The hype around the meme coins has seemingly vanished.
Remember what happened a year ago? Trump had won the US elections, the cryptocurrency market was booming, and meme coins were popping left and right, charting fresh peaks. Although DOGE failed to match its 2021 run, it still challenged the $0.50 level in anticipation of the new government department with the same acronym run by Musk.
Fast-forward to late 2025, and the landscape is entirely different. The OG meme coin has fallen into obscurity, with its price barely hanging above $0.12. It’s down 7% weekly and 20% monthly. What’s perhaps even more worrisome is the recent behavior of Dogecoin whales.
According to data shared by Ali Martinez, these market participants have gone on a substantial selling spree in the past several days, disposing of 150 million coins.
150 million Dogecoin $DOGE sold by whales in the last five days. pic.twitter.com/XxN1FZWDv1
— Ali Charts (@alicharts) December 26, 2025
The largest meme coin also joined the likes of Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and SOL a month ago when it had a couple of exchange-traded funds tracking its performance go live on Wall Street. The products, launched by Grayscale and Bitwise, are called GDOG and BWOW.
While this might sound like a step in the right direction, especially in terms of legitimacy, the actual numbers are disappointing, to say the least.
Data from SoSoValue shows that there has been only minor activity for the past month. The total net inflows stand at just over $2 million, which is nothing in comparison to the $1.1 billion the XRP funds have attracted in a similar period. Moreover, no actual activity has been recorded since December 10.
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This only goes to prove that meme coins are hyped almost exclusively by retail, and when there’s no Elon Musk (or someone with similar stature) to promote them, they might be forgotten, at least for the moment. However, such negative periods have been seen in the past, but DOGE has always found a way to make its way back into people’s hearts.
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