Meme coins are cryptocurrencies based on internet memes or public figures. For a long time, Dogecoin was the only meme coin on the market. Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, and Official Trump are the most popular meme coins.
Investing in a meme coin carries a high risk of losing money. Meme coins are here to stay. Meme coins can be purchased from all popular crypto exchanges.
Table of Contents
What are meme coins?
Meme coins are cryptocurrencies based on internet memes or public figures. Meme coins are characterized by extremely low unit prices and high volatility. Their popularity is based on hype created through social media, which causes drastic price changes. Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, and Official Trump are the most popular meme coins.
The table below lists the five largest meme coins by market cap (January 28, 2025).
| Coin | Ticker | Market cap |
|---|---|---|
| Dogecoin | DOGE | $49.5 billion |
| Shiba Inu | SHIB | $11.3 billion |
| Official Trump | TRUMP | $5.9 billion |
| Pepe | PEPE | $5.4 billion |
| Bonk | BONK | $2.0 billion |
Meme coins have no real purpose or use case. They only become valuable if there is enough hype about them on social media. If this happens, those who invested in the coin early will become wealthy and create even more hype. This creates a cycle that attracts more and more speculators.
Many people invest in meme coins to become part of an internet community. Almost every meme coin buyer is simply speculating about price increases. Buying meme coins can be considered equivalent to playing at a casino.
Since 2024, meme coins have been created primarily on the Solana platform. Solana has replaced Ethereum as the official crypto meme casino. This is due to Solana’s excellent scalability, which makes it possible to have very cheap and fast transactions.
At the peak, more than a million meme coins have been created on Solana in one month.
The evolution of meme coins
For a long time, Dogecoin was the only meme coin on the market. It was ranked around 30-50th by market cap, and Dogecoin did not gather any interest from the masses. This changed during the crypto boom of 2020-2021 when Dogecoin received massive attention from Elon Musk.
Below is one of Musk’s numerous tweets regarding Dogecoin.
Dogecoin is the people’s crypto
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 4, 2021
The popularity of Dogecoin attracted thousands of opportunists to create other dog-themed (and Elon Musk-related) coins. Shiba Inu was the most successful of these. Floki Inu, Kishu Inu, and hundreds of dog-themed coins also entered the market in 2020-2021.
Many expected meme coins to disappear after the 2021 bubble burst. That never happened. Dogecoin maintained its position in the top 10 crypto market list, and even Shiba Inu never dropped out of the top 20.
The year 2023 saw a significant shift in the meme market. Solana’s popularity began skyrocketing in the fourth quarter, replacing Ethereum as the meme casino. The PEPE meme coin, created in spring 2023, is the latest Ethereum meme to gain significant popularity.
Since 2024, the meme market has grown to a staggering size. Over a million meme coins are created on the market every month. Over 99.9 percent of these disappear as quickly as they were made.
There are 36.4+ million crypto tokens today. We are on pace to have 100 million tokens by the end of 2025
To put in perspective, the 2017-2018 "alt season" had just <3000 tokens and the 2013-2014 alt season had <500 tokens pic.twitter.com/p1qkCAwwUn
— Conor (@jconorgrogan) January 24, 2025
The meme market has also become very fast-paced. Every new social media phenomenon triggers hundreds of new memes within hours. Memes are no longer associated with animal characters. Coins are also created about public figures, politicians, and other characters.
The principle of how memes work has not changed, though. They are still coins that have no actual use or fundamental value. Meme coins have become extremely popular speculation targets, attracting an ever-increasing number of traders hoping to get rich quickly.
Most popular meme coins
Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, and Official Trump are the most popular meme coins. Let’s take a closer look at these cryptocurrencies.
Dogecoin (DOGE)
Dogecoin is the oldest meme coin on the market. It was founded back in 2013. Dogecoin differs from other meme coins in that it is a cryptocurrency with a blockchain. Other meme coins are tokens created on Ethereum, Solana, or other smart contract platforms.
Dogecoin uses Proof of Work consensus, meaning it is a minable cryptocurrency. It is technically very similar to Litecoin and Bitcoin. You can read more about the technology and history of Dogecoin in our Dogecoin Guide.
