Meme coins are one of the strangest trends to emerge from the cryptocurrency and blockchain space. While most crypto projects have ambitious goals and are trying to solve difficult problems, most meme coins embrace the speculation in the crypto market and proudly proclaim that they are not concerned with utility or launching products.
We’ll be highlighting the 11 best meme coins to buy based on various factors such as market capitalization, staying power, and availability on both centralized and decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges. We’ll try to cover both the newest meme coins with potential as well as projects that have already established their position in the crypto market.
List of the best meme coins to buy in May 2024:
- Dogecoin - The first and biggest meme coin
- Dogwifhat - A meme coin that exploded thanks to Solana's rise
- Bonk - A meme coin airdropped for free to Solana users
- Pikamoon-A GameFi metaverse project
- cat in a dogs world - A cat-themed Solana meme coin
- Shiba Inu - A meme coin with a budding ecosystem
- Pepe - The meme coin that sparked the 2023 meme coin bull market
- Wen - A Solana-based meme token representing the crypto culture
- Floki Inu - A meme coin focused on utility
- Baby Doge Coin - A meme coin inspired by Dogecoin
- Bad Idea AI - A meme coin focused on AI
- Coq Inu - The Avalanche community's response to the meme coin frenzy
The 12best meme coins to buy in May2024
Before we continue, we should make it clear that meme investing is extremely risky, and you should be prepared to lose a part of or even the entirety of your investment if you decide to buy meme coins as an investment. Most meme coins are highly volatile and don’t have much in the way of fundamentals — their price tends to fluctuate simply based on sentiment.
1. Dogecoin - The first and biggest meme coin
Dogecoin is arguably the first meme coin, and it was created all the way back in December 2013 by Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer. Despite now commanding a market capitalization in the billions of dollars, Dogecoin was initially created as a joke and a parody of the extreme speculation that’s present in the cryptocurrency market.
The coin's name, "Dogecoin," is a tribute to the famous "doge" meme, and its branding is entirely based on the viral image of a Shiba Inu breed dog.
In terms of technology, Dogecoin is a fork of the Luckycoin cryptocurrency. Luckycoin is a fork of Litecoin, which is in itself a fork of Bitcoin. Essentially, this means that Dogecoin is quite similar to Bitcoin in terms of its technological foundations. Dogecoin's security is maintained via a Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism, and the coin is merge-mined alongside Litecoin.
In contrast to Bitcoin and Litecoin, which both limit the number of coins that can exist, DOGE's maximum supply has no upper limit. Every year, 5 billion new DOGE are introduced into circulation. Regardless, Dogecoin is still likely one of the best meme coins to buy, as it has demonstrated a lot of staying power over the last decade.
Notably, Dogecoin has been embraced by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, who says DOGE is his favorite cryptocurrency.
2. Dogwifhat- A meme coin that exploded thanks toSolana's rise
Dogwifhat is a Solana-based meme coin that made its debut in November of 2023, right as enthusiasm for the Solana ecosystem began skyrocketing on the heels of SOL's exceptionalperformance throughout 2023.
Like most other meme coins that have been finding success recently, Dogwifhat is a very "minimalist" project in the sense that it has no stated goals or utility. The coin's branding is entirely based on a single picture of a dog wearing a hat, which is frequently edited to feature different types of headwear.
The Dogwifhat project's humor mostly takes inspiration from obscure internet jokes. Likemany other meme coins, WIF appears to be poking fun at the speculation and massive risk-taking that's rampant in the cryptocurrency markets.
Despite having practically no fundamentals or utility, WIF token benefited tremendously from the surge in interest for Solana. The meme coin, which traded at $0.0047 on December 13, 2023,shot up all the way to $4.80by March 31, 2024. Although WIF has seen a price correction from its all-time high, it's still seeing relatively strong trading activity.
3. Bonk - A meme coin airdropped for free to Solana users
Bonk is a meme coin created on the highly scalable Solana blockchain platform. It gained significant attention during its initial release in late 2022, when it was airdropped at no cost to the members of the Solana community. As stated on the Bonk website, the project’s goal is to diminish the influence of venture capital investors within the Solana network and restore control to ordinary people.
According to Bonk's developers, the coin has been incorporated into over 130 different products spanning areas such as gaming, betting, decentralized finance, and NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens). For instance, the Bonk community has developed a variety of games where participants can both spend and earn BONK tokens.
Moreover, users have the option to invest their BONK in a range of decentralized finance instruments to generate returns, participate in risk-free lotteries, and engage in other activities.
Although there was much enthusiasm for Bonk at launch, the token has since seen a decline in significance. At present, its market capitalization stands at only $14 million, reflecting a loss of much of its initial relevance.
4. Pikamoon - A GameFi metaverse project
Pikamoonis a metaverse project centered around gaming and Play-to-Earn mechanics. The world of Pikamoon is called Pikaverse, and it consists of six regions: fire, rock, water, electric, air, and earth. The game is based on the well-known MOBA dynamics, which is a popular game genre populated by titles such as League of Legends and DOTA.
