Are meme coins a scam?

Not all, but many are. Meme coins are real tokens that you can buy and sell, but Solidus Labs linked 98.6% of more than 7 million pump.fun tokens to rug pulls or pump-and-dump schemes. The common scams are rug pulls, honeypots, dev dumps, paid influencer calls and fake apps that ask for your private key. Our rug pull guide shows the red flags.

How do you make money with meme coins?

You make money only if you sell for more than you paid, after the fees on both trades. A take-profit order sells part of your position at a price you set, so you keep a gain before the price drops. No method picks winners reliably, so size each trade as money you can lose. Our memecoin trading guide shows how to size trades and plan exits.

Are meme coins gambling?

They work much like a bet. A meme coin has no product, so its price depends only on attention, and pump.fun’s own app is called “pump.fun - speculate on trends” on the App Store. Decide how much you can lose before you buy, and do not add more to win it back.

Are meme coins a good investment? Mostly no

Key takeaways

Meme coins are rarely a good investment: Solidus Labs linked 98.6% of more than 7 million pump.fun tokens to rug pulls or pump-and-dump schemes, and only about 97,000 kept $1,000 or more in liquidity.

Few meme coin traders make real money: in April 2026, CoinGecko found that 5.4% of pump.fun wallets realized more than $1,000 in profit, and 65.1% of all wallets made only $1 to $500.

Every trade starts at a loss: pump.fun charges 1.25% on every buy and every sell, so a coin must rise about 2.5% before you break even. Use only money you can lose, a separate wallet and take-profit orders.

For most people, meme coins are not a good investment. They have no product or revenue behind them, and Solidus Labs linked 98.6% of more than 7 million pump.fun tokens to rug pulls or pump-and-dump schemes. If you are new, start with what a meme coin is.

How it works

A meme coin is worth only what the next buyer pays. The price rises while people talk about it and buy, then falls when attention moves on. On pump.fun, most coins never leave the bonding curve, and few traders make real money.

The odds on pump.fun

Data point	Value	Period
Tokens linked to rug pulls or pump-and-dumps	98.6% of more than 7 million	Created January 2024 to March 2025
Coins that graduated to a PumpSwap pool	2.5% in one week; 6.7% on one day, about 8 times the June average	July 2026
Wallets with more than $1,000 in realized profit	5.4% of 3.1 million	April 2026

Sources: Solidus Labs rug pull report (opens in a new tab), The Block report (opens in a new tab), CoinGecko research (opens in a new tab).

The CoinGecko data has a bright side: 73.3% of wallets realized a profit in April 2026. But 65.1% of all wallets made only $1 to $500. In 20 of the 21 months from April 2024 to December 2025, fewer than half of the wallets made a profit. The study does not filter out bots.

Fees and slippage eat small trades

Pump.fun charges 1.25% on every buy and every sell on the bonding curve (pump.fun fee page (opens in a new tab)). On a $20 buy, you pay $0.25 to get in and about $0.25 to get out. So the coin must rise about 2.5% before you break even (our calculation). A trading bot adds its own fee, often 1% per trade: see memecoin trading fees compared.

Fixed fees hurt small trades most. In November 2025, TechCrunch reported (opens in a new tab) a $0.95 minimum fee per Solana trade in the Fomo app. On a $10 buy, that is 9.5% before the price moves, so check the fee on the confirm screen. Slippage can cost more: on a thin coin, your fill can be worse than the quote.

Common meme coin scams

Rug pull: the team removes the liquidity or sells its supply, and the price falls close to zero. See how rug pulls work.
Honeypot: a honeypot token lets you buy, but its contract blocks your sell.
Dev dump: the creator’s dev wallet and early wallets hold most of the supply and sell into the hype.
Paid influencer calls: an influencer gets tokens or money to post, then sells into your buy. See what a crypto KOL is.
Fake apps: a copycat app, bot or “support agent” asks for your private key or seed phrase. Pump.fun’s terms and conditions (opens in a new tab) say it will never ask for them. Open tools only from our official links.

What to do next

You want to try with a small amount: use a phone app such as Fomo as a separate wallet for trading money only. You can add funds with Apple Pay, and Fomo’s terms of service (opens in a new tab) say the app shows the fee before you confirm. Read our Fomo app review.
You want to buy coins at launch on pump.fun: check the top holders, the dev wallet and the mint and freeze authority before every buy. Our pump.fun safety checklist shows the red flags.
You trade every week: size each trade small and sell part of a position with a take-profit order, as our memecoin trading guide shows. For pros, BasedBot adds take-profit, stop-loss and trailing stop-loss orders (BasedBot docs (opens in a new tab)); read the BasedBot review. Locke works with BasedBot; it is scored with the same methodology.

Open Fomo with 10% off feesCode Iocke (capital I) is in the link

Bottom line

Meme coins are a bet on attention, not an investment in a product. Most lose almost all of their value, and fees take a share of every small trade. If you still buy, use only money you can lose, in a separate wallet, with a take-profit order. This page explains the odds; it is not financial advice. For the basics, read how meme coins work.

Frequently asked questions

For a few traders, yes. For most, the profit is small or negative. CoinGecko found that 73.3% of pump.fun wallets realized a profit in April 2026, but 65.1% of all wallets made only $1 to $500, and 5.4% made more than $1,000. In 20 of the 21 months from April 2024 to December 2025, fewer than half of the wallets made a profit.