Meme Coin
A token built on a joke, trend, or mascot, with value driven almost entirely by hype rather than utility.
Meme coins make no pretense of solving a problem. Dogecoin started as a 2013 parody of crypto mania and, years later, reached a market cap above $80 billion. Shiba Inu and Pepe followed, then a wave of Solana launches. The product is the meme; the price runs on attention and the hope that someone will pay more later.
Treat these as casino chips, not investments. Most are launched in minutes, controlled by a handful of wallets, and prone to rug pulls, where the creators dump their holdings and vanish. A few mint life-changing gains for early buyers; far more go to zero within weeks. If you can't name what gives a coin value beyond the joke, that is your answer.
Related terms
A scam where a project's creators drain its funds or dump their tokens, leaving investors with worthless holdings.
Pump and DumpA scheme that inflates a coin's price with coordinated hype, then sells into the buying for profit.
AltcoinAny cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin, a catch-all that spans serious networks and short-lived speculative tokens alike.
FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)The urge to buy an asset because its price is climbing fast and you dread missing the gains.