Following the highs of 2024’s first quarter (Q1), the crypto market faced a retrace during the second one (Q2). Despite this, Memecoins has remained the reigning champion of the market for the last three months.
Total Crypto Market Cap Falls 14% In Q2
On Tuesday, CoinGecko released its 2024 Q2 Crypto Industry Report. In the report, the crypto tracking website revealed that the total market capitalization declined last quarter.
The total crypto market cap dropped 14.4%, $408.8 billion, in the last three months. The crypto market closed Q2 with a market cap of $2.43 trillion, unable to make new all-time highs (ATH).
Comparatively, the total crypto market cap reached $2.9 trillion in March. During Q1, the market soared 64.5%, doubling Q3 2024’s growth.
In absolute terms, the growth of this quarter (+$1.1 trillion) was almost double that of the previous quarter (+$0.61 trillion). This was largely driven by the approval of US spot Bitcoin ETFs in early January, sending BTC to a new all-time high in March.
Additionally, CoinGecko highlighted that the crypto market cap was outperformed by the S&P 500, which registered a 3.9% increase. As a result, the correlation between the total crypto market cap and the S&P 500 plummeted from 0.84 in Q1 to 0.16 in Q2.
In Q2, crypto volatility remained high, with an annualized volatility of 48.2% for the total crypto market cap. Meanwhile, Bitcoin (BTC) and the S&P 500 saw 48.2% and 12.7% volatility.
Memecoins Continue Leading The Market
Despite the market retrace, Memecoins remain the most popular narrative in Q2. According to CoinGecko’s categories web tracking, the sector dominated the chart with a 14.3% market share.
Last quarter, Memecoins emerged as the most popular and profitable narrative. The sector delivered massive returns in the first quarter of 2024, with an average return of 1,313% across the top tokens.
Tokens like Dogwifhat (WIF) and Book Of Meme (BOME) became market sensations, fueling the memecoin frenzy. These tokens had over 2,000% and 1,000% returns.
This quarter, the market saw a Celebrity memecoin frenzy. Public figures like Iggy Azalea, Caitlyn Jenner, and Andrew Tate joined the industry amid controversial launches, hacks, and scam allegations.
Moreover, the PolitiFi memecoins surged in popularity. Last week, these tokens outperformed most categories in the crypto market following Donald Trump’s failed assassination attempt.
4 out of the top 15 most popular narratives were memecoin-related, with Solana and Base memecoins registering an 8.44% and 4.61% share. Meanwhile, cat-themed tokens overpowered Q1’s reigning champions in the sector, Dog-inspired tokens.
This quarter, the feline-inspired tokens made it to the top 15. The category ran remarkably this cycle, with tokens like Cat in a Dogs World (MEW) and Popcat (POPCAT) surging over 200%.
Similarly to Q1, Real World Assets (RWA) and Artificial intelligence (AI) were the second and third most popular sectors. RWA registered an 11.3% market share, while IA tokens saw a 10.9% share of market attention.
