Forget Meme Coins, AI Developers Are Now Working on Crypto Meme Games. Here's the Potential Impact on the Crypto Market.

Back in 2013, Dogecoin was launched as the first “meme coin” -- a cryptocurrency based on a meme, joke, or pop culture trend rather than a technical purpose. Many meme coins skyrocketed in 2021, driven by social media buzz and speculative traders, but fizzled out as rising interest rates chilled the market in 2022 and 2023.

In 2024 and 2025, the Trump Administration's crypto-friendly policies, new AI tokens, and political tokens warmed up the meme coin market again. But this year, the market cooled off again as rising rates and Treasury yields drove investors away from cryptocurrencies.

Some investors profited from the meme coin mania, but many others were badly burned. That wasn't surprising, since most meme coins couldn't be valued by their scarcity, like Bitcoin, or by their utility, like Ethereum.

Today, a similar bubble could be brewing with crypto “meme games”. Let's see how AI could accelerate the development of these games, and how they could impact the crypto market.

What are crypto meme games

Crypto meme games generally combine an internet meme with blockchain mechanics, such as cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens. Most of the games are designed to be simple and accessible, and popular genres include infinite runners, card games, and combat arenas.

Many of these games run as mini-apps within Telegram and other messaging apps. By playing the game, the player earns tokens as rewards. It might seem counterintuitive to pay the player -- rather than charging them to play -- but that's how most crypto meme games work.

When a developer creates a new meme game, they often mint billions or trillions of new tokens out of thin air as rewards for its players. On their own, these tokens are initially worthless on the open market and can only be used to purchase in-game items. But if the game attracts more users, demand for new tokens will rise, driving up their real-world value.

Simply put, meme games give new meme coins a reason to exist. However, most of these flash-in-the-pan meme games vanish within a few months.

One notable exception is Valhalla, a full-featured massively multiplayer online role-playing game that runs on PCs and in web browsers rather than in a messaging app. Its underlying token, Floki, had over half a million holders last year. Another winner is Shiba Eternity, a collectible card game backed by Shiba Inu.

How could AI pop the meme game bubble

Generative AI platforms have made it much easier to create simple games without any coding knowledge. Kieran Warwick, the co-founder of the gaming blockchain Illuvium, says those tools have reduced the costs of developing crypto meme games to around $1,000.

Warwick warns that as many as 100,000 of those games could launch within a year, and that many of them will only survive a few days before their creators take the money and run. As more of those low-quality games saturate the market, the bubble could burst.

However, that wouldn't be too different from the early days of mobile gaming. So while many of those games will disappear, some new hits could emerge.

What would be the impact on the broader crypto market

Blue chip tokens, such as Bitcoin and Ether, probably wouldn't be affected by an AI-inflated bubble in the crypto meme game market. But if that bubble bursts, smaller altcoins -- including Dogecoin and Shiba Inu -- could struggle to stay relevant in this volatile market.

While crypto-driven games might still flourish over the long term, they could fare better on established developer platforms like Ethereum and Solana. It would make sense for serious developers to launch new games on those blockchains -- which already have plenty of users and token holders -- rather than build their own economy from scratch.