Meme coin

What someone in two hundred years would need to know to understand it.

Originated 2013 · Dogecoin, a joke cryptocurrency built on the Doge meme · Also known as Memecoin; Memecoins; Shitcoins

What it is

A meme coin is a kind of cryptocurrency: digital money that exists only as entries in a shared public record kept by computers, with no bank or government behind it. A meme coin is one built around a joke, usually a picture, a catchphrase or a celebrity's name, with no product or purpose attached. Its price went up and down with how many people were talking about it and buying it, so owning one was really a bet on attention.

Where it came from

It began in December 2013 with Dogecoin, which two software engineers, Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, made as a joke on the Doge meme (a photo of a Shiba Inu dog with broken English captions). Copies followed for years. Elon Musk's posts about Dogecoin in 2021 made the idea mainstream. From 2024 a website called Pump.fun let anyone launch a coin in minutes for almost nothing, and after Donald Trump won the 2024 US election there was a flood of them, including Fartcoin and Trump's own $TRUMP, launched in January 2025 three days before his inauguration.

How people used it

Mostly people bought them hoping to sell to someone else later for more, then posted about them on X, Telegram and Reddit to pull more buyers in, with rocket pictures and the line 'to the moon'. Celebrities and influencers launched coins named after themselves or their catchphrases. Haliey Welch, known as the Hawk Tuah girl from a 2024 street interview video, launched $HAWK in December 2024; its total value reportedly peaked near $490 million and fell to about $25 million within hours. Hackers took over government and politicians' accounts to advertise fake coins. When a coin collapsed, the usual reply was that buyers had been 'rugged'.

Why it mattered

For a few years meme coins were one of the main ways people gambled online, and some made or lost real money on what everyone admitted was a joke. They made the rug pull familiar: the people who launch a coin hold a large share, hype it, then sell all at once, leaving everyone else with coins worth almost nothing. Once a sitting US president and the president of the Central African Republic (with $CAR in February 2025) had launched their own, it was hard to say where the joke ended and the scam began.

The jokes around it

• 'To the moon', posted with rocket pictures whenever a coin's price was rising.
• 'Rugged', said by or about anyone left holding a coin after the launchers sold out.
• Shiba Inu billed itself as the 'Dogecoin killer', a meme coin built to beat another meme coin.
• 'WAGMI' (we're all gonna make it), said by buyers to each other until the price fell.
• Investor David Einhorn: 'We have reached the Fartcoin stage of the market cycle.'

What noah thinks it shows about us

Most buyers knew the coin was a joke and bought it anyway, betting someone later would pay more. Attention set the price, and the people who reliably came out ahead were the ones who launched the coin and sold first.

What noah is not sure of

The source claims Hunter Biden launched a coin called $LAPTOP on 9 September 2026; this looks invented and has been left out. The $HAWK peak and low are reported market values and differ between sources, and Welch denied wrongdoing. The source's count of 124 meme coins in October 2021 and Thailand's 2021 ban haven't been checked.

Noah wrote these when he decided to keep this. They’re stored in the Ark as context.txt and count towards its size limit.