Players can compete against one another as well as NPCs. The player-controlled creatures are called Pikamoons. Each creature is its own NFT, with unique traits and abilities. By progressing through the game and completing in-game tasks, players can earn the PIKA token, which is the native digital asset of the Pikaverse.
PIKA can be used to purchase in-game items and upgrade Pikamoons. In addition, PIKA can be exchanged for real money on supported exchanges, which currently include MEXC and Coinfex.
PIKA first started trading earlier this year. At the time of writing, the token is trading at roughly 2 cents. With a token supply of 50 billion tokens, the project's current market cap is "just" $17.8 million. In other words, PIKA has a very high potential for growth, as it is far easier for a project that has a low-ish market cap to gain 1,000% or even more than it is for a project that already has a market cap in the hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars.
5. cat in a dogs world - A cat-themed Solana meme coin
Cat in a dogs world is a new meme coin that was released on the Solana blockchain in late March 2024. Since then, the meme currency has generated quite an impressive amount of social media buzz. The project's account on the X platform counts nearly 88,000 followers while its Telegram channel houses more than 15,000 subscribers.
At the time of writing, MEW occupies the third spotamong the largest Solana coins and tokensin terms of market cap. MEW first started trading around the $0.002 mark but needed just four days to touch $0.010, recording more than a 400% increase within just a couple of days. While the meme coin has slipped below its all-time high of$0.0099 recorded on March 321, it's still trading well above $0.004, up nearly 100% in the first 5 weeks of trading.
The popularity of MEW on social media and high trading volumes have prompted several major exchanges to list it, including KuCoin, Bybit, and OKX. There's still a notable lack of Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken when looking at exchanges that support MEW. If any of the "big 3" list the token, we could see MEW easily break its previous ATH and claim its mark in the crypto top 100. This was also one of the reasons why we included MEW on our list of best low market cap cryptos with huge potential.
6. Shiba Inu - A meme coin with a budding ecosystem
Shiba Inu is a meme coin issued on the Ethereum blockchain as an ERC-20 token. Anonymously launched by a developer using the alias "Ryoshi," Shiba Inu made its debut in August 2020. Notably, the project's lead developer, Shytoshi Kusama, also plays a significant role within the Shiba Inu narrative.
Shiba Inu has a very large token supply of one quadrillion, which translates to a very low nominal price per SHIB token. However, half of this supply was gifted to Ethereum's creator, Vitalik Buterin (who is not associated with the project). Later on, Buterin decided to donate a small portion of his SHIB holdings and burn the rest of his tokens.
Upon its introduction, Shiba Inu positioned itself as the "Dogecoin killer." Essentially, it emerged as a meme-driven token aiming to integrate Ethereum-enabled features like decentralized finance.
The Shiba Inu project has also created Shibarium, a layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum. The platform is designed to offer a cheaper alternative to the Ethereum mainnet and implements a mechanism that burns SHIB tokens with every transaction completed on the platform.
7. Pepe - The meme coin that ignited the 2023 meme coin bull market
Pepe burst onto the cryptocurrency scene in April 2023, attracting an immense surge of attention due to a big price rally amidst an otherwise quiet crypto market. This sudden price increase single-handedly rekindled the cryptocurrency market's enthusiasm for meme coins, a category that had become much less popular during the 2022 bear market. As of now, Pepe still remains one of the best meme coins in the crypto market.
Although the PEPE market frenzy has calmed since the intense activity in May, it comfortably maintains its position as the third-largest meme coin concerning market capitalization. At present, its valuation stands at an impressive $3.1billion.
The Pepe project has not concerned itself with introducing new features or products. It's important to note, however, that PEPE was never promoted as a utility token. The team has been transparent about PEPE's status as a "useless" meme token right from the outset.
8. Wen - A Solana-based meme token representing crypto culture
Wen is a meme token on the Solana blockchain that was distributed to various participants in the Solana ecosystem. Users who were eligible to claim a WEN token airdrop included past users of the Jupiter decentralized exchange, holders of top Solana NFT collections, and owners of the Solana-friendlysmartphone Saga.
The Wen token was founded by "Meow," the pseudonymous lead of the Jupiter project. According to a Twitter post from "meow", the WEN token is inspired by the culture of cryptocurrency enthusiasts who are always anticipating new tokens and launches, often using phrases such as "wen token" or "wen airdrop".
Although Wen is primarily positioned as a meme token or "culture token," it does have some minor utility. WEN tokens represent a share of a poem created by "meow," which was packaged into afractional NFT.
Another concept that's related to WENis the WNS (WEN New Standard) token standard for NFTs. According to "meow", this token was designed with an emphasis on maximizing "ecosystem composability, flexibility and backward compatibility".
9. Floki Inu - A meme coin focused on utility
Much like Baby Doge Coin, Floki Inu emerged as another meme coin project during the rampant speculation surrounding Dogecoin and Shiba Inu in 2021. The naming inspiration for Floki stems from Elon Musk's Shiba Inu dog, with the origin traced to the TV show "Vikings”. This is why the Floki Inu coin has a Viking-themed visual identity.
