Summary
Rene Peters sets the loudest segment of the half against its actual use.
Launchpad activity hit record daily volumes in January, yet across the whole half memecoins accounted for 1.1% of volume and 1.4% of transactions on simpleswap.io.
The listing data explains why that gap exists. 268 assets were made routable over the half, about ten a week, and the median one then waited 48 days for its first meaningful activity.
Seven weeks is a long time in a market that measures attention in hours.
The distribution matters more than the median. The fastest asset reached first activity in 101 hours — 4.2 days — while the median sat for 48.
That spread is not a measure of how quickly a venue can move; it measures how unevenly attention is distributed across new tokens. Once demand arrives, the infrastructure is already in place.
The article is careful about what the memecoin figure does not prove. It is not evidence that memecoins faded — market data says otherwise. It is evidence of who shows up where.
That sets up the obvious question: why add ten assets a week when the median sits unused for seven? The answer given is an asymmetry rather than optimism.
A route is a path, not an inventory position — nobody has to hold the asset for the pair to exist, so carrying an unused route costs almost nothing, while missing one costs users.
There is a second reason the maths works: no venue, SimpleSwap included, can pick winners in advance.
The framing the report lands on is that catalogue length is not a shop window but an option bought before anyone needs it.
“Catalogue length is not a shop window. It is an option bought before anyone needs it.”
Key Takeaways
- Memecoins made 1.1% of volume and 1.4% of transactions despite dominating the half's noise.
- 268 assets were made routable, about ten a week.
- The median new asset waited 48 days for first meaningful use; the fastest took 101 hours.
- The spread measures how unevenly attention lands, not how fast a venue can list.
- A route is a path rather than an inventory position, so an unused one costs almost nothing.
- Catalogue length is framed as an option bought before anyone needs it.






