How to short meme coins (2026): perps guide

You can short meme coins, but only coins that have a perpetual futures market (a perp) or that someone lends you to sell. Most new coins, such as coins on the pump.fun bonding curve, have neither, so you cannot short them. For the large meme coins, the simplest route is perps on Hyperliquid inside the pump.fun app, if your country allows it.

This guide is part of our memecoin trading guide. The steps and numbers below come from pump.fun’s terms and fee page and from Hyperliquid’s docs, checked on 24 October 2026. Button names in the app can change, so check them on screen.

Ways to short meme coins at a glance

Sources: pump.fun terms §30B (opens in a new tab), pump.fun perps list (opens in a new tab), fomo perps help (opens in a new tab), fomo perps fees (opens in a new tab).

How shorting a meme coin works

A short is a bet that the price falls. There are two ways to make that bet.

• Borrow and sell: you borrow coins, sell them now and buy them back later to repay the loan. If the price fell, you keep the difference. This needs a lender, and few venues lend small meme coins.
• Short a perp: a perpetual future tracks the coin’s price and has no expiry. You post USDC as margin and open a short. Each 1% fall in the price is a 1% gain on the position size, and each 1% rise is a 1% loss. No one lends you a coin.

On Hyperliquid, one contract equals one unit of the coin, per its contract specifications (opens in a new tab). Markets with a “k” prefix group 1,000 units: the pump.fun list shows kPEPE as “Pepe x1000”.

Perps also have funding. Each hour, one side pays the other. When the perp trades above the spot price, longs pay shorts, and when it trades below, shorts pay longs, per Hyperliquid’s funding docs (opens in a new tab). Funding is capped at 4% per hour. A crowded short on a meme coin can pay funding every hour that it stays open.

Which meme coins can you short?

You can short a meme coin on Hyperliquid only after Hyperliquid lists a perp for it. A coin that launched today on the pump.fun bonding curve has no perp, and no one lends it, so you can only buy it or sell it.

On 24 October 2026, the pump.fun perps list (opens in a new tab) showed these meme coin markets:

Sources: pump.fun perps list (opens in a new tab) (24 Oct 2026), Hyperliquid liquidations (opens in a new tab) (maintenance margin is half the initial margin at max leverage).

Hyperliquid’s own market list (opens in a new tab) on the same day also had WIF, kSHIB, kFLOKI, POPCAT, BRETT, MOODENG, PNUT and kNEIRO. Check in the app whether pump.fun shows them: its terms let it add or remove markets at any time (§30B.9). Hyperliquid can also delist a market.

The lower the max leverage, the thinner the market tends to be, and the higher the maintenance margin. A 3x market needs 16.7% of the position as maintenance margin.

Step-by-step: short a meme coin in the pump.fun app

Pump.fun added perps on Hyperliquid in October 2026, per Bankless (opens in a new tab). Its terms call this the “Perpetuals Feature”: pump.fun builds the orders, you sign them with your wallet key, and Hyperliquid matches, margins and liquidates them (§30B.1). Your collateral stays in your own Hyperliquid account, not with pump.fun (§30B.7).

1. 1

   Check that you may use perps

   The feature is not for anyone in the United States or in Ontario, Canada, or in a prohibited or sanctioned country, per section 30B.2 of pump.fun’s terms (opens in a new tab). Pump.fun itself is not available in the UK or Russia, and you must be 18 or older.
2. 2

   Sign in and fund the app

   Sign in to the pump.fun app or website. If you are new, our pump.fun tutorial shows how to deposit by card or SOL.
3. 3

   Open Perps and approve the setup

   Open Perps (in the website menu it is “Perps”). The first time, you sign messages that approve pump.fun’s builder fee, record pump.fun’s referral code on your Hyperliquid account and set the account mode (§30B.6). Hyperliquid takes a one-time activation fee from your first deposit.
4. 4

   Move collateral to Hyperliquid

   The app moves your money to Hyperliquid through a third-party bridge, Relay at the time of writing (§30B.7). Pump.fun charges up to 0.25% per bridge transfer, plus the bridge’s own fee. Transfers can be slow or fail.
5. 5

   Pick the market and choose Short

   Search the meme coin, for example kBONK or FARTCOIN. Choose Short, isolated margin if the app offers it, and low leverage. The order screen shows the builder fee as a separate line before you confirm.
6. 6

   Set a stop loss, then confirm

   Add a stop loss above your entry price. Hyperliquid triggers it against its own mark price, not pump.fun (§30B.5). Check the liquidation price on screen before you confirm.
7. 7

   Close and move the money back

   When you close, the app can offer a transfer of your free balance back to your wallet in the same flow (§30B.7). Money that stays on Hyperliquid stays under your wallet’s control.

