Memcoins remain one of the most discussed categories of cryptocurrencies. They can rapidly grow in price due to the excitement on social networks, but also depreciate just as quickly. In a column for RBC-Crypto, Fedor Ivanov, director of analytics at Shard, explained how this market works, what keeps memecoins popular, and what risks investors should consider.
Memcoins are cryptocurrency tokens that have gained popularity through internet memes and viral marketing. They are often created as jokes and have no real fundamental value, making them highly volatile and risky to invest in. Essentially, investing in a memecoin is like buying a lottery ticket, although the chance of winning the lottery depends not on luck but on how well you can guess whether a particular memecoin will “take off” or not.
Recently, especially with the rise of Donald Trump, it is precisely these tokens that have attracted a lot of attention, as they show a sharp increase in value after their launch. Although memecoins often attract the attention of investors at launch, their value ultimately depends on social trends and activity in communities, as well as the support of bloggers, who often quickly lose interest in the coin.
Some of the properties of cryptocurrency that global financial regulators do not like are independence from financial institutions and accessibility. Every day, tens of thousands of tokens are created in various blockchains around the world, which are available to anyone. And thanks to platforms like Pump.fun, creating a token on the Solana blockchain does not require any technical knowledge at all. Therefore, anyone can make and buy a memecoin, but the success of each specific coin depends heavily on the meme itself and the activity of the community around it. The community plays the main role in promoting a memecoin.
Investors who back these cryptocurrencies often form groups on Reddit and Discord, where they discuss strategies, share news, and even organize joint market “interventions.” This creates a network effect: the more people participate, the higher the demand for the tokens, which in turn drives up prices.
Memecoins, supported by active communities, spread quickly through social networks, primarily Twitter and TikTok. Information about them can go viral in a matter of hours, which provokes a surge in discussions, information goes beyond the Internet into traditional media and attracts more and more new investors. Celebrities and influencers who support a particular coin play a key role in increasing trust in it. The simplest example is Elon Musk and Dogecoin, a mention of which on the billionaire's Twitter brought the token into the top 10 by capitalization, where it has remained steadily to this day.
Also known is the BOME token, which became popular this spring and was created by the Internet artist Darkfarms. The token became one of the most prominent coins of that wave of memecoin popularity, with a capitalization of $1.2 billion at its peak. This was followed by a sharp drop in the price and capitalization of the coin. Now it is at the $140 million mark.
There are also examples aimed at the Russian audience. The project of a joke bank and the FPIBANK token on the TON blockchain, launched by several schoolchildren, grew to $40 million in capitalization in a couple of days, according to CoinGecko. The project is promoted on YouTube and even has its own full-fledged website and technical documentation (white paper).
Memcoins have a penny value (at the start, always significantly less than $1), which makes them accessible to a wide range of investors, and the belief in their growth by thousands of times attracts those who are not ready to invest significant funds in investing, but want to make money quickly. That is why investing in memcoins can be fairly compared to a casino. The analogy becomes more complete if you remember the volatility of such coins, when in a minute you can both increase and decrease investments several times.
As mentioned, memecoins are often based on popular internet memes and reflect current cultural trends. These can also be coins launched or supported by celebrities, such as the recently launched TRUMP and MELANIA tokens, created to further promote the new US president and his wife in the crypto community. Like all such tokens, they lack any functional value and are technically no different from hundreds of thousands of similar coins. But TRUMP rose to seventh place in terms of capitalization during the president’s inauguration, overtaking such “old-timers” of this market as $DOGE and $SHIB. Why? Because it was Donald Trump’s official coin, and millions of users bought it simply to be part of the trend. And, of course, dreaming of making money on its price growth.
Memecoins are based on user communities and form them themselves, attracting new adherents. Many are ready to invest in a memecoin, as well as to lose small invested funds. But it's fun. And you can also make money. Users unite around these tokens, creating a sense of belonging and joint creativity. Many memecoins are initially aimed specifically at a youth audience, such as $PEPE or $WIF. Young people actively participate in meme culture and become the target audience, bringing investments into coins. Again, there are no restrictions on buying a coin, even a technically poor user can do this.
