Meme coin

• 1. Introduction

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  Meme coins began, in late 2013, as a deliberate joke. The first to make a mark was Dogecoin, named after a viral image of a Shiba Inu dog. Software engineers created it as a satirical swipe at the cryptocurrency boom of that year. What distinguishes meme coins from other cryptocurrencies is not technology but attention. Their prices rise when viral interest draws in new buyers and fall when that interest fades. The pattern resembles a Ponzi scheme, which relies on new capital to sustain returns for earlier participants. By October 2021, 124 separate meme coins were circulating simultaneously. What began as satire had attracted the attention of politicians, fraudsters, and serious investors alike. Pepe, a coin referencing the Pepe the Frog internet meme, would one day carry a peak market capitalization above eleven billion dollars.

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• 2. The Musk Effect

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  Elon Musk's public posts about Dogecoin in 2021 and 2022 turned the coin into a case study in celebrity-driven price swings. He announced that Tesla-branded merchandise could be purchased with Dogecoin. Investors later sued him, alleging he had used the coin as an unregistered security and operated what they called a pyramid scheme. Dogecoin's peak market capitalization reached roughly eighty-eight billion dollars.

  Floki Inu took its name from a Shiba Inu dog Musk owned. Launched in June 2021, it ran on the BNB Chain and eventually reached a peak market cap of two point three billion dollars. Baby Doge Coin, launched as a variant of Dogecoin in 2021, drew widespread attention after Musk tweeted about it. Its peak valuation reached around one billion dollars. The pattern was consistent: Musk mentioned a coin, and money followed. In November 2024, when Trump announced a new government efficiency body nicknamed DOGE, Dogecoin's price climbed again on the strength of an acronym alone.

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• 3. When Presidents Launch Coins

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  On the 17th of January 2025, Donald Trump launched $TRUMP on the Solana blockchain three days before his second inauguration. Reuters reported a peak market value above fourteen and a half billion dollars by January 19th. A large decline followed shortly after. Melania Trump launched MELANIA on the same day. Its market cap reached roughly two point two billion dollars. Bloomberg reported it had fallen about ninety percent from its peak by February 6th.

  On the 10th of February 2025, Faustin-Archange Touadéra, President of the Central African Republic, posted about a national memecoin called $CAR on his official X account. He described it as an "experiment" in national development. The coin's value dropped by ninety-five percent the following day, February 11th. The announcement video had previously been flagged as a deepfake, and the project's own X account was suspended soon after launch. Starting February 14th, Argentine president Javier Milei began promoting $LIBRA. Researchers cited by Reuters put the peak valuation around four and a half billion dollars before the coin crashed, triggering legal scrutiny.

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• 4. The Rug Pull Circuit

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  In December 2024, Haliey Welch, who had become famous online for the "hawk tuah" meme, issued a token called $HAWK. It hit a peak valuation of four hundred and ninety million dollars before collapsing to twenty-five million. Welch was accused of running a pump-and-dump scheme and engaging in insider trading.

  During the memecoin boom of early 2025, hackers broke into verified government X accounts and used them to promote fraudulent tokens. The accounts compromised included those of the Cuban government, former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, and Bihar's Water Resource Department. CUBA's trading volume fell from one hundred fifty-eight point seven million dollars to four point three million. The MALAYSIA rug pull drained one point seven million dollars from participants. The Catholic News Agency's account and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier's account were also hijacked to push similar scams. On the 15th of April 2025, hackers compromised UK Government Minister Lucy Powell's verified X account to promote a coin called $HCC. They used deleted posts bearing the House of Commons logo, describing the token as a "community-driven digital currency."

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• 5. Critics and Credibility

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  American investor David Einhorn declared that the market had reached the "Fartcoin stage of the market cycle." He added that the coin "fulfills no need that is not served elsewhere." Commentators drew comparisons between the meme coin wave and the NFT market's collapse in 2022. In early 2021, Thailand's Securities and Exchange Commission banned meme coins, describing them as digital goods with "no clear objective or substance." In late 2021, the UK's Advertising Standards Authority investigated advertisements for Floki Inu that had appeared in London. The authority treated the token as an unregulated financial product.

  In February 2025, more than seven hundred copycat and spam coins were sent to Trump's digital wallet. Those senders appeared to be seeking to falsely suggest they had his endorsement. In January 2025, three US asset managers set out to launch exchange-traded funds investing in meme coins linked to Trump and Musk. In 2025, an ETF proposal linked to the Pengu token and Pudgy Penguins NFTs was also filed. A decade earlier, no such instrument had existed.

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