Look no further as in 2025, memecoins have stolen the show as the best performing sector in crypto. As every other sector crumbles, memecoins are the ones consistently printing miraculous gains. A new analysis finds that memecoins were responsible for a meme-tastic average return of 33.08% between January 1 and May 31, 2025. This amazing performance blew away every other tracked category. To put this performance into context, memecoins have been widely considered a trashy non-asset.
The research examined price performance across ten of the largest crypto categories. These categories featured Real World Assets (RWA), Layer 1 (L1), Decentralized Exchanges (DEX), Lending, NFT, GameFi, Restaking, AI and Layer 2 (L2). PumpFun and CoinGecko data were used in the study.
Memecoins therefore had an extraordinary performance compared to the Real World Assets (RWA), the second-best performing category, which had an average return of -7.95%. In comparison, these were even higher the returns of AI (8.69%) and Layer 2 (6.14%).
"While often dismissed unseriously as the ‘joke coins’ of crypto, memecoins are achieving something remarkable in 2025: outperforming every other market segment," - the report
The memecoin sector has had particularly outstanding performance across the board. The report found that only a handful of these studies yielded profitable projects.
"A notable 18.82% of meme projects achieved profitability," - the study
By 2025, on average over 36,000 new meme tokens were launching every single day. January by itself was meme token pandemonium, with more than 1.7 million deploying during the month. Tokens with no trading activity or that were delisted during the study period were assigned a default return of -100%. Memecoins’ recent performance is remarkable considering that nearly all memecoins have completely gone to zero at this point.
