A memecoin is a cryptocurrency that draws inspiration from funny images, celebrities and other characters that rise to fame on the internet or in pop culture.
Memecoin Definition
Memecoins are cryptocurrencies that base their names and logos around social media memes, celebrities or pop culture trends. Popular examples include Dogecoin (DOGE), Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Pepe (PEPE).
What started as a joke lampooning overhyped crypto projects in 2013 has taken on a life of its own. The most popular memecoins are worth billions of dollars, and they have created a new revenue stream for flash-in-the-pan celebrities, famous animals and even the president of the United States.
While memecoins may be entertaining, their extreme volatility and association with scams has made them a contentious element of an industry striving for mainstream acceptance. As the crypto sector enters a new regulatory environment, investors are eager to see if memecoins will shoot up, flame out or mature with age.
What Is a Memecoin?
Memecoins are altcoins inspired by internet memes, celebrities and cultural trends. They often start as niche references within online communities before gaining attention through social media and celebrity endorsements.
Memecoins are notoriously volatile, as their value is not tied to technological or financial utility. Rather, their prices fluctuate with the rise and fall of internet culture fads, and the market is rife with scams that deflate any short-lived spikes in value. Often associated with fraud and short-term financial gains, memecoins are seen by many as a distraction, diverting attention away from more substantive projects that advance blockchain technology and expand financial use cases.
History of Memecoins
The first memecoin was created in 2013, when software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer launched Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency based on the “doge” meme that had been making the rounds on Reddit. By basing a coin on a wide-eyed Shiba Inu and its supposed internal thoughts, Jackson and Palmer were satirically poking fun at the proliferation of uninspired cryptocurrencies flooding the market at the time.
For years, Dogecoin served as a tipping currency among Redditors rewarding the best posts and comments, but it didn’t truly take off until 2021. At that time, the r/WallStreetBets subreddit collectively drove up the price of GameStop stock — the first of several “meme stocks” powered by the community’s coordinated action. Ridiculed by institutional traders, these self-described “degens” (short for degenerates) prided themselves on taking risky bets that defied conventional wisdom.
The r/WallStreetBets subreddit also drove up the price of Dogecoin around the same time. Both GameStop and Dogecoin also received a boost from tech mogul Elon Musk, one of the first of many celebrities to boost Dogecoin in 2021. Dogecoin continues to be the most popular memecoin, and it has inspired many other dog-themed coins like Shiba Inu, Bonk and Floki, which is the name of Musk’s own pet Shiba Inu.
Today, there are more than 4,000 memecoins on the market, according to CoinGecko. Because they are cheap and easy to make with tools like Pump.fun, memecoins are constantly popping up on social media with grand claims of “going to the moon.” In reality though, many of these coins enjoy a very brief stint of popularity that enriches only a handful of traders. Many more never get any attention at all.
How Do Memecoins Work?
Like other cryptocurrencies, memecoins are digital assets built on blockchain technology. Dogecoin is one of the few memecoins built on its own blockchain. Most other memecoins are built on existing blockchains like Ethereum and Solana. Solana is a particularly popular platform for memecoins, as it’s home to the Pump.fun marketplace that allows users to quickly and cheaply launch their own memecoin.
Unlike other cryptocurrencies, memecoins don’t purport to have any utilitarian value. Instead, their value depends on more people buying into the joke, the community and its potential growth. Their success is often stoked by social media groups and celebrity endorsements, but the vast majority of memecoins don’t hold much value for very long. Memecoins are typically very cheap with unlimited supply, so their price can rise and fall quickly.
Memecoin Examples
Dogecoin
Dogecoin (DOGE) was the first memecoin, and it remains the most popular memecoin to this day. Launched in 2013, the coin rose to popularity on Reddit, and it has been promoted by Elon Musk, Snoop Dogg and other celebrities. Dogecoin has also gone on to inspire multiple other dog-related coins, as well as the name of the U.S. government’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Dogecoin is the ninth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization as of March 2025.
Shiba Inu
Shiba Inu is the breed of the dog that inspired the “doge” meme and Dogecoin, but it’s also the name of a separate memecoin that launched in 2020 on the Ethereum blockchain. Shiba Inu (SHIB) is the native currency of Shibarium, a layer-2 Ethereum ecosystem that features decentralized apps (dApps), a cryptocurrency exchange and several utility and governance tokens. SHIB is limited to a quadrillion tokens, half of which were sent to Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin.
