WHAT ARE MEME COINS?
In this short beginner’s post we will look at the darling tokens of 2021 – the meme coins. But, before we begin to look at what are meme coins, we first need to understand what is a meme ?
WHAT IS A MEME?
According to Marriam Webster Dictionary a meme is:
‘an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture’ or ‘an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media. With meme coins we are obviously working with the second definition; the ‘amusing or interesting item..’
WHERE IT ALL BEGAN – DOGECOIN
Perhaps the most well known meme coin is Doge. Back in 2014 it was 0.00017 cents. At its all time high it was around 70 cents and it is trading, at the time of writing, at about 8 cents. This is a wild ride and no mistake. Especially considering the coin was made as a joke! Initially the coin was created by Jackson Palmer who promoted the cryptocurrency project with irony, satirizing the craze for cryptocurrencies that was happening at the time. However, it became popular. So much so, that the Dogecoin community even supported the Jamaican Bobsled team at the Sochi Olympics. They did not do well. In fact they came last in the runs they participated in.
WHAT IS THE USE FOR DOGE & OTHER MEME COINS
Bitcoin cleaerly has a use case as a limited supply, permissionless, fungible, and almost instantaneous digital currency. Also, compared with banks it does not allow third parties to control your assets. What about DOGE? Meme coins are really all about the community that uses them. If the community is large enough and wishes to assign value to something, then it has value. Many people use DOGE for tipping for content on Reddit, but it is also used by Elon Musk – reportedly SpaceX accepts it. Hence, if the community accepts it as a token of value and the community is sufficiently numerous the meme coin can have a use.
Doge is extremely cheap to transfer – a few cents in most cases. Of course this depends on the wallet you are using or the exchange you are on. Clearly it is a lot less expensive than Bitcoin or Ethereum. This makes it a great way to tip people small amounts for something they write or produce. Due to its perceived low value, it is also less likely to be hoarded (HODL). It is spent, given away and passed around, much like a currency should be.
OTHER MEME COINS
Riding on the success of DOGE, in 2021 a plethora of other meme coins hit the market, many of them based around a Shiba Inu theme (the original DOGE was a Shiba Inu). While DOGE may have succeeded vastly beyond the expectations of its founder others have not and were, perhaps, doomed from the start. Shikoku Inu (SHIKO) has had a steady decline and now trades at 0.000000000000950238 cents… thats a lot of zeroes. In addition, its trading volume has always been low and it is difficult to see what use it might have ever had. Without a community Meme coins are just dust. SHIKO is one of a number of such meme coins that never rose from the ashes in which they were born.
Shibu Inu SHIB is another meme coin that has high volume and is at number 17 in the rankings in terms of market value. It might be fun to dabble in if you enjoy the idea of being part of a meme community.
HOW TO BUY MEME COINS
To buy DOGE – go to any major exchange. It is not difficult to buy DOGE as it is listed on more than 50 exchanges. If you prefer to use FTX CRYPTO EXCHANGE you can trade it there for low fees. It’s easy to search for your favourite meme coin on Coinmarketcap and it will also tell you where to trade it. Read our guide about navigating Coinmarketcap HERE.
As a general rule, more obscure meme coins will most likely be relegated to more obscure exchanges. Stick to the bigger exchanges such as FTX or BINANCE if you are unsure if the project is reliable or not. While not foolproof this will give you a stronger starting point.
Watch the original DOGE coin video that started it all.
