The legends, the disasters, and every term explained. From DOGE to PEPE, from rug pulls to bonding curves.
The meme coins that broke through. Some made millionaires out of strangers on the internet, others rewrote what a "real" cryptocurrency could be.
The original. Created by two engineers as a joke about the Shiba Inu "Doge" meme, DOGE accidentally invented an entire asset class. Elon Musk's tweets, a Tesla payment integration, and a Saturday Night Live appearance later, it sat at an $89B market cap. Still trading more than a decade after launch — the longest-living meme of them all.
The "Dogecoin killer". Anonymous launch, sent half the supply to Vitalik Buterin's wallet as a stunt. Vitalik burned 410 trillion tokens (about $6.7B at the time) and donated the rest to Indian COVID relief — instantly creating one of the most-talked-about narratives in crypto. SHIB went on to spawn an entire ecosystem with its own L2 (Shibarium).
A pure fair launch on Ethereum, no presale, no team allocation, no utility promised. Just the meme. PEPE rode pure internet culture to a multi-billion dollar mcap and proved that the "meme coin without a roadmap" model could compete with serious projects. Contract ownership was renounced and liquidity was burned early, reinforcing the "no roadmap, no utility, no team control" narrative.
A picture of a Shiba Inu wearing a pink knit hat. That's it. WIF became Solana's first $4B+ meme and arguably what put the chain back on the meme map after the FTX collapse. The community famously crowdfunded a Las Vegas Sphere ad campaign — raising roughly $700k to put the hat on the world's biggest screen. The campaign never actually made it onto the Sphere, but the attempt itself became part of WIF lore: a meme so strong people tried to buy physical advertising on one of the most visible screens on earth.
Launched as a Christmas airdrop to Solana wallets just weeks after the FTX collapse, when SOL was crashing toward $8 and morale was at zero. BONK gave the chain something to be excited about and helped catalyse the entire Solana meme renaissance. Half the supply was given away to the community for free.
One of the cleanest Solana cat-coin success stories. POPCAT showed that the Solana meme wave did not have to be only dogs, frogs or celebrity launches — a simple viral internet cat could become a multi-billion-dollar market. The cat that pops, indefinitely.
An AI persona called Truth Terminal — created by Andy Ayrey and trained on internet-weirdness lore — became obsessed with the GOAT meme and started posting about it. The posts, amplified by Crypto Twitter, helped turn GOAT into the first major AI-meme coin narrative. Marked the start of "AI-meme" as a category.
A baby pygmy hippo in a Thai zoo went viral on TikTok. Within days, multiple Moo Deng tokens launched on Solana — the original on pump.fun rocketed to $400M+ mcap. Textbook example of how fast a real-world event becomes a tradable asset in the meme economy.
Inspired by Elon Musk naming his Shiba Inu "Floki", the coin attracted Elon-watcher hype and built an actual ecosystem around it: a metaverse game, NFTs, a debit card, even crypto education. Combination of meme energy and serious development put FLOKI in the top 100 by mcap.
Fartcoin rode the same AI-meme wave that GOAT helped start, with Truth Terminal becoming part of the broader lore. It is the spiritual successor to "the dumber the better" — a name designed to be unhypeable, that the market hyped anyway. A test of whether a meme can have literally zero substance and still pump.
Launched days before Donald Trump's inauguration, TRUMP became one of the biggest and most controversial political meme coins ever. It showed that meme coins were no longer just internet jokes — they could become direct extensions of celebrity, politics and brand power. Also raised major concerns around insider supply, conflicts of interest and retail risk.
MOG started as a pure culture/meme coin and became one of the strongest non-dog, non-frog Ethereum memes. Its "mog/accumulate/alpha" culture gave it a distinct identity, proving that meme coins can be built around internet-native language rather than a single animal image.
BOME compressed an entire meme coin cycle into days: viral presale, massive Solana hype, huge candle, then major exchange attention. It became one of the defining examples of the 2024 Solana presale meta — powerful, fast and extremely dangerous for late buyers.
PNUT turned a viral real-world internet story into a tradable asset. Like MOODENG, it showed how fast online outrage, sympathy and memes can become liquidity on Solana.
Where the bag holders learnt their lessons. These are the most infamous rug pulls, honeypots and celebrity-fuelled disasters. Read them so you can recognise the pattern.
