NFTs Regain Traction, As Top Meme Coins Suffer Bad Reputation

Disclosure

Updated: 17 February 2025

Don’t invest unless prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment, you shouldn’t expect to be protected if something goes wrong.

The non-fungible token market has started regaining acceptance among crypto and non-fungible token communities after some of the leading meme coin projects turned out to be scams. NFTs lost their initial market hype to meme coins earlier this year after the majority of crypto projects, non-fungible token projects, and prominent leaders, such as Trump and Melania, launched their meme coins.

NEW KID ON THE BLOCK pic.twitter.com/xQdL0nCC3C

— beeple (@beeple) February 17, 2025

$LIBRA Meme Coin Falls 92% Hours After Launch

Over the weekend, the lawyer filed a lawsuit accusing Argentine President Javier Milei of promoting a memecoin project and causing investors to lose their funds. The Argentine President Milei promoted $LIBRA on Friday through X, presenting it as part of the Viva La Libertad Project, a crypto initiative supposedly aimed at funding small businesses and startups. Hours later, he withdrew his endorsement and admitted to insufficient due diligence as the token’s value dropped by 85%.

JUST IN: 🇦🇷 Argentine lawyers file fraud charges in criminal court against President Javier Milei for promoting a crypto rug pull. pic.twitter.com/lxkhbSQY5R

— Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) February 16, 2025

In his defense, the President clarified that he had no connection to the project team and criticized political opponents for taking advantage of the unfortunate situation. On the other hand, the opposition leaders, led by lawmaker Leandro Santoro, called the incident a scandal and demanded accountability. These opposition lawyers have filed criminal fraud charges against Milei and are even considering launching an impeachment trial against him.

Earlier today, the blockchain analytics firm Bubblemaps claimed that it had identified on-chain connections between the teams behind the Libra and Melania meme coins, suggesting that a single entity may be orchestrating both projects. The findings, based on cross-chain transfers and transaction patterns, point to potential centralized control over the two tokens, which have experienced similar rapid market price surges and massive collapses.

1/ How $LIBRA was created by the same team behind MELANIA and other short-lived coins

Featuring new onchain evidence

A thread with Coffeezilla 🧵 ↓ pic.twitter.com/gNwj97KapF

— Bubblemaps (@bubblemaps) February 17, 2025

In related developments, Hayden Davis, a renowned American Youtuber also claimed that before Trump’s token launch, a select group of investors were granted exclusive pre-sale access, valuing the coin at $500 million market capitalization. Davis said these investors could purchase $TRUMP tokens at low prices before the contract address was made public, giving them a significant lead.

NEWS: Hayden claims insiders had early access to buy $TRUMP coin at a $500M market cap.

pic.twitter.com/VFcYRWfhIv

— SolanaFloor (@SolanaFloor) February 17, 2025

NFTs Regain Slight Adoption

In light of the recent controversies, the meme coin market has suffered a bad reputation, with many investors now considering non-fungible token collections as the safest portfolio among digital assets. One of the traders on X has asserted that at least NFTs allow holders to hold an art instead of holding a worthless token, unlike meme coins. Another user on X wrote, “At least with NFTs, we can lose money in style.”

NFT is better because build communities, give you a funny moments, art is important part and much more. I miss NFt so bad

— ZionNFT 🏛️ (@rafazulia) February 17, 2025