If pump.fun limits your access, your open positions stay on Hyperliquid and can still be liquidated (§30B.8). You can manage them on Hyperliquid directly with the same wallet.

Liquidation: how a meme coin pump wipes out a short

Liquidation is the main risk of a leveraged short. Hyperliquid closes your position when your account equity falls below the maintenance margin, per its liquidation docs (opens in a new tab). The maintenance margin is half of the initial margin at the market’s max leverage: 5% on a 10x market, 16.7% on a 3x market.

The table uses Hyperliquid’s liquidation formula for an isolated short, without fees and funding:

Sources: Hyperliquid liquidations (opens in a new tab) (formula and maintenance margin), our calculation.

On the day we checked, the pump.fun perps list showed 24-hour moves of more than 10% on several meme coin markets. A move of that size is enough to liquidate a high-leverage short in a few hours.

What else can happen:

• Cross margin takes everything. If a cross position goes to backstop liquidation, all your cross positions and cross margin go to the liquidator. With no isolated positions, you end with zero equity.
• You lose the maintenance margin in a backstop. Hyperliquid does not return it in a backstop liquidation. A stop loss that triggers before the liquidation price helps you keep it.
• Mark price, not the chart. Liquidation uses Hyperliquid’s mark price, which can differ from the last trade in a fast market.
• Auto-deleveraging. In extreme moves, Hyperliquid can close profitable positions against losing ones. See its auto-deleveraging docs (opens in a new tab).
• No undo. Pump.fun says it cannot prevent, delay or reverse a liquidation (§30B.5, §30B.10).

Fees to expect when you short on pump.fun

Pump.fun’s fee page (opens in a new tab) lists two perp fees of its own. The 0.45% app fee (0.40% with a referral code) does not apply to perps.

Sources: pump.fun fees (opens in a new tab), Hyperliquid fees (opens in a new tab), Hyperliquid funding (opens in a new tab).

In this example, a round trip costs up to about $1.95 before funding and the bridge operator’s fee, or about 2% of your margin. Fees grow with the position, not with your margin, so higher leverage costs more. For the spot fees, see our pump.fun fees guide.

Other ways to short or bet against meme coins

• Fomo perps: the Fomo app, our pick for beginners, also sends perp orders to Hyperliquid. Fomo charges 0.05% per trade on perps, plus Hyperliquid fees and funding, per its fee article (opens in a new tab). Fomo’s help center names no meme coin markets, so check in app. Perps are not for US persons. Compare both apps in pump.fun vs Fomo.
• Other trading apps: our ranking of meme coin trading platforms shows which apps and bots fit your trading style.
• Exchange perps and margin: some exchanges list perps or margin loans for large meme coins. Rules depend on your country and the venue. Check that the venue is licensed where you live.
• Sell or stay out: if you hold a coin you think will fall, selling it is the simplest “short”. To set exits on what you hold, see the take-profit and stop-loss section of our trading guide.

Safety checklist

1. Check your country first. Pump.fun perps are not for US persons, Ontario, or prohibited and sanctioned countries.
2. Use isolated margin. Then one bad short cannot take your whole Hyperliquid balance.
3. Keep leverage low. At 2x on a 10x market, a 43% pump liquidates you; at 10x, a 4.8% pump does.
4. Set the stop loss with the order. Put it well below the liquidation price, so you keep the maintenance margin.
5. Watch funding. On a crowded short, you can pay funding every hour.
6. Size from the loss. Decide the dollar loss you accept, then pick the position size.
7. Sign only in the official app. Your perp orders are signed with your wallet key; never paste a private key or seed phrase anywhere else.

Mistakes to avoid

• Do not short a coin because it “already pumped”. Meme coins can keep rising long after they look too high.
• Do not use max leverage on a meme coin. A 3x market already liquidates a 3x short after a rise of about 14%.
• Do not leave a short open without a stop. Liquidation runs 24/7, and pump.fun cannot reverse it.
• Do not use a VPN to get around a country block. Pump.fun can close your access, and your positions stay open on Hyperliquid.
• Do not forget the money on Hyperliquid. After you close, move your free balance back to your wallet.

Bottom line

You can short a meme coin only when it has a perp market or a lender, which rules out almost every new launch. For DOGE, PEPE, BONK, FARTCOIN, PUMP and other listed coins, the pump.fun app is the simplest route outside the US, Ontario, the UK and Russia. Low leverage, isolated margin and a stop loss are the rules that keep a pump from taking your margin.

Changelog

• 2026-10-24: first version published. Perp rules from pump.fun’s terms §30B and fee page (both dated 17 October 2026); market list from pump.fun’s perps page; liquidation, funding and fee rules from Hyperliquid’s docs.