memecoins

Memecoins are a hard place to hold tokens and a good place to run a platform. New data in CryptoSlate's reporting shows both sides of that picture at once.
📌 The news
Pump.fun earned about $18.6 million in protocol revenue over the seven days to October 7, per DefiLlama figures cited by CryptoSlate. Over 30 days, traders paid about $184.5 million in fees, and the protocol kept roughly $60.7 million.
At the same time, a Talos study found that 81% of the memecoins it tracked had fallen at least 90% from their highs.
📊 The numbers
• About $27.3 million worth of $PUMP was bought back and burned over 30 days
• In the Talos sample, the median token peaked about 17 days after trading began
• Only five of 151 coins stayed above their first-day price
• Pump's co-founder said over 140,000 users shared about $4.46 million in rewards and creator fees in one recent day
🔍 Why it matters
• The platform earns from activity, not from any single coin surviving
• Holders of individual memecoins depend on new buyers coming back to that exact token
• Buybacks tie part of the revenue to the PUMP token, which is why it trades differently from the coins launched on it
⚖️ Bull vs bear case
Bull: as long as people keep launching and trading, fees keep flowing and buybacks keep running.
Bear: activity is cyclical. Today PUMP is down about 6% near $0.0056, per CoinGecko, and a slowdown in launches would hit revenue directly.
👀 What to watch next
• Weekly fee totals as the market cools
• Whether buybacks continue at the same pace
• New competitors for memecoin launches
━━━━━━━━━━━━
💡 My take: My view is that this is the classic marketplace story. The house can do well even when most players lose, but the house still needs players.
💬 Is it smarter to hold the platform or the coins launched on it?
#Memecoins #PumpFun #Solana