Memecoin Market Nears $30 Billion as Most Pump.fun Tokens Stop Trading

Memecoin market capitalization was near $30 billion on Oct. 18, while only a small fraction of Pump.fun launches had trades in the week beginning 30 days after launch, underscoring a gap between category value and token-level activity.

The category figure is a broad valuation measure, not a count of tokens with active markets or of fresh money entering the sector. Across crypto as a whole, market capitalization rose $840.1 billion, or 39.6%, to $3 trillion in the third quarter. Average daily trading volume fell 8.6% quarter over quarter to $73.3 billion. Those figures cover the entire crypto market and do not isolate memecoin prices or flows.

Among 8,984,141 Pump.fun launches with enough history to observe a fifth week, 79% recorded trades only on launch day. Just 1.5% had any trades during the week that began 30 days after launch, and 0.2% recorded at least 10 trades during that week. The figures track trading activity rather than distinct buyers, so they do not show how many people traded or whether fresh capital entered the sector.

Activity was more common among tokens that had graduated by Oct. 7: 43% continued trading in their fifth week, compared with 1% of tokens that had not graduated. About one in 58 tokens in the sample had graduated by that date. Graduation is a platform milestone; the comparison does not show that reaching it caused later trading or that the tokens had deep markets.

The results add a longer view to earlier coverage of fast memecoin trading and participant losses, which focused on short holding periods. The launch data do not identify whether fifth-week trades came from returning traders, newly arrived wallets or funds moving between tokens.

Pump.fun’s fee schedule took effect Oct. 17. Trades through its web or mobile app carry a 0.45% platform fee without a referral code and a 0.40% fee with one, in addition to other applicable fees. The retention sample ends Oct. 7, so it does not include activity after the fee change.