January 18, 2026, a special day. Looking back at the madness exactly one year ago—the top trending Meme coin that suddenly appeared on the Solana chain, which made countless people dream of "getting rich overnight." Now, looking at these numbers, the market cap has fallen from its peak of $32-80 billion to $1-1.2 billion. This is not just a price correction; it’s more like a profound reflection of the entire market on "celebrity tokens."

**The Starting Point of Madness**

On January 18, 2025, this coin was officially announced. The basic parameters are quite simple—total supply of 1 billion coins, with an initial circulating supply of 200 million. But there’s a detail worth noting: 80% of the coins were locked by related entities for three years before they could be unlocked. The opening price was $0.1824, which sounds insignificant, but within 12 hours, it skyrocketed to $30. In an instant, all exchanges were overwhelmed by this coin.

The trading mechanism was also quite interesting—each transaction involved a fee, which went directly into the project team’s wallet. Later data showed that just from transaction fees alone, over $324 million had accumulated. As for the shares locked by the team, there was no selling in the short term. Such a structure indeed helped push the price higher.

**The Truth After One Year**

If the start was madness, then the story after a year is sobriety. As of January 18, 2026, the price had fallen to between $0.8 and $1.2 (slight variations across platforms), and the market cap shrank to a two-digit billion level. The 24-hour trading volume also dropped from the initial frenzy to $30-50 million, basically losing all vitality.

Chainalysis’s data is even more heartbreaking—about 764,000 people are in a loss position. Only a few who entered very early and held large amounts of coins truly profited. For most participants, this has been a one-way game of “cutting leeks.”

**Midway Turmoil and Turning Points**

The past year was not a smooth decline. Around the Chinese New Year of 2025, when news broke that an agent was also issuing tokens, the market heated up again for a while. It even attracted a wave of copycat coins. But this wave of enthusiasm quickly dissipated, and the price couldn’t be sustained.

By April to May, the project team even tried a move—launching a "Holder’s Dinner," aiming to stimulate the market with a sense of scarcity and exclusivity. But what happened? Some people did get excited, but it couldn’t change the overall trend. The bears remained dominant, and the downward trend continued unabated.

**Regulatory Wake-up Call**

The real turning point was when regulatory actions began. The situation where government officials issued personal crypto assets triggered discussions in the U.S. Congress, with some proposals even aiming to ban such activities outright. The market started to fear—compliance risks, policy risks—these are even more deadly than selling pressure in the secondary market.

Since then, the attitude toward celebrity tokens has changed. It’s not enthusiasm fading but increased caution. People began asking themselves: what does this coin really represent? Does it have any fundamentals? Or is it just a hype tool?

**Industry Shockwaves**

In the short term, this coin did boost attention to the Solana ecosystem, and SOL’s price also benefited. The entire Meme coin sector was hyped during that period. But the long-term impact is more alarming—this event made many see clearly: Meme coins are fundamentally highly speculative assets.

And this time, the exposure was particularly thorough— from the peak to now, a 98% decline. It’s not just a “market correction,” but the entire bubble deflating. The de-bubbling process in the crypto market is accelerating, and regulatory attention is rising. For the entire industry, this may be painful, but it might also be a necessary cleansing.

One year, a coin’s journey from dream to warning. For those still involved, this should be a valuable reflection opportunity.