$114514 Soars by 40 Million Market Cap, Which Projects Are Worth Accumulating?

After a prolonged period of weakness, meme coins have finally shown an encouraging recovery.

Since mid-September last year, the total market capitalization of meme coins gradually declined from around $80 billion to a low of only $35 billion, with virtually no significant rebounds along the way. However, entering 2026, the total market cap of meme coins finally rebounded in the first week of the year, climbing back to nearly $50 billion.

During the same period, the proportion of meme coin market capitalization within the overall altcoin market nearly reached its lowest point since July 2022, dropping to just about 3%. Entering 2026, this metric has also finally rebounded, returning to approximately 4%.

This meme coin recovery feels like a "nostalgia server." It seems the market version for meme coins has switched from "new shitcoin launches" back to "classic old coins." Pepe surged over 70% in the past week, with a staggering 24-hour trading volume reaching about $1.1 billion, which is over 50% of Doge's 24-hour trading volume.

Familiar large-cap, long-lifecycle meme coins like Doge, Shiba, Pepe, BONK, Pengu, SPX, and Fartcoin have seen broad gains over the past week, with none rising less than 20%. If this trend continues, based on past experience, we can hope to see a recurrence of the pattern from previous bull cycles where large-cap meme coins lead the charge, followed by the emergence of new meme stars.

This meme recovery is also viewed by optimistic crypto players as the starting point for a new round of comprehensive market uptrend. Looking back at history, meme coin rallies have often served as leading indicators for shifts in market risk appetite, such as Doge in 2021, and the Bome and pump.fun rallies in 2024, among others. Since meme coin logic is more heavily supported by sentiment and they are extremely prone to sparking discussions on social media, once positive discussions increase during a price rise, it's easy to foster a comprehensive bull market atmosphere among retail investors.

If this bull market is truly arriving, from our current vantage point, what angles can we approach to capture new opportunities in this new bull cycle?

"Currently Hottest": Attention Tokens

The meme recovery has made the rotation of attention shift rapidly again. White Whale's success is just over a week old, and its price is still hovering near all-time highs, but in the last couple of days, a new "golden dog" named "114514" has emerged, breaking through a $40 million market cap to set a new all-time high just today, surging about 250x in 2 days.

The meme "114514" originates from the Japanese studio COAT CORPORATION's 2001 gay adult film "BABYLON STAGE 34 Midsummer Night's Lewd Dream the IMP." An actor playing the role of a "senpai" delivered exceptionally standout acting and lines, particularly shouting "いいよ！こいよ！" ("Alright! Come on!") in the film. This line was nicknamed by Japanese netizens using Japanese number puns and inserted into various meme images and videos.

Although the actor's real identity remains unknown due to the studio's confidentiality agreement, in 2011, a Japanese man named "Tadokoro Koji" was arrested for indecent assault. Because his appearance highly resembled the "senpai," netizens defaulted to assuming the "senpai" was Tadokoro Koji. This meme is also very popular in Chinese-speaking circles. Comments accompanying "114514" often include words related to "stink," like "臭、臭死了、恶臭" ("stinky, so stinky, foul stench"), originating from the foul nature of the indecent assault crime committed by Tadokoro Koji, who is presumed to be the "senpai." Another frequently seen phrase, "好时代，来临力" ("The good times are coming"), is also an intentional mistranslation of "114514."

It's difficult to pinpoint any objectively analyzable reason for the sudden surge of this old meme "114514" in the crypto space, but the overflow of sentiment can still be anticipated to some extent. Due to the lack of objective reasons, the direction of "114514's" sentiment overflow depends on how the market interprets it and how capital provides direction. It can be understood from the angle of a Japanese meme, or from the perspective of a pure number meme like "42069."

In the game of attention tokens, one doesn't need to ask why, but rather needs to judge what other players will think, what kind of reasoning can be accepted by the majority as a buying rationale, and luck.

"Long-termism": Classic Meme Coins

In this meme recovery, the return of "classic meme coins" like Pepe, BONK, and Pengu is pleasantly surprising, as these large-cap, time-tested old meme coins haven't been in the market spotlight for a long time. Due to the popularity of attention-based gameplay, people have become more accustomed to fast-paced games, and even "diamond hands" have taken on a somewhat mocking connotation.

However, in every truly comprehensive bull cycle, some excellent meme coins do stand out, being accepted and recognized by the market as "good coins," maintaining a relatively high market cap over the long term and possessing a group of steadfast holders.

This is actually a sign of the maturation that the meme coin sector has long needed. In Murad's proposed "meme coin supercycle" theory, it includes a set of criteria for judging meme coin quality—being able to maintain a medium or even large market cap (above $5 million), having undergone at least 6 months of time testing, having a clear enough target vision to achieve certain things, and being able to evoke inner resonance to truly complete the sedimentation and unity of holders, etc.

By this standard, besides meme giants like Doge, Shiba, Pepe, BONK, and Pengu, which the market already defaults as "too big to fail," there are still many potential contenders worth watching. Larger ones include SPX, Fartcoin, Mog, BITCOIN (HarryPotterObamaSonic10Inu), and smaller ones include neet, Chillhouse, Joe, etc.

In the game of classic meme coins, one needs to detach from personal emotions as much as possible and observe their social media and communities objectively and deeply. Meme coins that can grow to this stage are necessarily rare and easy to distinguish, because first, it's not easy for a meme coin to be stably operated over the long term. Either the community has already coalesced to collectively produce content, or a sufficiently resourced team has greater ambitions for sustainable development. The goal of these coins is no longer just solidifying the internal community and token supply situation, but rather, based on having completed internal integration, considering how to attract external incremental users through multiple channels, and even influencing or changing real-world issues from a certain angle through meme culture.

"Revenue is King": The Realization of Token Rights

For a long time, it has been difficult to say that projects in the crypto space with beautiful, stable revenue reports can be analyzed using the stock market's P/E ratio logic, because token holders do not enjoy rights like dividends as shareholders do. Therefore, the profit metric in crypto serves more as a "hope," playing a "narrative" role. And this fragile "narrative" role is also considered by meme coin maximalists to have no essential difference between altcoins and meme coins; altcoins are meme coins.

Nevertheless, the revenue narrative still holds in crypto. From further back, Uniswap and Aave still firmly occupy top spots in crypto market cap. More recently, Hyperliquid's rapid growth single-handedly raised the ceiling for the Perp DEX sector.

Even better, since last year, we have seen some progress in the realization of token rights. For example, the repeatedly stuck Uniswap fee switch was finally successfully activated. Another example is the Aave "Brand Assets Control Transfer to Token Holders" proposal, which concluded without passing, but Aave Labs committed to sharing revenue generated outside the protocol with token holders, acknowledging that aligning interests is crucial for both Aave Labs and AAVE holders.

Although there are still many legal, practical execution, and other issues on the path of tokens aligning with equity-like rights, the improvement of governance models within the space and the awakening of token holder consciousness are already significant progress. If a bull market arrives next, projects that perform better in aligning revenue interests should gain more market recognition. This is equivalent to an upgrade before revenue distribution truly moves beyond narrative into reality.

Conclusion

We hope this meme recovery truly is the prelude to a comprehensive market uptrend. We hope that if a comprehensive bull market arrives, new stars will emerge from the market, completing the "changing of the guard" in the crypto space.

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