Capitalising on the Netflix show, SQUID pumped from $0.01 to $2,861 in under a week. The catch: it was a honeypot — buyers literally couldn't sell. The devs eventually pulled the entire $3.4M liquidity in a single transaction and disappeared. The most quoted "I told you so" rug in crypto history.
Argentine President Javier Milei promoted the LIBRA contract address as a private project meant to support small businesses and startups. The token exploded to a multi-billion-dollar valuation, then collapsed after wallets linked to insiders removed liquidity and cashed out roughly $107M. One of the biggest political meme coin scandals to date.
Influencer Haliey "Hawk Tuah" Welch promoted HAWK after massive online buildup. The token reportedly hit around $490M market cap shortly after launch, then collapsed more than 90% within hours. A lawsuit later targeted entities involved in the launch, alleging unregistered securities and misleading promotion. Textbook example of how celebrity attention, token allocation and launch mechanics can turn toxic fast.
The first major Base chain meme. BALD pumped to a $100M mcap in days. Then the deployer wallet pulled tens of millions in liquidity. On-chain sleuths later pointed to links between the deployer wallet and Alameda/FTX-related wallets, though the exact identity of the deployer was never cleanly proven. Demonstrated that a chain being new is not protection from rug devs.
"Safe" was the operative joke. SafeMoon pumped on a Reddit-fuelled mania to a $5B+ mcap, marketed itself as anti-rug-by-design with auto-burns and reflection rewards. The SEC eventually charged the founders with siphoning over $200M from the protocol's liquidity pool. In 2026, SafeMoon CEO Braden John Karony was sentenced to 100 months in prison, turning one of the biggest "safe tokenomics" memes into a full legal case study. The "safe" was always quotation marks.
Not technically a meme coin but a key part of the cultural lore. BitConnect promised guaranteed daily returns through a "trading bot" — actual answer: it was a Ponzi. The "WAS-SUH BICONNNNNNECT" promotional stage clip became one of the most-quoted moments in crypto history. The coin went to zero and the founders were eventually indicted.
Endless variations: TRUMP variants, MELANIA, dozens more. Celebrity tweets contract address, retail rushes in, insiders (or sometimes the celebrity team itself) dump within hours. Pattern is so consistent that a celebrity-launched coin is now treated as guilty until proven innocent. Examples range from celebrity-adjacent launches like HAWK to political coins like TRUMP and MELANIA. Iggy Azalea's MOTHER is a more complicated case: it survived longer than most celebrity coins, but later faced a class-action lawsuit over allegedly misleading utility and ecosystem claims.
The most common rug pattern of 2024-2025. Bots wash-trade a fresh pump.fun coin to fake hype: thousands of trades per hour, suspiciously balanced buy/sell ratios, average trade size of $20. Real buyers see "trending" and FOMO in. Bots dump within minutes, leaving holders with worthless tokens. Look for our Audit tool's "Bot / wash trading" check to spot these patterns before you ape.
MELANIA launched shortly after TRUMP and quickly became controversial after reports that wallets bought minutes before the public announcement and made huge profits. A strong case study for insider-timing risk in celebrity and political meme coins — when the launch is telegraphed, the people closest to the announcement always seem to be the earliest buyers.
Promoted by influencers and marketed around a charity narrative, then collapsed after launch amid accusations of pump-and-dump behavior and insider selling. A classic example of "good cause" branding being used to lower retail skepticism. The lesson: a charity wrapper does not change the on-chain mechanics of a launch.
Promoted by major celebrities and influencers, then became known mostly for lawsuits and regulatory issues around paid promotion. Useful as a non-Solana, non-pump.fun example of celebrity-token risk — the SEC eventually used the EthereumMax case as a reference point for crypto influencer disclosure rules.
A dog-themed OlympusDAO-style project raised tens of millions and then funds vanished almost immediately. Great example of how hype, anonymous teams and rushed deposits can destroy due diligence. The pattern keeps repeating: the more pressure to "get in early", the easier it is to skip the basics.
Every important meme coin term, in plain English. Search to filter, or jump to a category.
The total dollar value of all tokens currently in circulation. Calculated as price × circulating supply. A $100M mcap meme means $100M worth of that coin exists at the current price.
What the market cap would be if every single token that will ever exist was already in circulation. FDV greater than mcap means more tokens are still being unlocked or vested. Big gap between mcap and FDV is a warning — there's hidden supply that can dump on you.
