What is a meme coin? A token that runs on hype

A meme coin is a crypto token built on a joke, a meme or a trend, with no product or revenue behind it. Its price moves on attention: it rises while people talk about it and buy, and it falls when they stop. For the short definition, see our memecoin meaning and history entry.

CoinGecko calls meme coins projects “built around joke concepts” and names Dogecoin, created in 2013, the original one (CoinGecko guide (opens in a new tab)). Today, anyone can launch one on pump.fun, a Solana site where everyone can buy and sell from the start (pump.fun homepage (opens in a new tab)). Our pump.fun guide shows how it works. To get one, follow our guide to buying meme coins.

How it works

A meme coin has no product, so its price is only what the next buyer pays. On pump.fun, a coin goes through three stages (pump.fun fee page (opens in a new tab)).

1. 1

   Someone creates the coin

   Anyone can create a coin on pump.fun. There is no platform fee, only Solana network costs.
2. 2

   Buyers move the price on the curve

   The coin first trades on a bonding curve: each buy raises the price and each sell lowers it. Each trade on the curve costs 1.25%.
3. 3

   A few coins graduate

   When buyers fill the curve, the coin graduates to a PumpSwap pool, and pump.fun takes a 0.015 SOL migration fee. After that, the price still moves only on attention.

Most meme coins go to zero. Early buyers and the creator sell into the first wave of hype, and nothing holds the price up after that.

Sources: Forklog report on Solidus Labs data (opens in a new tab), The Block report (opens in a new tab).

Our pump.fun safety guide has the full data, and our rug pull guide shows the red flags.

What to do next

• You want your first meme coin: use the Fomo app. You sign up with email or Apple ID, add funds with Apple Pay, a debit card or crypto, then slide to buy (Fomo’s buying guide (opens in a new tab)). Read our Fomo app review.
• You want coins at launch: buy on pump.fun directly, on the site or in the app. Our code is lockein, but pump.fun does not publish what a referral gives, so we promise no perk. The pump.fun referral code page shows how to use it.
• You trade every week: move to a Telegram bot such as BasedBot. It adds limit orders, take-profit and stop-loss orders and copy trading, but you fund it with crypto, not a card. Read the BasedBot review and how memecoin trading works. Locke works with BasedBot; it is scored with the same methodology.
• You do not know the words yet: learn terms like “rug”, “ape” and “degen” in our crypto slang guide.

Bottom line

A meme coin is a token that trades on a joke and on attention, not on a product. Most fail fast, so only buy an amount you can lose in full. Before your first buy, read whether meme coins are worth it.