Meme coins and artificial intelligence (AI) have been dominating crypto mindshare in 2025, amidst massive investor interest across the world. But a new report suggests that their popularity failed to translate into performance.<\/p>\n
This could mean that the frenzy for purely speculative crypto may be subsiding, especially as investors grow cautious amid a choppy Q4.<\/p>\n
According to CoinGecko\u2019s latest report, despite ranking as the most followed narratives this year, meme coins and AI tokens delivered<\/a> average year-to-date losses of -31.6% and -50.2%, respectively. Most of the largest meme coins declined between 44.6% and 82.5% YTD, with Ribbita by Virtuals standing out as the lone exception.<\/p>\n A similar pattern played out across AI crypto<\/a> as well, where only Alchemist AI and Kite avoided steep drawdowns, while the rest of the sector fell between 49.8% and 84.3%.<\/p>\n Beyond meme coins and AI, other widely followed narratives also struggled, which was indicative of how uneven 2025 has been across the market. DeFi posted average losses of -34.8%, and roughly matched meme coin performance. Meanwhile, decentralized exchange (DEX) tokens declined 55.5% and closely mirrored the AI narrative\u2019s downturn.<\/p>\n Layer 2s continued to disappoint for a second straight year, after recording average losses of -40.6% YTD, despite their long-term role in scaling Ethereum and other networks.<\/p>\n In contrast to these laggards, real-world assets<\/a> (RWA) emerged<\/a> as the most profitable crypto narrative of 2025. This cohort delivered average gains of 185.8% YTD across its largest tokens, and this outperformance was driven primarily by Keeta Network\u2019s explosive 1,794.9% rally, alongside strong gains from Zebec Network and Maple Finance.<\/p>\n However, overall returns were still far below last year\u2019s 819.5% surge.<\/p>\n Layer 1s ranked as the second-best-performing narrative with average gains of 80.3%, and were supported<\/a> by outsized rallies in privacy-focused chains Zcash and Monero, as well as resilience from Bitcoin Cash, BNB, and Tron. Notably, RWA and layer 1 were the only narratives to post a second consecutive profitable year.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the \u201cMade in USA\u201d narrative remained modestly positive at 30.6% YTD, largely due to Zcash offsetting losses elsewhere. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Gaming and DePIN recorded the steepest drawdowns of 75.2% and 76.7% YTD, while the Solana ecosystem fell 64.2% despite leading in mindshare.<\/p>\n The post Meme Coins and AI Post Negative Returns Despite Leading Crypto Narratives in 2025<\/a> appeared first on CryptoPotato<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Meme coins and artificial intelligence (AI) have been dominating crypto mindshare in 2025, amidst massive investor interest across the world. But a new report suggests that their popularity failed to translate into performance. This could mean that the frenzy for purely speculative crypto may be subsiding, especially as investors grow cautious amid a choppy Q4. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":123307,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-discovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123306"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=123306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/123307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=123306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=123306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=123306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}RWA and Layer 1 Outperform<\/h2>\n