The pool of paired tokens (usually SOL or ETH plus the meme coin) sitting on a DEX, available for trading against. Higher liquidity means smaller slippage on your trades. Low liquidity means you'll move the price hard just by buying or selling.
The difference between the price you expected and the price you actually got. On thin liquidity, a $1,000 buy can move the price 5%+ before your trade fills. Always check slippage settings before swapping.
The highest price the coin has ever traded at. For most meme coins, ATH is a moment in history that holders will tell you about — usually at length, usually painfully.
The lowest price the coin has ever traded at. Often very close to launch price for memes that didn't survive their first week.
The total USD value traded in the last 24 hours. Healthy ratio is roughly 30-300% of mcap per day. Volume way larger than liquidity is suspicious — often wash trading.
The number of distinct wallets that own the coin. More holders = better distribution = harder for a single whale to crash the price. Under 200 holders on a coin with high mcap usually means a few wallets own most of the supply.
Three different numbers. Circulating = currently in wallets. Total = exists but not yet released (vested or locked). Max = upper bound, if the contract has one. For most fair-launch memes, all three are the same number.
How much a single trade moves the price. Direct cousin of slippage. A trade with 10% price impact will fill at 10% worse than the displayed price.
The price where you bought into a coin. Your entire trade psychology changes depending on entry. Someone who bought at $1M mcap and someone who bought at $100M mcap are technically holding the same coin, but emotionally living in different universes.
The new buyers that allow earlier buyers to sell. If you buy after a coin is already up 100x, there is a real chance you are not early — you are the exit liquidity.
Profit and Loss. Shows whether your position is up or down. "Realized PnL" is after you sell. "Unrealized PnL" is paper gains or losses while you still hold.
Profit you actually locked in by selling. Screenshots of unrealized gains do not count. Meme coin traders often learn this the hard way.
Profit that exists only on screen while you still hold. It can disappear in one candle, especially on low-liquidity memes.
Dollar-cost averaging. Buying in smaller chunks over time instead of all at once. In meme coins this can reduce bad entries, but "DCAing into a dying chart" can also become cope-trading.
An order that only executes at your chosen price or better. Useful for planning entries and exits without panic clicking.
An order that buys or sells immediately at the best available price. Fast, but dangerous on low-liquidity coins because slippage can be brutal.
When devs remove the liquidity from the pool, leaving holders with worthless tokens that can't be sold. The classic exit scam. Often telegraphed by the dev wallet still holding a large position. Use the Audit tool to check creator balance and LP lock status.
A token contract that lets you buy but blocks you from selling. The transaction looks normal until you try to exit and it just… reverts. SQUID is the famous example. Always test sellability before going in big.
Bots buying and selling the same coin between wallets to create fake volume. Goal: make a coin look "trending" so real buyers FOMO in. Tells: tiny average trade size ($20-30), thousands of trades on a small mcap, sustained 70%+ buy ratio that no organic market produces.
One actor controls many wallets — funded from a single source — that all buy at launch to fake distributed ownership. Looks like 30 different "early buyers" but it's really one person holding 30 bags. They dump together when retail piles in.
Buying in the very first block after a coin launches, before regular traders can react. Snipers often use bots and pay extra fees to be first. Heavy sniping at launch usually means the early supply is concentrated in bot wallets that will dump on the first pump.
A wallet with the power to create new tokens out of thin air, diluting everyone else. On Solana this is set on the mint account. If it's not renounced, the dev can mint trillions more whenever they want. Big red flag.
The creator gave up one or more control powers over the token contract. On Ethereum this can mean contract ownership is renounced, limiting the owner's ability to change taxes or admin settings. On Solana, check mint authority and freeze authority separately: mint authority controls new supply, freeze authority can freeze token accounts. "Renounced" is only meaningful if you know exactly which authority was removed.
The liquidity provider tokens are locked in a smart contract or burned, making it much harder for the creator to pull liquidity. Check how much LP is locked, for how long, and whether the lock contract is trusted.
Contract feature that caps how many tokens a single wallet can hold or buy at once. Limits whale damage. Mild positive signal — but if anti-whale is "modifiable", the dev can turn it off whenever they want.