The lack of financial qualifications for investing also contributes to the growth of popularity. The price of $DOGE was about $0.3 in February 2025, and during the first wave of popularity, the coin cost $0.002. It is one thing to buy Bitcoin and earn 5% on its price growth, risking a solid capital, another is to buy 1000 DOGE or another memecoin and hope that it will grow 10 or 1000 times.
And crypto exchanges play an important role. Since the largest of them, registered in offshore jurisdictions, have no regulation of coin listing, they can list those tokens that they themselves consider in demand. This further simplifies their purchase, increases liquidity and volatility.
Social media plays a vital role in spreading the word about memecoins. Celebrity and influencer endorsements can dramatically increase interest in certain coins. DOGE and TRUMP have already been mentioned, but in general, memecoins are called that because they are associated with a certain person, character, or social phenomenon, and it would be impossible to promote such a coin without the blogosphere.
It is important to understand that the bloggers themselves are obviously interested in promoting tokens, since they often try to make money on growth. Since manipulation of the price of a market asset is a crime in many countries around the world, no one advertises it. But the same Elon Musk is constantly accused of deliberately mentioning DOGE for the purpose of speculation, and the organization that monitors compliance with ethical standards in the United States, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), is considering filing a lawsuit in federal court against Trump and his wife.
This is not a trial run for Trump – his first experience was with the MAGA token, which, thanks to the support of the then presidential candidate, grew from $0.2 in January to $17 in June 2024. It is not known whether the candidate himself made money on this.
There are also lesser-known examples, such as the SAFEMOON token. SafeMoon was launched in March 2021 and quickly became popular thanks to active support on TikTok. Bloggers and influencers used the platform to promote the token, which attracted more than 2 million users and increased its capitalization to $1.7 billion.
Memecoins typically have unlimited supply, which can lead to low token prices and high inflation. Investing in such assets is considered high-risk, as their price can fluctuate wildly depending on public interest and social media activity. The rapid growth in the value of meme tokens is due to their speculative nature: everyone understands that these are high-risk assets where you can make a quick profit or lose everything. Therefore, the earlier an investor enters such an asset, the higher the chance of exiting with a profit before the collapse. The price chart of meme tokens is usually characterized by a sharp rise, followed by a gradual decline or a rapid fall. When a new meme token appears, investors, fearing the possibility of missing out on a quick profit, invest in it, albeit small.
Meme tokens often do not require significant technical resources to create, which contributes to the emergence of many new coins. Some of them, such as BOME and WIF, quickly get listed on major exchanges, becoming available to a wide audience. The explosive growth of the value of meme tokens is explained by the support of communities, the desire of people to make a quick buck without deep analysis, and the belief in their rapid growth. However, it is important to remember that meme tokens are a kind of lottery. Investing in them after a period of active growth is a bad idea, since it is almost impossible to predict further price movement. Moreover, in the event of a market correction, such cryptocurrencies fall much faster than they grew.
For example, DOGE, which operates on the PoW consensus algorithm and has a large community, and also periodically receives support from Elon Musk, has not been able to return to its historical highs of 2021.
And we mustn't forget about the scammers. For example, during the pre-election hype in the US, more than 6,000 coins were created that speculated on Trump's name in one way or another, but had nothing to do with him. An example is the BARRON token, allegedly created with the support of one of the president's sons, but not officially supported by any of the Trumps. As a result, the coin's value rose sharply, and then fell just as sharply.
The biggest danger in this situation is fake tokens that try to mimic the original and thereby confuse the user. Therefore, as in the case of fiat money, beware of counterfeits and carefully check what is transferred to your wallet.
When deciding to invest in cryptocurrency, it is important to carefully study the idea behind the coin, as it is the main driver of the asset's value. In the case of meme tokens, the situation is ambiguous: if they have already passed the peak of popularity, then most likely, they will remain interesting only to a small circle of enthusiasts and speculators who are trying to make money on their volatility.
Источник: cryptocurrency.tech