Below is a picture from the project’s official website.
Dogecoin’s founder, Jackson Palmer, created the coin purely for fun. Over the years, Dogecoin has been used as a tipping currency and simply for fun, but no significant use cases have emerged.
Dogecoin’s popularity exploded to a whole new level during the 2020-2021 bull market, thanks to Elon Musk. The world’s richest man joked on X for a couple of years, causing considerable changes in the Dogecoin price.
In recent years, Musk’s interest in Dogecoin has waned. Despite this, the coin still has many holders, especially in the United States. This has allowed Dogecoin to maintain its position as a top 10 cryptocurrency.
Shiba Inu (SHIB)
Shiba Inu is a meme coin launched in 2020. It is a token created on the Ethereum platform, designed to capitalize on the popularity of Dogecoin. The dog in the Doge meme is of the Shiba Inu breed, where this token is named. The creator of Shiba Inu is an anonymous person named Ryoshi.
The peak of Shiba Inu’s popularity was in the fall of 2021 when it was listed on Coinbase. At that time, the Shiba Inu price skyrocketed so high that the token’s market cap briefly surpassed Dogecoin. Shiba Inu has remained the second-largest meme on the market in recent years.
Below is a picture from the official Shiba Inu website.
Shiba Inu differs from other meme coins because a larger ecosystem has been built around it. Shiba Inu has a strong community that has implemented, among other things, a decentralized exchange (ShibaSwap) and an Ethereum Layer 2 layer solution (Shibarium). The decentralized ShibaSwap exchange was also moved from the Ethereum platform to Shibarium in the spring of 2024.
The Shiba Inu ecosystem includes an NFT collection, a metaverse, and a DoggyDAO governance mechanism. You can read more about Shiba Inu’s evolution in the Shiba Inu guide.
Despite all this, the Shiba Inu token (SHIB) has no significant use in this ecosystem. For example, paying transactions on the Shibarium platform or the ShibaSwap exchange is unnecessary. A separate BONE token has been created for this purpose. The ecosystem also includes the LEASH token.
Official Trump (TRUMP)
Official Trump is the official meme coin of President Donald Trump. Donald Trump’s team launched this meme token just a few days before his inauguration in January 2025. Here’s what Trump’s official X account posted about it.
My NEW Official Trump Meme is HERE! It’s time to celebrate everything we stand for: WINNING! Join my very special Trump Community. GET YOUR $TRUMP NOW. Go to https://t.co/GX3ZxT5xyq — Have Fun! pic.twitter.com/flIKYyfBrC
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2025
It was the most successful cryptocurrency launch in history. No cryptocurrency has ever risen to such a large market cap so quickly. The TRUMP token broke a $10 billion market cap in a single day. Some traders made millions of dollars in just a couple of hours.
Donald Trump’s official meme was also added to the best cryptocurrency exchanges extremely fast. TRUMP tokens were available on popular crypto exchanges within 48 hours of its launch.
Unofficial Trump memes have been on the market for years. Official Trump (TRUMP) is the first meme coin officially backed by Donald Trump’s team. It is also the first meme launched by a popular politician.
TRUMP was launched on the Solana platform. So far, it is a pure meme coin or token without actual use. Time will tell how well the TRUMP token maintains its popularity.
Investing in meme coins
Investing in a meme coin carries a high risk of losing money. Many would argue that the word investment should not be used in this context. Gambling and speculation characterize the purchasing of meme coins more accurately.
Here are some essential points for the potential buyers of meme coins:
- You are likely exit-liquidity for whales
- Don’t be blinded by the illusion of a low unit price
- Remember to withdraw your winnings
Let’s go through these points in more detail next.
Exit-liquidity
In effect, every regular buyer of a meme coin is exit-liquidity for whales. This means that your investment allows early investors to cash out their profits. Whales refer to the professional investors who dominate the crypto market.
The people who get rich with meme coins buy the tokens instantly after it’s launched. Usually, it’s the founders of the meme coin, their close circle, or lucky investors who notice the coin early enough.