A fee taken on every buy or sell, usually going to a marketing wallet or auto-LP. 0% is ideal. 5% per side eats your gains. Asymmetric tax (e.g. 1% buy, 10% sell) is a deliberate trap — the dev wants you to enter and have trouble exiting.
The contract owner can change buy or sell fees after launch. A coin can start with 0% tax, then suddenly become a 50–99% sell-tax trap. This is one of the most common stealth-honeypot mechanisms on tax-token contracts.
An upgradable contract — the logic can be replaced after deployment. For meme coins this is almost always negative: the rules can change after you've bought. Audit it before trusting it.
A Solana token authority that can freeze token accounts. If freeze authority is still active, certain wallets may be blocked from moving or selling tokens. For meme coins, active freeze authority is a major red flag.
On Solana metadata, this controls whether token metadata can be changed. Less dangerous than mint or freeze authority, but still relevant if the token image, name or metadata can be altered later.
A contract feature that lets the owner block specific wallets from selling or transferring. Can be legitimate for compliance tokens, but for meme coins it is usually a honeypot warning.
A function that lets the owner pause transfers or trading. In serious protocols this can be a safety feature. In meme coins it can become an exit trap.
Limits how much one wallet can buy, sell or hold. Sometimes marketed as anti-whale protection, but if the owner can change it, it can also be abused to block selling.
Tokens kept by the creator or team. A small transparent allocation can be fine. A large hidden dev allocation is a loaded gun pointed at the chart.
How much supply is held by the largest wallets. If the top 10 wallets hold a huge share of supply, one coordinated dump can destroy the chart. Our Audit tool surfaces this percentage automatically.
Wallets that appear separate but are likely controlled by the same actor, often funded from the same source. This is how insiders fake "healthy distribution".
When multiple wallets were funded by the same wallet or exchange deposit before buying the token. Often used to detect bundled launches and cabal activity. Our Audit tool's bundle detection looks for exactly this pattern.
When the creator or dev wallet sells its tokens. Not always fatal, but early creator selling is one of the strongest signs that the team is extracting value instead of building a community.
Liquidity can be removed at any time. If the LP is unlocked and controlled by the dev, the coin can be rugged instantly.
A slow-motion rug where the team does not pull liquidity all at once, but slowly sells supply, stops communicating, misses promises, and lets the chart bleed to zero.
Similar to a soft rug, but usually more deliberate. The project keeps posting just enough updates to keep holders hopeful while insiders exit over time.
A coin launched mainly to extract fees, volume or creator rewards rather than build a lasting meme. Common in high-speed launchpad environments.
The Solana platform that lets anyone launch a meme coin in 30 seconds for $2. Coins start on a bonding curve; if they hit a $69k mcap target, they "graduate" to a real AMM. Most pump.fun coins die. A few become POPCAT.
A mathematical pricing mechanism where the token price increases as more is bought. Pump.fun uses one to bootstrap liquidity before a coin graduates to a regular DEX. While on the curve, you trade against a smart contract, not against other users.
When a pump.fun coin completes its bonding curve, usually around the ~$69k market-cap threshold, it "graduates": liquidity moves from the bonding curve to PumpSwap, pump.fun's own AMM. Before PumpSwap launched in March 2025, graduates commonly migrated to Raydium. Graduation is a milestone — most pump.fun coins never reach it.
The biggest decentralised exchange (DEX) on Solana. Most non-pump.fun memes trade here. AMM-style liquidity pools, low fees, deep books for the established names.
Solana DEX that pioneered "DLMM" (Dynamic Liquidity Market Maker), which gives liquidity providers tighter price ranges. Lots of newer memes launch here, and many graduated pump.fun coins migrate over.
Another major Solana DEX, known for its concentrated-liquidity "Whirlpools". Cleaner UX than Raydium, popular with semi-serious projects.
A way to submit multiple Solana transactions together, guaranteeing they execute in the same block in a specific order. Snipers and MEV bots use these to monopolise launches. Most "perfectly-bundled" launches you see were enabled by Jito.
An RPC provider for Solana — gives apps a fast, enriched way to query chain data. We use Helius behind the scenes for our Audit tool's holder + bundle analysis.
A popular Solana trading terminal used by meme coin traders for fast charts, buys, sells and token discovery.
A trading terminal used for finding and trading new meme coins quickly, especially on Solana. Often used by degen traders hunting fresh launches.