Pepe
Pepe (PEPE) is a coin inspired by the Pepe the Frog, a cartoon frog that transformed from a character in a 2015 web comic to a viral meme on internet message board 4chan. The coin, which was launched in 2023 on the Ethereum blockchain, does not charge taxes, and burns a small amount of tokens with each transaction to control its circulation.
$TRUMP
Donald Trump launched his own $TRUMP memecoin less than three days before he was sworn into his second term in office. The meme is an image of the president pumping his fist in the air and the words “fight fight fight,” which he mouthed to his supporters after he was shot in the ear at a campaign rally in July 2024. The coin’s market capitalization peaked at nearly $15 billion on the day of his inauguration, but then dropped to $6 billion just hours later. Within a month, it was valued at less than $3 billion. Trump’s wife Melania also launched a memecoin with a market cap that peaked at more than $2 billion, but sank below $400 million within a week.
Meanwhile, a Democratic politician has proposed legislation that would prevent politicians or their family members from sponsoring cryptocurrencies, and it would force Trump to relinquish any profits from the $TRUMP coin.
Dogwifhat
Dogwifhat (WIF) pushes the absurdity of dog-related memecoins to new heights, differentiating its mascot by adding a pink knit hat to a Shiba Inu puppy. Launched on the Solana blockchain in 2023, the Dogwifhat website describes WIF as “literally just a dog wif a hat.”
Bonk
Based on the meme of a Shiba Inu being “bonked” on the head with a hammer or a baseball bat, Bonk (BONK) launched on Christmas 2022, when half of the coin’s supply was airdropped to users who have contributed to the Solana blockchain. Positioning itself as the “community coin of Web3,” Bonk has been integrated in games and other applications across 11 different blockchains.
Floki
Floki (FLOK) borrows its name from Elon Musk’s dog, which is of course a Shiba Inu. It’s the native currency of the Floki ecosystem, which includes a NFT marketplace, a metaverse game, a crypto education platform and a tool that allows users to create their own token. Floki is built on the Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain blockchains.
Fartcoin
Fartcoin launched on the Solana blockchain in October 2024. Every Fartcoin transaction generates a noise meant to mimic the sound of flatulence — a play on the “gas” fee that blockchains levy to fund network operations, like recording and processing transactions. The initial Fartcoin tokens were distributed to those who submitted jokes and memes about farts.
Why Do People Invest in Memecoins?
People buy memecoins primarily because they see them as an opportunity to make fast money. Most people know that memecoins are as risky as gambling, but they are attracted to the thrill of potentially winning 10 or 100 times more than what they put in. This can be particularly appealing for Millennial and Gen Z investors, who feel shut out of the housing and financial markets.
Memecoin traders are also attracted by their low cost of entry. Almost all of them are less than a dollar, and most of them cost a fraction of a penny. “When you can own a million of something that’s cheap, I think people have bigger dreams about what the upside is,” Ben Huh, a partner at Web3-focused venture capital firm OrangeDAO, told Built In.
Aside from the dreams of becoming overnight millionaires, memecoin traders have also found a sense of belonging by sharing inside jokes, war stories and market observations with each other.
“Memecoins have a cultural value,” Huh said. “They’re creating a shared experience, or a shared thrill, of the ups and downs for a lot of people of this generation.”
Risks of Memecoins
Despite their appeal, memecoins are known for being more volatile than other crypto assets. With no intrinsic value, their prices are at the mercy of whatever is happening in the market.
“Lacking fundamental value drivers, prices can swing wildly based on sentiment, influencer promotion, or exchange listings, making them highly speculative investments,” Jupiter Zheng, a partner at crypto investment firm HashKey Capital, told Built In.
Memecoins’ volatility is largely due to scams that take advantage of those new to the space. In his book Magic Money: The Rise of Crypto Degens, Rug Pulls, and a Digital Revolution, Andrew Lunardi, head of chain adoption at Web3 gaming company Immutable, shared his own cautionary tale of losing $5,000 in a memecoin based on the television show Rick and Morty. He watched his investment shoot up fivefold within 15 minutes only to lose it all minutes later.
All told, memecoin traders lost an estimated $2.8 billion in these types of scams during the memecoin boom of 2021. Those who are considering investing in memecoins should only invest what they are prepared to lose. They should also do their due diligence by researching the developers of the coin, reviewing third-party audits of the token and ensuring assets are not consolidated in a small group of wallets.
Types of Memecoin Scams
These are are the three most common memecoin scams to watch out for:
Rug Pulls
A rug pull is when a memecoin developer abandons the project shortly after launching it, taking off with all of the investors’ funds. They may abruptly steal the funds and delete all associated websites and social media pages, or they may slowly siphon money from the project over time. Sometimes developers will write malicious code into the memecoin’s smart contract to withdraw funds from the liquidity pool or prevent investors from selling their tokens. Rug pulls have become more common in recent years, as platforms like Pump.fun make it easy for anyone to launch their own memecoin.