With new meme coins being created every minute, a regular investor can’t possibly know which meme will gain popularity. This is why 99 percent of investors only purchase memes once they are listed on major crypto exchanges. At this point, whales who have become rich on the coin sell their holdings to all the latecomers.
If you buy a meme coin from a crypto exchange, you are exit-liquidity for others and last in the line.
Extremely low unit price
The low unit price creates the illusion of the possibility of a rapid increase in value. This is a conscious tactic used in the creation of meme coins. You can get up to millions of coins in your wallet with an investment of a couple hundred dollars. An inexperienced investor is given the illusion that the coin’s value only needs to increase “just a little” for the investor to get rich.
“If it only goes to 0.1 dollars I will become a millionaire”
This is not going to happen.
The only thing that matters is market capitalization. The higher the market cap, the more dollars it takes to move the price. No matter how much you want to, you can’t escape the math. Once the market cap has risen high enough, it becomes a bigger and bigger drag for the coin.
So, look at the market cap of the meme coin – not the unit price. The market cap gives a better idea of the realistic upside potential.
You can use the following rule of thumb: if a meme coin has a market cap of less than $1 billion and is not in one of the top 100 cryptocurrencies, you are probably not among the very last buyers. Once the market cap has risen to over $1 billion and the meme coin is listed on well-known crypto exchanges, the most significant profit potential has already been lost.
Cashing out
Cashing out your winnings early enough is the only way to win in meme investing. Buying memes is like gambling in a casino; the longer you keep playing, the more likely the casino will win. The only way to win is to leave the casino while still on profit.
It’s important to remember that meme coins are generated without any real purpose essential. The hype that has built up can disappear as quickly as it came. Most investors get greedy when the coin price increases and buy more of their favorite memes. Eventually, such an investor becomes exit-liquidity for the entire market.
It is a good idea to cash out your invested capital as soon as possible if the coin’s price increases by more than a hundred percent. If the meme eventually crashes to zero, at least you avoided losses.
The future of meme coins
Meme coins are here to stay. Memes took over the crypto market in 2021, and the 2022 bear market proved that popular meme coins have plenty of stubborn holders. They won’t give up even during 90% price drops.
Dogecoin and Shiba Inu have cemented their positions among the largest cryptocurrencies. Dogecoin has been in the top 10 for four years, and Shiba Inu has been in the top 20 for over three years. Both have a community of over a million investors that will not fall apart quickly.
The rest of the meme coins are significantly smaller on market cap. Their fate will be determined during the next bear market. The official Donald Trump meme is also an interesting case. Its popularity is difficult to assess due to its short history.
Clarifying US regulations might create an avalanche of meme coins featuring public figures. So far, celebrity meme coins have mostly turned out to be scams.
In the future, you might see a meme coin for every popular movie star, artist, and social media influencer. Meme owners may also be offered some actual benefits. For example, if you own a certain number of meme coins of a particular artist, you could book tickets for better seats at an upcoming concert. Perhaps you could use the artist’s meme coin to buy certain products in a fan shop.
So far, no attempts have been made to create any uses for memes. They have been purely speculative.
The most significant trend in recent years has been the migration of memes from the Ethereum platform to Solana. Solana’s popularity is currently in a class of its own compared to other smart contract platforms. This status will probably not last forever, and memes will also be created on different platforms in the future. For example, Ethereum’s Layer 2 layer Base has already challenged Solana with reasonable success.
How to buy meme coins
Meme coins can be purchased from all popular crypto exchanges. It’s important to remember that meme coins will be listed on cryptocurrency exchanges with a notable delay. Active meme traders trade directly on Solana’s decentralized Raydium exchange, where memes can be purchased as soon as they’ve been launched.
To use the Raydium exchange, you need a Solana wallet. The most popular wallet is Phantom, which also supports several other blockchains. You must transfer a small amount of Solana’s native tokens (SOL) to the Phantom wallet to pay transaction fees.
Read more: How to Buy Solana (SOL)?
Once you have acquired SOL, transfer them from the crypto exchange to your Phantom wallet and start trading on the Raydium exchange.
We do not recommend buying meme coins for novice investors. Investing in meme coins carries significant risks that can materialize very quickly. Be prepared for substantial losses if you invest in meme coins.
