The Truth About Meme Coins: Why Spreading Memes is a Thousand Times More Important than Waiting for a "Pump"?

How does an old meme turn into hundreds of billions of dollars?

In May 2021, something magical happened - a “joke coin” that was born in 2013 actually surged into the TOP 10 of the cryptocurrency market by market capitalization.

The surge of Dogecoin ( has left even seasoned investors dumbfounded: isn't this just an emoji with a Shiba Inu picture? Why is it worth hundreds of billions?

The answer is actually hidden in the millions of shares every day, buried in the overwhelming “To the Moon” messages, and even more so in those community group chats that you can't see at all.

Today, let's discuss why the spread of memes in the Meme coin space is a thousand times more important than urging project teams to “pump the price.”

It was just a prank at first

Time rewinds to the year 2013.

Two programmers, Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, were fed up with the rampant speculation in the cryptocurrency space at the time, so they decided to create something - they directly used the popular Shiba Inu meme as their logo and set the issuance to unlimited, aiming to satirize the “scarcity narrative.”

So what happened? This “anti-cryptocurrency experiment” unintentionally caught fire.

Reddit users started tipping fun posts with Dogecoin, the community spontaneously engaged in charity, and even crowdfunded sponsorship for a NASCAR driver and the Jamaican bobsled team ) that's right, the winter Olympic team from that tropical country (.

Without a white paper, without any technological innovation, Dogecoin survived until 2021 purely on the enthusiasm of a group of people - peaking at $0.74, with a market value soaring to $85 billion.

Of course, Musk's Twitter played a catalytic role, but what really helped it withstand three bear markets were those die-hard fans. While other altcoins have long cooled off, Dogecoin holders are still tirelessly creating memes and hosting online parties. This cultural stickiness is more reliable than any technology.

What Frogs and Shiba Inus Teach Us

If Dogecoin is “a casual success”, then the Shiba Inu coin )SHIB( that emerged in 2020 is a cultural experiment that was well-prepared.

It calls itself the “Dogecoin Killer” and has copied the successful formula - the cute Shiba Inu image + the slogan of the “SHIB Army”, making everyone who buys the coin feel like they are participating in a movement.

In 2021, SHIB skyrocketed by 120,000 times, with its market value peaking at 36 billion dollars. Do you think that's outrageous enough? The PEPE coin in 2023 is even more extreme — based on the “Sad Frog” meme, without any official endorsement, it relied solely on spontaneous dissemination by netizens, surpassing a market value of 7 billion dollars in just two weeks.

What do these cases illustrate?

The price of Meme coins is not determined by code, but by the dissemination of cultural symbols. Just like Disney makes money from Mickey Mouse, Meme coins have turned memes into tradable cultural assets. The more people recognize, use, and spread a symbol, the more valuable it becomes. Simple and straightforward.

Stop urging for a “pump” every day, you are the real whale.

Many newcomers, after buying Meme coins, first thing they do is join the community and ask: “When will the pump happen?”

Bro, you got it wrong.

Meme coins are completely different from stocks and Bitcoin. Stocks are backed by company performance, Bitcoin is backed by blockchain technology, but the only “fundamentals” of Meme coins are community consensus and cultural dissemination. The project team can at most be considered as igniters, but the real “controllers” are actually every holder.

Let's see how PEPE came to be: no founder, no team, completely relying on netizens crazily creating memes and spreading emojis in Twitter and Telegram groups. When you retweet a PEPE frog image, when you chat with friends saying “this frog is really interesting”, you are actually “empowering” it - every time it spreads, it is recharging this cultural symbol.

Conversely, if a community only knows to wait for the project party to pump the price, it's like a group of people surrounding a hen that won't lay eggs; they will eventually starve.

Every day, hundreds of new Meme coins emerge on Pump.fun, but 99% do not survive beyond seven days. The reason is that there is only code without culture, and there is no community willing to actively promote them.

Attention is hard currency

In the age of information explosion, attention is the scarcest resource.

Meme coins are essentially “attention securities”—turning the attention, discussion, and shares of netizens into tradable assets.

Algorithms favor engaging content, and Meme coins are inherently designed as tools for spreading on social media. A funny meme spreads a thousand times faster than ten pages of a white paper, and a phrase like “To the Moon” can evoke FOMO feelings more effectively than technical specifications. When you post SHIB memes in a group, you are essentially helping it capture others' attention—this attention will eventually convert into buying interest.

Meme coins are especially active on the Solana and Base chains because these chains offer fast transactions and low fees, making them more suitable for retail high-frequency trading and dissemination. Technology is just the stage; the real stars are the “social currencies” created by the community.

Three Survival Rules ) are more useful than watching candlesticks (

If you decide to play this cultural game, remember these three points:

1. Choose the symbols you truly identify with

Don't buy Meme coins that you don't understand. If you find a meme boring, don't expect others to spread it. Most holders of PEPE grew up with this frog meme and spread it because they genuinely like it, not just to make money.

2. Be a promoter, not a speculator

Instead of asking “When will the price pump?” every day, why not think about how to let more people know about this joke? Create a meme, write a skit, or leave a meme image under related topics. Every time you creatively spread the word, you are increasing the value of your coin.

3. Treat investment with an entertainment mindset

Meme coins are essentially “cultural lotteries”. Although they have more cultural value than pure gambling, they are still highly speculative. Never invest more money than you can afford to lose; think of it as buying a ticket to an amusement park—having fun is the most important thing, and making money is just a bonus.

Lastly, a few words

When we turn memes into cryptocurrencies, we are essentially doing an “IPO” for internet culture. The surge of each Meme coin is a “blitzkrieg” by grassroots culture against the traditional financial system.

But please remember: without dissemination, there is no value.

The promises made by project teams and the calls from KOLs are not as powerful as that meme you are about to send in the group chat from your phone. Instead of waiting for others to “pump the price”, why not open your phone now and create a financial cultural symbol that belongs to this era.

After all, in the era of attention economy, everyone is their own banker.