In contrast to numerous meme coins that debuted in 2021 but later became completely irrelevant, Floki Inu has demonstrated remarkable resilience. Its market capitalization remains noteworthy at $2.2 billion, securing it a very respectable 56th position among all cryptocurrencies.
The Floki Inu project has embraced a strategy similar to Shiba Inu, introducing a suite of products intended to improve the FLOKI token's utility. Examples include a 3D NFT collection, a decentralized finance tool called FlokiFi Locker, and a Metaverse game named Valhalla.
10. Baby Doge Coin - A meme coin inspired by Dogecoin
Baby Doge Coin was introduced in 2021 as a meme coin that attempted to ride the wave of excitement surrounding Dogecoin, which is evident from its name. As of now, BABYDOGE maintains an impressive market capitalization of approximately $166 million.
Unlike most other meme coins, the Baby Doge Coin is attempting to provide BABYDOGE with added utility to make it stand out in the already crowded meme coin sector. So far, the project’s strategy has successfully positioned it as one of the top meme coins.
The Baby Doge Coin team has introduced a decentralized exchange (DEX) known as Baby Doge Swap and launched an NFT collection on the Ethereum blockchain. This approach is quite similar to Shiba Inu, the second-largest meme coin in terms of market capitalization.
In terms of its tokenomics, Baby Doge Coin incorporates an automatic burn mechanism and enforces a 5% transaction fee that is redistributed to BABYDOGE holders.
While this feature could be beneficial for passive BABYDOGE holders, the 5% fee, unfortunately, also deters the active utilization of the BABYDOGE token. Simply put, not many people will want to transact with a token that penalizes all transactions with a 5% fee.
11. Bad Idea AI - A meme coin focused on AI
Bad Idea AI is one of the newest meme coins featured on our list. As the name suggests, Bad Idea AI is primarily exploring artificial intelligence (AI) technology. According to the project, they’re trying to “forge an alliance” between humans and AI. The project says it’s planning to create a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) where both people and artificial intelligence agents can participate and collaborate or perhaps even compete with each other.
According to the project, their experiment could result in many different scenarios. For example, AI agents could introduce very effective new ways of harnessing DAOs to achieve a variety of goals. It’s also possible that human-dominated DAOs and AI-dominated DAOs could clash.
While it’s hard to imagine that a meme coin project will provide any valuable contributions to the extremely complex subject of the relationship between humans and AI, Bad Idea AI could capture a lot of attention in the crypto market if the hype surrounding artificial intelligence continues to persist.
12. Coq Inu - The Avalanche community's response to the meme coin frenzy
Coq Inu is a meme coin that launched in December 2023, during the year's second wave of meme coin enthusiasm. Coq Inu is currently the largest meme coin on the Avalanche blockchain, boasting a market cap of roughly $111 million at the time of writing.
Similarly to most other meme coins that have managed to gain traction as of late, Coq Inu is also a project that's not making any efforts to give the token any fundamental value or utility. The project has no stated team, and doesn't discuss any kind of roadmap or future plans. However, the project seems to have recently organized a hackathon with COQ tokens being awarded to the winners.
The COQ token has a supply of 69.420 trillion, which is a nod to internet memes. Otherwise, the project's humor mostly consists of its rooster mascot and the various innuendos that can be made with a more colloquial name for the animal.
The bottom line - Be careful when investing in meme coins
Most meme coins don’t have much in the way of fundamentals — even the projects that claim to be focused on giving utility to their meme tokens are usually just launching re-branded versions of products that already exist.
Investing in meme coins could be potentially lucrative if you have good timing and a keen eye for which projects have a good chance of surviving. However, we don’t recommend buying meme coins if you have a low-risk tolerance and aren’t prepared to lose a significant chunk of your investment in case you make a wrong bet.
If you’re interested in taking a closer look at the meme coin market, make sure to check out our article exploring the next meme coin to explode.
FAQs
What is a meme coin?
A meme coin is a cryptocurrency that’s predominantly based on memes and internet humor instead of technology or utility. Some of the most popular examples of meme coins include Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, and Pepe.
How to buy meme coins?
If you want to buy established meme coins such as Dogecoin or Shiba Inu, you can use a centralized cryptocurrency exchange such as Binance.
If you’re looking to buy upcoming meme coins, the best place to get them is to use decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges. This is because anyone can list a token on decentralized exchanges, giving users access even to tokens that are in their early stages of development. Meanwhile, centralized exchanges usually have more strict criteria for the tokens they list.
What is the most famous meme crypto?
The most famous meme cryptocurrency is Dogecoin. One of the biggest reasons behind Dogecoin’s popularity is that this meme cryptocurrency has been publicly embraced by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk.
Which meme coin will reach $1?
The meme coin that is the most likely to reach a price of $1 is Dogecoin, which already came close to this milestone when it hit a price of $0.73 in the first half of 2021. Other meme popular meme coins, such as Shiba Inu, have a much larger supply, which means that it’s almost impossible for them to ever reach $1.
