Pepe (PEPE), the first-ever frog coin and one of the most popular community meme cryptocurrencies, becomes the second worst performer of this week. By contrast, cryptocurrencies associated with artificial intelligence (AI) agents logged a splendid start of 2025.
PEPE closes first 2025 week in red: Worst start of year
Pepe (PEPE), a top meme cryptocurrency, lost 4% of its price in the last seven days. After having $360 million of its market cap erased, it is on the verge of leaving the top 25 of cryptos by market cap. The PEPE price is close to sinking below $0.00002, which is a crucial level in the USDT pair.
Besides stablecoins, only two cryptocurrencies are closing the first week of 2025 in red: Pepe (PEPE) and Hyperliquid (HYPE). In the last 24 hours, Pepe (PEPE) lost 3.5% of its capitalization.
The entire segment of meme coins is sending mixed messages to the community. In the last 24 hours, over $25 million in contracts on main meme coins were liquidated; DOGE/USDT, PNUT/USDT, WIF/USDT, PEPE/USDT and AI16Z/USDT traders being hit the worst.
In CoinGecko’s ranking of 200 largest cryptocurrencies, there are 24 meme coins today. Only one of them, Akuma Inu (AKUMA) demonstrated positive dynamics in the last 24 hours.
All major meme coins are losing value, while SPX, POPCAT, WIF, MOG see double-digit losses.
AI agents stealing spotlight from meme coins
The benchmark of the crypto market is down by 4.6% as Bitcoin (BTC) fails to stay above $100,000. For the fifth time in its history, the orange coin is brutally rejected by bears here.
The only segment that performs incredibly well these days includes AI agent-associated cryptocurrencies. These are cryptos somehow attributed to artificial intelligence (AI) agents, primitive isolated software programs based on AI and ML.
AI16Z, ELIZA and ZEREBRO are examples of these coins.
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