DeFi researcher Ignas says that recent stock/Meme-coin narratives such as ZCAT, STONK, PONS, INDEX, SHROOM, and CASHCAT fundamentally rely on transaction-fee-driven dividends, buybacks, or liquidity reinvestment. Once trading volume rapidly shrinks, the related cash flows decline in tandem, weakening incentives to hold the tokens. Using Coinbase’s previous cycle as an example, Ignas notes that its quarterly trading volume fell from $547 billion in Q4 2021 to $145 billion in Q4 2022—down by about 73.5% year over year. He expects that Meme-coin trading volume could drop by as much as 95% after the hype cools, and points out that current Uniswap trading volume has already started to decline. Therefore, it is not reasonable to extrapolate an entire year’s “return” directly from the current fee level.