launched in 2023 that specifically invests in meme coins has dwarfed more traditional investments.

It was just the latest so-called meme coin — a cryptocurrency based on a meme or cultural event such as like Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, or Pepe the Frog — to spike and then, seemingly inevitably, fall (or completely tank) in a matter of hours.

The coin surged to $490M on launch day but within minutes fell to under $100M. Just a month after its December launch it has a market cap of just $39,760, making it virtually worthless. 

The team behind the coin is now facing scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission and a class action lawsuit from angry investors who lost money and feel cheated.

“If you thought about ‘how do I benefit financially from Peanut?’ a reference to a meme coin based around a New York State pet squirrel who made headlines after being forcibly removed from his owners and destroyed, you would have made a lot of money,” Parmentier added.

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