Memecoins are not dead despite the collapse in prices and fading hype, according to MoonPay president Keith A. Grossman, who believes the sector is undergoing a structural reset rather than a permanent decline.
Grossman argued that memecoins were never solely about jokes or financial nihilism, but about the technological ability to tokenise attention cheaply and at scale using blockchain infrastructure.
“Before crypto, attention could only be monetised by platforms, brands and a small group of influencers, while everyone else generated value for free,” Keith A. Grossman said.
He added that likes, trends, online jokes and digital communities created enormous economic value that remained largely captured by centralised technology platforms.
According to Grossman, blockchain-based social tokens introduced a way for ordinary users to participate directly in the attention economy for the first time.
He compared current pessimism around memecoins to early predictions that social media would fail after the first generation of platforms collapsed in the early 2000s.
Grossman noted that later social media companies transformed a niche concept into a dominant cultural and economic force, suggesting memecoins could follow a similar trajectory.