Why are meme coins worth tens of billions? Because spreading culture is more important than pumping the price.

How Did a Joke Become Worth Billions?

In 2013, two bored programmers took the internet’s most popular Shiba Inu meme and created a coin—just to poke fun at the then-crazy crypto speculation craze. Total supply? Set to infinite. Whitepaper? None. Roadmap? Even less.

The result? That thing called Dogecoin shot straight into the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap in 2021, reaching an all-time high of $0.74 and a market cap of $85 billion.

You might ask: How is this possible?

The answer lies in every meme that gets shared, in the relentless “To the Moon” posts on Reddit, and most of all, in the sense of belonging formed by millions of holders.

The Secret to Surviving Ten Years Without Tech

So what’s kept Dogecoin alive all these years? It’s not the code (it’s based on Litecoin’s outdated framework), and it’s definitely not just Elon Musk’s tweets.

What really kept it going through multiple bear markets is the community.

Redditors tipped each other with DOGE for funny posts, organized charity events, even crowdfunded sponsorships for NASCAR drivers and the Jamaican bobsled team. No one’s pushing to “pump” the price—people are just in it for the fun.

While other altcoins vanished one after another, DOGE fans kept making new memes and hosting online events. That cultural stickiness is the real reason it’s lasted a decade.

SHIB and PEPE: Copy-Paste Success Stories

Dogecoin’s success may have looked like an accident, but the ones that followed came prepared.

Shiba Inu (SHIB), launched in 2020, called itself the “Dogecoin killer.” Using the same Shiba Inu image and the “SHIB Army” slogan, it made every buyer feel like part of a cultural movement. In 2021, SHIB skyrocketed 120,000X, reaching a peak market cap of $36 billion.

Even crazier was PEPE in 2023. This “sad frog” meme coin had no team, no marketing budget—just users organically posting memes on Twitter. In two weeks, its market cap soared past $7 billion.

What do these cases prove? The price of a meme coin doesn’t depend on how awesome its code is, but on how far the cultural symbol spreads.

Just like Disney makes money from Mickey Mouse, meme coins turn memes into tradeable cultural assets. The more people recognize, use, and spread a symbol, the more valuable it becomes.

Stop Asking the Team to “Pump the Price”

A lot of newbies buy meme coins and then spend all day in chat groups asking, “When is the team going to pump the price?”

Bro, you’re missing the point.

Meme coins are a completely different beast from stocks or Bitcoin. Stocks are backed by company performance, Bitcoin is backed by blockchain tech, but meme coins have only one “fundamental”—community consensus and cultural virality.

At most, the team can light the spark—the real “market maker” is every single holder.

Look at PEPE: no founder, no team, just users organically creating memes and spreading them on social media. Every time you share a PEPE frog meme or joke about it with friends, you’re adding value to the symbol—every act of sharing increases its worth.

On the flip side, if the community just waits for the team to pump, it’s like a group of people sitting by a fish pond that can’t replenish itself—eventually, you’ll run out. Hundreds of new meme coins are born on Pump.fun every day, but 99% die within a week, because they have code but no culture, and even less of a willing community to spread them.

Attention Is Money

In today’s age of information overload, attention is the scarcest resource. Meme coins are essentially “securitized attention”—turning people’s interest, discussion, and shares into tradeable assets.

Platform algorithms naturally favor fun content. A funny meme spreads way easier than a technical whitepaper; a simple “To the Moon” sparks more FOMO than complex technical specs.

When you post a SHIB meme to your group chat, you’re helping it grab more attention. And that attention eventually converts to buying pressure.

Meme coins on Solana and Base are especially active because these platforms offer fast transactions and low fees, making them perfect for retail traders and high-frequency meme spreading. Tech is just the infrastructure—the real engine is the “social currency” created by the community.

Want to Play? Remember These Three Rules

If you decide to join this cultural game, these three things matter a hundred times more than watching price charts:

Pick a Symbol You Genuinely Like
Don’t buy meme coins you don’t get. If you think a meme is lame, don’t expect others to spread it. Most PEPE holders are Gen Z who grew up with the frog meme—they spread it out of genuine love, not just for profit.

Be a Spreader, Not a Speculator
Instead of constantly asking “When will it pump?”, think about how to get more people to know the meme. Make a funny meme, write a joke, or leave a comment under trending topics. Every bit of creative sharing increases the value of your holdings.

Treat It as Entertainment Investing
Meme coins are basically “cultural lotteries.” There’s more cultural value than pure gambling, but they’re still highly speculative. Never invest more than you can afford to lose—think of it like buying a ticket to an amusement park. Have fun first; profit is just a bonus.

The Grassroots Financial Blitz

When we turn memes into crypto, we’re basically doing an “IPO” for internet culture. Every meme coin moonshot is a grassroots culture blitz on traditional finance.

But remember: without virality, there’s no value.

The promises from project teams and calls from influencers are nothing compared to the meme you’re about to post on your feed.

Instead of waiting for someone else to “pump,” open your drawing app and create the next big cultural-financial symbol.

After all, in the attention economy, everyone is their own market maker.