In 2024, the cryptocurrency market continued to grow, increasing its total market capitalization by 96.2% year-on-year to $3.9 trillion, which stood at $3.4 trillion at the end of the year: 40.7% and 59.5% respectively.
Among the key events of the year were approval of spot ETFs on bitcoin in the USwhich attracted about $35 billion and brought the total assets of these ETFs to $105 billion. This contributed to the growth of bitcoin’s market dominance, which exceeded 60% for the first time since 2021. In December, bitcoin exceeded $100 thousand for the first time.
Memcoins became one of the most prominent trends in 2024 and dominated the crypto market information space. They demonstrated a 212% growth over the year, far outpacing DeFi, L1s, and even popular traditional financial investments.
Why did memecoins become so popular? First, many of them were fairly launched without distribution among insiders and without unlocking tokens, which created a sense of transparency and fairness. Secondly, their accessibility has increased significantly thanks to tools such as Pump.fun, Moonshot, and Telegram.
Also in 2024, there was a growing distrust of venture capital (VC) as users were dissatisfied with the poor performance of many large tokens. Retail investors suffered losses, while early investors made profits, which further reinforced the memcoin narrative.
Memcoins can also be seen more as a game. The process of creating these coins based on cultural moments and then trading them at high prices creates excitement and a chance for ultra-high profits (although the risks are proportionally high) 
As for the platforms that dominate this memecoin sector, the division is between Ethereum and Solana. Ethereum remains the leader among the largest and oldest memecoins (DOGE, SHIB, PEPE), while Solana is rapidly gaining popularity among new projects.
Memcoins became a bright trend in 2024 and dominated the crypto community. The narrative about artificial intelligence, in particular, did not lag behind, AI agents. The latter have been gaining momentum over the past few months.
Source: Binance Research
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