Pump.fun Hits $6.6B Weekly Trading Volume Peak as Memecoin Mania Refuses to Cool
Memecoin trading platform Pump.fun just shattered its own records—weekly volume rocketed past $6.6 billion. The retail crowd isn't just dipping toes; they're diving headfirst into speculative waters, proving that internet jokes can still move serious money.
The Anatomy of a Frenzy
Forget blue chips. The action centers on hyper-volatile, community-driven tokens launched in minutes. Pump.fun's model strips away traditional barriers—no VC rounds, no tedious roadshows. It's a launchpad that turns a tweet into a tradable asset before Wall Street finishes its morning coffee.
Liquidity on Tap
The platform's mechanics create instant, if shallow, pools. This fuels the fire, allowing rapid entry and exit—a trader's dream and a risk manager's nightmare. The sheer scale of the $6.6 billion weekly flow suggests this isn't just niche activity; it's a mainstreaming of degenerate gambling, dressed up as decentralized finance.
When Memes Beat Fundamentals
The surge underscores a market paradox: in an era of sophisticated DeFi yields, the simplest, dumbest narratives often attract the fiercest capital. It's a stark reminder that crypto markets are still driven more by crowd psychology than discounted cash flow models—much to the chagrin of every CFA charterholder trying to apply traditional valuation metrics.
The trend shows no sign of stopping. As long as social media feeds buzz with the next 'based' animal coin, platforms like Pump.fun will keep printing volume—and a few lucky moonshots will keep the dream alive for everyone else. Just remember, for every viral token that makes it, thousands vanish into the ether, taking investor funds with them. Some things never change—even on the blockchain.
Pump.fun marks peak trading, while fees remain lower
In the new year, the trading and activity generate slightly lower fees of $13M daily, down from September’s peak $39M in fees. The fee mix depends on new minting activity, swaps, creator fees, and additional app usage fees.
The meme model has also shifted to even shorter-term lifecycles, to include content and creator tokens. The spikes in volume may also reflect whale or automated activity. Streaming and creator effects are also adding to the growing engagement, as well as users coming from the Padre app.
New token creation recovered to over 28,000 per day, with a rising trend in the past week. Pump.fun broke another milestone in early 2026, reaching over 15M token launches over its lifetime. However, only 208 tokens graduated to exchanges in the past day, and most trade at extremely low valuations.
Despite the success of Pump.fun and the recent recovery, the native PUMP token traded flat at $0.0021.
Solana memes reawakened in the first week of 2025
Legacy Solana meme tokens reawakened in the first week of 2026, with gains of up to 63% in the case of the White Whale.
Large-scale traders returned to selected memes, once again pumping Fartcoin and USELESS. Other sources of growth were the TRUMP and MELANIA meme tokens, which rallied on the news of Donald Trump’s military campaign in Venezuela.
Memes are turning into short-term plays, though whales are also selecting projects like PIPPIN for repeat pumps. Memes on other networks are also reviving, including PEPE and FLOKI on Ethereum.
Meme tokens, unlike NFTs, have not been dismissed as dead projects. The tokens are closely watched for the inflow of new liquidity or whale-sized accumulation.
For now, only TRUMP retained a valuation above $1B,. The market, however, is still reevaluating the way to trade memes, whether through belief or short-term turnover.
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