Tokens associated with AI and memes captured 62.8% of cryptocurrency user interest in the first quarter of 2025, according to a review by CoinGecko.
Among the 20 most popular digital assets during this period, six were categorized as memes and five as AI. The former accounted for 27.1% of global investor attention, while the latter attracted 35.7%.
The share of Made in USA reached 9.5%. Interest in this category surged following the signing of an executive order by U.S. President Donald Trump to establish a cryptocurrency reserve task force.
The top 20 list also included the ecosystems of Solana, Ethereum, Base, and Sui.
Connection with TradFi
The correlation of the S&P 500 index with Bitcoin was 0.85, and with the overall cryptocurrency market, it was 0.77.
These metrics slightly declined compared to the fourth quarter of 2024.
Ethereum
The supply of Ethereum increased by 185,000 ETH. Analysts recorded only three days of deflation from January to March.
The issuance amounted to 232,200 ETH, while 47,200 ETH were removed from circulation.
The leaders in “burning” were on-chain transfers (3400 ETH), Uniswap (3200 ETH), and Tether (2500 ETH).
Base accounted for 26% of all transactions in the EVM ecosystem (8.6 million), while TRON represented 18.6% (7.7 million).
The average daily figure across 14 tracked blockchains in the segment rose to 33 million. For comparison, the metric for the Ethereum mainnet was 1.2 million.
Meme Coins
Following the “fiasco” of LIBRA, interest in the meme coin category plummeted. This was reflected in a 56.3% drop in new launches on Pump.fun within a day, down to 31,000.
DeFi
TVL in the DeFi sector fell by 27.5%, from $177.4 billion to $128.6 billion.
Ethereum’s share plummeted from 63.5% to 56.6% ($112.6 billion to $72.7 billion). Solana and Base experienced absolute losses of 23.5% and 15.3%, respectively.
Launched on February 6, Berachain soared to the sixth position with a TVL of $5.2 billion.
Among individual categories, positive TVL dynamics were demonstrated by CDP stablecoins (+9.5%) and RWA (+12.7%).
The most significant declines were seen in the liquid staking (-39%) and restaking (-36.7%) segments due to the drop in Ethereum’s value.
The worst result was in yield farming protocols (-49.8%). Analysts attributed this to users’ “defensive” sentiment.
Earlier, Standard Chartered estimated the capitalization of stablecoins to reach $2 trillion by 2028.