The end of the memecoin bear is near.
I think the memecoin bear front ran the actual bear back in mid-January 2025, when Trump/Melania launched.
With that as the starting point, we’ve been in the memecoin bear for 525+ days.
For comparison, the 2021 memecoin bull ended in late October when Shib hit a $41B market cap.
At the time, the entire memecoin market peaked around $88 Billion.
It then restarted 530+ days later in mid-April 2023, when Pepe launched.
After Pepe took off, memes went on a 2-year run and brought in millions of new participants.
The total memecoin market cap nearly doubled the previous cycle by peaking around $150 Billion.
Memecoin daily volume went from $1.1B in 2023 to $9.7B in 2024.
Now as we look forward, I think the main difference no one talks about is the participation.
During the 2022/2023 bear, most of the 2021 meme crowd was gone.
People actually left.
Now we’re in 2026 and a lot of the previous bull participants are still around and lurking because they didn’t win big enough to walk away.
They’re just sidelined, tired, and waiting for the spark.
That’s why I think our starting base of active/lurking participants is probably an order of magnitude bigger.
So, when the new bull run is ignited, we don’t just have a new cohort coming in, but we have a massive bucket of existing users ready to pour back in too.
So, with that, I believe we’re set up for the biggest memecoin season we’ve ever seen.
i have good sense for what will jumpstart attention, jito did very well with their airdrop at beginning of 2023 at same time solana was breaking out of its range, i also called that happening beforehand on many pods, pump has maintained mindshare for longer than ive seen any other crypto app & their userbase is all degens - onchain coins would rip if they're given a stimmy, also their pump token is down a ton & i would be very surprised if they dont ever try to send that back to ATHs
timing would make sense, & even if theyre greedy they understand theyd make much more if token is trading 10x higher & that would also likely increase their revenues, just common sense imo
The Jotchua Thesis
People buy memes they want to belong to.
Look at the biggest memecoins ever:
DOGE
SHIB
PEPE
WIF
BONK
4/5 of them are dogs.
Dogs are universal.
They're instantly recognizable, easy to customize, and people want them as profile pictures.
Jotchua already had an internet identity before crypto,
it's an established meme people already use across the internet which proves it's sustainability.
Itt doesn't rely on virality like punch or penguin.
It's a timeless meme with internet culture.
Which matters for longevity.
Now you combine that with something even rarer:
A community choosing to build around the meme, have fun, have a shared belief, and share the same vision of working as a collective to believe in something bigger than themeselves.
The goal was never to convince people to gamble.
The goal has always been to create a community people genuinely want to join.
It's not about the money, it's about sending a message.
Jotchua has the opportunity to become the runner not because someone declared it, but because enough people decided to brace arms with one other, have a shared belief in the meme and in each other, and build culture as a collective.
Just take a look at how strong our pack is.
Hope you can see the vision like we do.
Would love to have you join the jotchuans :)
Jotchua.