Meme Coin: What They Are, Why They Surge, and How to Spot the Real Ones

When you hear meme coin, a cryptocurrency created as a joke or internet trend, often with no technical innovation or real-world use. Also known as memecoin, it's not built to solve problems—it’s built to go viral. Think Dogecoin, started as a parody of Bitcoin in 2013, or Shiba Inu, which exploded years later because of a Reddit post and a Tesla tweet. These aren’t stocks, they aren’t tech projects—they’re social experiments wrapped in blockchain code.

What makes a meme coin move isn’t whitepapers or team credentials. It’s Twitter trends, Discord hype, and celebrity mentions. Elon Musk saying "Dogecoin to the moon" can spike a coin’s value overnight. But when the meme fades, so does the price. That’s why most meme coins die within months. Only a handful survive—not because they became useful, but because they built a loyal community that keeps trading, talking, and sharing. That’s the real engine: culture, not code.

And here’s the catch: you’ll see dozens of new meme coins every week, each with a funny name and a flashy logo. NikePig on Cardano? Chains of War’s MIRA token? Both started as jokes. One has a market cap under $1.3 million and zero development. The other is tied to a game that doesn’t even exist yet. These aren’t investments—they’re bets on attention. And the people promoting them? Often aren’t the creators. They’re influencers paid to push tokens they don’t understand.

That’s why the posts below focus on the real stuff: how to tell if a meme coin is just a pump-and-dump, what happened to the ones that vanished, and which ones actually stuck around long enough to matter. You’ll find deep dives on coins like NIKEPIG and MIRA, warnings about fake airdrops pretending to be meme projects, and breakdowns of why some meme coins get listed on exchanges while others disappear into thin air. There’s no fluff here. Just what works, what doesn’t, and what you need to know before you click "buy."