In the past, the reason why so many meme coins surpassed a $B market cap wasn’t because they were particularly magical, but because BTC and SOL were both in clear upward trends, and the entire market was in an expansion phase. When mainstream assets keep rising, liquidity within the market increases and spills over. High Alpha, low valuation targets naturally get repeatedly pumped, and that’s how meme coins surpassing $B market cap kept popping up one after another. Recently, I’m relatively optimistic about Penguins and Lobsters. In terms of narrative strength alone, they’re actually not weaker than those $B market cap meme coins from before. But the reality is: Penguins peaked at around $170M Lobsters peaked at around $120M Both went through deep corrections afterward. The biggest reason is simple: The market is really out of money. In an environment where the overall market enters a downward trend, liquidity keeps flowing out, new funds stay on the sidelines, and old funds become extremely conservative. Everyone turns into paper hands. No matter how strong the narrative is, it can’t support a higher market cap ceiling. Market cap = Liquidity (fuel) × Narrative (catalyst)