Meme coins are cryptocurrencies built around an internet joke, an image or a community instead of a technical purpose. Their prices are driven mostly by attention. A few have lasted for years and reached very large valuations. The great majority lose nearly all of their value soon after launch.
A Short History
Dogecoin was the first. Software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer launched it in December 2013 as a parody of the wave of new coins at the time, using the Shiba Inu dog from the "Doge" meme as its mascot. It is its own proof-of-work blockchain, based on Litecoin's code. The project's site, dogecoin.com, describes it as an open-source, peer-to-peer currency.
Dogecoin stayed a niche curiosity until 2021, when retail trading interest and public comments from Elon Musk pushed it to a peak in May of that year. The same period brought Shiba Inu to wide attention and set the pattern for what followed.
The Major Meme Coins
- Dogecoin (DOGE): launched December 2013. It has no supply cap. Each block creates 10,000 DOGE, which adds about 5 billion coins a year.
- Shiba Inu (SHIB): an Ethereum token launched in August 2020 by an anonymous founder using the name Ryoshi. Its developers later added a decentralized exchange, ShibaSwap, and a Layer 2 network called Shibarium.
- PEPE: an Ethereum token launched in April 2023, based on the Pepe the Frog meme, with a total supply of about 420 trillion tokens. It has no connection to the character's creator.
- BONK: a Solana token distributed by airdrop to Solana users and developers in December 2022.
- dogwifhat (WIF): a Solana token launched in late 2023, built on a picture of a dog in a knitted hat.
Why Meme Coins Move
A meme coin has no revenue and usually no product. Its price reflects how many people want to buy it at a given moment, and that depends on attention: social media posts, exchange listings, influencer promotion and the mood of the wider market.
This makes the price reflexive. A rising price draws attention, attention draws buyers and buyers push the price higher. The same loop runs in reverse. Moves of 50% or more in a day are common in both directions, especially for small tokens.
Meme coins tend to do best late in bull markets, when risk appetite is high. They have also tended to fall hardest when the market turns.
The Launchpad Era
In January 2024 a Solana platform called pump.fun made it possible for anyone to create a token in a few clicks for almost no cost. New tokens trade on a bonding curve, a formula that raises the price as more is bought. Tokens that attract enough buying move on to regular DEX liquidity pools.
The result was a flood of new tokens, many thousands per day at busy times. Nearly all of them go to zero within hours or days. Similar launch tools now exist on other chains.
Risks to Understand
- No underlying value: there are no cash flows to support the price when attention fades.
- Rug pulls: creators or insiders remove liquidity or sell a large hidden allocation.
- Honeypots: contracts written so that buyers cannot sell.
- Insider supply: teams and early wallets often hold a big share of the supply across many addresses.
- Thin liquidity: a small pool means large price impact when you try to sell.
- Bots and snipers: automated traders buy in the first seconds of a launch and sell to later buyers.
- Impersonation: fake tokens copy the name and ticker of a popular coin.
The US SEC's investor education site has a crypto assets section with alerts on fraud and manipulation that apply directly to this part of the market.
How to Check a Meme Coin
No checklist makes a meme coin safe. These checks only help rule out the worst cases.
- Confirm the contract address from the project's official channel, not from a search or a reply on social media.
- Look at liquidity. Compare the size of the pool to the token's market cap.
- Check whether the liquidity is locked or burned, and for how long.
- Check whether the contract can still mint new tokens, change taxes or block transfers.
- Look at holder distribution. A handful of wallets holding much of the supply is a warning sign.
- Check the token's age and trading history. Most failures happen in the first days.
Regulation
The legal position differs by country and continues to change. In February 2025, staff at the US Securities and Exchange Commission published a statement saying that typical meme coins, as described in that statement, are not securities under federal securities law. The statement also noted that fraud involving meme coins can still be pursued under other laws. In practice this means buyers of such tokens do not get the protections that come with registered securities.
Promoters have faced lawsuits and enforcement actions in several countries, particularly over celebrity-backed tokens and undisclosed paid promotion. The CFTC's Learn and Protect pages cover common fraud patterns, including pump-and-dump schemes.
Common Mistakes
- Buying after a token has already risen sharply on social media.
- Putting in money you cannot afford to lose completely.
- Assuming a low price per token means it is cheap. Supply is what matters, so compare market caps.
- Leaving unlimited token approvals on unknown trading sites.
Nothing in this article is financial advice.
Track on CoinMarketGuy
The Dogecoin price page shows the live price, market cap and supply, and the same data is available for other coins such as Shiba Inu. The trending page lists the most searched coins, which is a quick way to see where attention is going. For tokens that trade on decentralized exchanges, the DEX page shows pool liquidity and volume.