The default charting site for meme coin traders. Shows price, liquidity, volume, holders, transactions and trending pairs across chains.
Solana-focused market data platform with token charts, wallet views and trading data. Often used to check price, liquidity and holder behavior.
A Solana block explorer. Lets you inspect wallets, token transfers, holders, authorities and transactions directly on-chain.
Extra fee paid to get a Solana transaction processed faster. During hyped launches, bots pay high priority fees to beat normal traders.
Solana's way of measuring how much processing a transaction needs. Traders sometimes adjust compute unit limits and fees to improve transaction success during congestion.
Tools or routing methods designed to reduce sandwiching, failed transactions or bot extraction. Not perfect, but useful when trading volatile launches.
The token's unique address. On Solana people often say "CA?" when asking for the contract address. Always verify the CA before buying — fake copycats use similar names and tickers.
The short symbol of a coin, like DOGE, PEPE or WIF. Tickers are not unique. Many scam coins copy famous tickers, so always verify the contract address.
An exchange that runs entirely on smart contracts — no company, no signup, no KYC. You connect your wallet and trade against a liquidity pool. Examples: Raydium, Uniswap, Meteora, Orca.
A regular crypto exchange you sign up for, with a company behind it. Examples: Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, OKX. Coins listed on major CEXes are usually past the high-rug-risk phase.
The smart contract that holds the liquidity pool and quotes you a price based on a mathematical formula (usually x * y = k). Most DEXes are AMMs.
The two-sided pool of tokens (e.g. PEPE + SOL) that backs an AMM. People who deposit get LP tokens representing their share. They earn a cut of trading fees as long as their tokens are in the pool.
A receipt for your share of a liquidity pool. Holding the LP token = you can withdraw your liquidity. If LP tokens are burned or locked, no one can pull liquidity → safer for buyers.
Profit that bots can extract by reordering, inserting or sandwiching transactions in a block. On Solana, MEV through Jito bundles is what gives snipers their edge. As a regular trader, you mostly just lose to MEV bots without realising it.
A bot sees your transaction in the mempool, then submits its own transaction with higher fees to execute first. Common technique for "sandwich attacks" — buy before you, sell after, pocket the slippage you eat.
The fee you pay to have your transaction processed. On Ethereum it can be expensive ($5-50). On Solana it's effectively free ($0.0001). On busy days, bots pay massive priority fees to jump the queue.
A tool for moving assets between blockchains, like Ethereum to Solana. Bridges add risk: wrong chain, wrong token, bridge delays or bridge exploits can all cost money.
A token that represents another asset on a different chain or in a different format, like wrapped SOL or wrapped ETH. Useful for DeFi, but it adds another layer of contract risk.
The smart contract or trading system that finds the best path for your swap. Aggregators use routers to split trades across pools.
A tool that searches multiple liquidity sources for the best trade route. Jupiter on Solana and 1inch on Ethereum are examples.
A bot buys before your trade and sells right after, forcing you to get a worse price. You lose value through slippage; the bot pockets the difference.
The waiting room for pending transactions before they are included in a block. On Ethereum, public mempools make front-running easier. Solana works differently, but bots still compete for ordering.
A transaction that was submitted but did not execute successfully. You may still pay a small fee. Common during congested launches or when slippage is too low.
Permission for a smart contract to spend tokens from your wallet. On Ethereum-style chains, unlimited approvals can be risky if the contract is malicious or later exploited.
Removing token spending permissions from your wallet. Good wallet hygiene after using sketchy dApps or trading unknown coins.
Holding through everything, no matter how brutal the dump. Either the most committed believer or the most stuck bag holder. History will tell.
Selling at the first sign of trouble. Often used as an insult, often used by people who themselves paper-handed last cycle.
Buying a coin without doing any research. "I aped in for $500" = "I saw the chart and bought immediately". The opposite of due diligence. Sometimes works, more often doesn't.
Someone holding a coin that has dumped 90%+ from where they bought it. They will tell you the project still has fundamentals. They will be wrong.
Price going up dramatically. "When moon" = "when does my coin go up". One of the foundational pieces of crypto vocabulary, likely outliving the entire industry.
Wrecked. Lost a lot of money. "Got rekt on that PEPE long" = lost serious money on a leveraged trade. Universal across crypto.
Fear Of Missing Out. The feeling that drives you to ape into a coin already up 500% because you don't want to miss the 1000%. The single most expensive emotion in crypto.
Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. Negative talk about a coin or project, sometimes legitimate criticism, sometimes coordinated by people trying to buy lower. "Don't FUD my bags" = "stop saying mean things about my failing investment".
Aggressively promoting a coin, usually because you hold it (and want it to go up) or were paid to. "Shill thread" = "thread written to pump my bags". A core part of meme coin marketing.
Refusing to accept that your investment thesis was wrong. "Just cope" is what people say to anyone explaining why their dump is actually a "healthy correction".
"We're All Gonna Make It" / "Not Gonna Make It". Used for both coins and people. Calling someone NGMI is a soft insult. Calling yourself WAGMI is dangerously optimistic.
An insider group coordinating buys before public launch, sometimes with a celebrity or KOL. Their wallets pump first, retail pumps next, cabal sells. Almost every "celebrity launch" has a cabal behind it.
A trader who sells early, often at the first small profit or first red candle. Usually used as an insult: "jeets got shaken out".
A confident trader or community member who holds, buys dips or acts decisively. Often used ironically.
The exaggerated version of a Chad. Someone who bought early, held through chaos and somehow sold near the top.
A mainstream internet user who is not deep in crypto culture. When normies discover a meme, it can either mean mass adoption or the local top.
When a team, community or chart looks like it is building momentum. "Let them cook" means give it time.
Buy or push the coin aggressively. Used when a community wants price to move higher fast.
A trader or community member known for aggressively pushing or buying coins. More slangy, but common in degen circles.
A meme-cycle example where a viral mainstream character or theme becomes tradable through multiple tokens. Useful as shorthand for how internet memes turn into coin metas.
The part of X/Twitter where crypto narratives are born, pumped, fought over and killed. Meme coins live or die by CT attention.
A coordinated community push to flood a post, influencer or comment section with a ticker or meme. Often used to manufacture attention.
When the original dev leaves or rugs, and the community takes over promotion, socials and narrative. Some CTOs become real recoveries; most are cope with a Telegram group.
A wallet that holds enough of a coin to move the price by buying or selling. For most memes, anyone holding >1% of supply qualifies. Whales decide when the chart pumps and when it nukes.
A bot or user that specialises in buying coins in the very first block after launch. Their goal is to be the earliest entry, then dump on the human FOMO that follows. Most sniped tokens never recover from the first wave of sniper exits.
"Degenerate". Someone who takes huge, often irrational risks in crypto. Wears the label proudly. Aping into bonding-curve coins at 3am with house money is peak degen behaviour.
An influencer with enough crypto Twitter or YouTube reach to move markets. Coins often pay KOLs to shill, sometimes openly, sometimes not. "Paid KOL alpha" is one of the great oxymorons of the space.
Someone with privileged access to a coin's launch — pre-sale allocation, foreknowledge of the contract address, whatever. Insiders almost always profit at the expense of retail. "Insider buys" detectable on-chain are red flags.
The deployer of the coin. Their wallet usually holds the initial supply, sometimes legitimately for community distribution, sometimes as a pre-loaded dump bag. Always check the dev wallet balance — our Audit tool surfaces it.
Someone who posts early coin "calls" to a group or social feed. Good callers can move small caps. Bad callers use followers as exit liquidity.
Tokens given to influencers or KOLs in exchange for promotion. If not disclosed, this is a major red flag because the influencer may dump while telling followers to buy.
A person or firm providing liquidity and managing order books, especially around CEX listings. Can help stabilize a token, but can also be used as marketing cover for insider selling.
A wallet controlled by the project team. Should be transparent, labeled and ideally locked or vested.
Funds controlled by the project or community for marketing, listings, development or operations. A treasury is only as trustworthy as the people controlling it.
A wallet requiring multiple approvals before funds can move. Better than one person controlling everything, but still depends on who the signers are.
Creating new tokens. Either at launch (initial mint) or later if the contract allows it (a non-renounced mint authority). New mints inflate the supply and dilute holders.
Permanently destroying tokens by sending them to a "burn address" no one controls. Reduces supply. SHIB famously burned 410T tokens via Vitalik. Some projects burn tokens regularly as a marketing strategy.
Distributing tokens for free to a list of wallets. Often used as a launch tactic to bootstrap holders and create instant secondary-market demand. BONK is the textbook successful airdrop.