Pump-and-Dump Schemes
A pump-and-dump scheme is when a group of investors buys a large amount of a memecoin, hypes it up on social media to attract new buyers and then sells off their shares at an inflated value, leaving other investors with devalued tokens. Lunardi said organized pump-and-dump groups often include an inner circle of traders that is buying the memecoins at a lower price and selling at a higher price than other group members, effectively creating a pump-and-dump scheme within a pump-and-dump scheme.
“These are not fair markets,” Lunardi told Built In. “There are insiders who have positions in tokens already or are getting paid to promote the tokens. Very often, when you’re hearing about them, you’re one of the last people in the ranks. You have to be extremely careful.”
Fake Airdrops
Memecoin creators sometimes build hype about a new coin by “airdropping” or transferring free tokens to those active in the memecoin community. However, some scammers will promise to airdrop free tokens if users provide their personal information, wallet keys or an activation fee. Memecoin traders should watch out for this fraudulent practice, as memecoin developers don’t typically need a person’s wallet information to airdrop tokens to them.
Benefits of Memecoins
The primary benefit of memecoins is that they bring new users and capital into the crypto market, teaching them how to use wallets, exchanges and other blockchain tools. When Trump launched his memecoin, for example, nearly half of the buyers created a new wallet to do so. This infusion of new users could encourage growth and innovation in the entire Web3 space.
Still, memecoins also take away attention and liquidity from developers who are building more promising projects, said Debbie Soon, author of Digital Mavericks and co-founder of Web3 creator marketplace HUG.
The current memecoin moment reminds Soon of the early days of smartphone apps: A lot of those apps fizzled out over the years, while others paved the way for more substantive technologies. Indeed, some memecoins have already created Web3 ecosystems featuring NFT marketplaces, metaverse applications and integrations with other blockchain projects.
Soon said memecoins can be used to help an entrepreneur bootstrap a company, allowing supporters to fund its growth while profiting from its success. They can also support social media creators, offering a “more direct and equitable way for both creators and communities to monetize cultural moments,” she added
“Essentially, what we’re doing is monetizing attention,” Soon told Built In. “We already live in an attention economy right now, but we as consumers are not being paid for it. Now, if something got my attention and other people caught on to the attention that I’ve given to this, it could accrue in value over time. Obviously it could also go in the other direction, which is what we tend to see.”
The Future of Memecoins
The future of memecoins is currently being shaped by changing regulatory perspectives.
In February 2025, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission stated that memecoins fall outside its jurisdiction because they don’t meet the legal definition of a security. This is a major departure from the position of former SEC Chair Gary Gensler, who argued the “vast majority” of crypto assets should be considered securities under the Howey Test, a legal standard stemming from a 1946 U.S. Supreme Court case. Now, under new leadership, the SEC has found that memecoins derive their value from speculative trading and market sentiment, “like a collectible,” and therefore do not require regulatory oversight.
The SEC is one of several agencies tasked with developing friendlier crypto regulations under an executive order from Trump. The federal agency’s new stance means memecoins won’t need to be registered with the SEC, and their traders won’t have the protections securities laws provide. The SEC did note, however, that fraudulent activities will still be prosecuted under state and federal laws.
In the future, Zheng anticipates that memecoins that offer more utility will be better positioned than those based on pure speculation. Dogecoin and BONK, for example, are both accepted as a payment method on some websites. He is particularly optimistic about memecoins’ potential to integrate with other Web3 applications.
“Ultimately, while most memecoins will fade into obscurity, those that evolve beyond pure speculation by building genuine communities and utility may find sustainable niches in the broader crypto ecosystem,” Zheng said.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the purpose of a memecoin?
Memecoins have no underlying purpose other than entertainment value. People buy memecoins because they want to be in on the cultural trend of the moment, and because they hope they can cash in on a memecoin’s short-lived popularity.
What is the most popular memecoin?
The most popular memecoin is Dogecoin. The coin, which is based around the “doge” meme, was created in 2014 in response to the number of new cryptocurrencies launching at the time. While hundreds of other memecoins have come and gone since 2014, Dogecoin remains among the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.
Do memecoins have any value?
Memecoins, like other cryptocurrencies, are speculative assets that have value so long as others are willing to pay money for them. They do not have any underlying value like a stock, for example, which pays dividends to its shareholders.
