Memecoins finish 2025 down 31.6% while RWAs take the narrative crown

The year the memes got outrun by paperwork

There is no gentle way to file this one. According to CoinGecko data summarised by NewsBTC, the narrative that spent 2024 printing life-changing candles spent 2025 averaging a -31.6% year-to-date return. $DOGE and $SHIB, the two largest names in the sector, each ended the period down more than 60%.

Meanwhile the least degen thing imaginable — tokenised treasury bills, credit and other real-world assets — topped the table at 185.8% average YTD returns, with a reported $18.88 billion in distributed asset value. Layer-1s came second at 80.3%, dragged upward mostly by privacy coins.

-31.6%

memecoin avg YTD return

+185.8%

RWA avg YTD return

-55.5%

DEX tokens, the worst narrative

$88,960

BTC price cited in the report

What it means for degens

A sector average is not your PnL. Memecoin returns are famously barbelled: a handful of survivors carry everything while the long tail goes to zero, so "the narrative was down 31.6%" mostly tells you that the median launch was a disaster and that rotation, not conviction, paid in 2025. Read it as a liquidity map rather than a verdict — capital spent the year walking toward yield-bearing paper, and it has to walk back before the tape gets fun again.