Tokens locked up to be released over a schedule (e.g. 25% per year for 4 years). Standard for team / investor allocations on serious projects. Pure fair-launch memes have no vesting because there's no team allocation to vest.
The full picture of how a token is distributed: supply, allocation between team / investors / community, vesting schedule, fees, burn mechanisms. For pure fair-launch memes, tokenomics is usually "100% in the pool, mint renounced, no taxes". The simpler, the safer.
A launch with no presale, no team allocation, no insider rounds. Everyone gets the same shot at buying from block one. PEPE is the most famous fair launch in meme coin history. Fair launches are rarer than they sound — many "fair launches" had cabal buys behind the scenes.
Selling tokens to investors before public launch, usually at a discount. Pre-sale buyers can dump on retail when trading opens. Pre-sales are not inherently bad, but they're inherently unfair compared to a true fair launch.
A tax-token mechanic where holders receive a share of every transaction. Popular in 2021-era tokens like SafeMoon. Often marketed as passive income, but usually funded by new buyers and trading fees.
A mechanism that automatically changes token balances or supply. Can be confusing and dangerous for casual traders because your number of tokens may change without a normal buy or sell.
A token with buy/sell fees built into the contract. Some use fees for marketing or liquidity, but high or modifiable taxes are a major risk.
A wallet no one controls, commonly used to permanently remove tokens from circulation. Sending tokens there is considered a burn.
Another name for a burn address. Often starts with a recognizable null or dead pattern depending on the chain.
Tokens that exist but unlock over time. If big unlocks are coming, future sell pressure may be high.
A scheduled release of previously locked tokens. Unlocks can cause dumps if recipients sell.
New tokens entering circulation over time. High emissions can suppress price because supply keeps increasing.
The phases meme coin season tends to move through: animal coins, then political coins, then AI coins, then back to animals. Each cycle the dominant theme rotates. Catching the new cycle early is where the asymmetric returns are.
An investment that goes up 100 times in value. The thing every meme coin buyer is mathematically chasing. Statistically nearly impossible — but not quite, which is the whole problem.
Money flowing from one narrative to another. "Rotating from BTC to memes" = selling Bitcoin to buy meme coins. Rotations drive meme seasons; when liquidity rotates out, even the strong memes bleed.
A meme-able event so culturally extreme that it marks the local market top. Usually a celebrity launch, a meme on the cover of a mainstream publication, or your barber asking which coin to buy. Funny in hindsight, expensive in real time.
The point where holders give up and sell at a loss en masse. Marks the end of a brutal downtrend and often the start of the recovery. Capitulation is painful in the moment and easy to spot in hindsight.
The story driving a coin or sector. AI memes had a narrative. Animal memes had a narrative. Political memes had a narrative. Memes without a narrative don't pump, no matter how funny.
Buying more of a coin to "average down" after it crashed, hoping to break even. Sometimes brilliant, more often a way to turn a bad trade into a worse one.
The amount of buying demand sitting in the market. "Bid is gone" = no one wants to buy your coin at any reasonable price. When the bid evaporates on a meme, the price can drop 50% in minutes.
What's currently working in the market. The meta rotates: yesterday's meta was AI agents, today's is dog coins, tomorrow's is something nobody has named yet. Trading the meta means buying what's hot now, before it stops being hot.
A market where traders are mostly competing against each other instead of investing in long-term value. Meme coins are often PvP: for someone to win big, someone else usually buys too late.
A zero-sum market means one trader's gain is another's loss. Meme coins can be negative-sum after fees, taxes, MEV and rugs are included.
Buying only because you expect someone else to buy higher later. A lot of meme coin speculation runs on this, even when nobody says it out loud.
A trade where the downside is limited to what you put in, but the upside could be many multiples. This is the core appeal of meme coins.
Strong belief in a coin or narrative. Useful when you are right, expensive when it becomes blind loyalty.
The reason you are buying a coin. "Funny dog with strong community" is a thesis. "Chart green" is not much of one.
The point where your thesis is proven wrong. Good traders define this before entering. Bad traders move the goalposts until they become bag holders.
When money moves from one chain, sector or meta into another. For example: profits from AI coins rotating into cat coins.
The idea that meme coins are priced partly by attention. More attention can mean more buyers, more volume and higher price — until attention moves elsewhere.
