The True Value Logic of Meme Coins: Why Spreading Culture Is More Important Than Pumping the Price

A Multi-Billion Dollar Joke

One late night in May 2021, when that goofy Shiba Inu avatar appeared in the top ten of the cryptocurrency market cap rankings, the entire crypto world was stunned.

Isn’t this thing just a meme? How did it suddenly become worth so much money?

The story of Dogecoin starts in 2013. Two programmers, fed up with the speculative chaos in the crypto world, decided to create a satirical “anti-cryptocurrency.” They casually picked the most popular Shiba Inu meme on the internet as the logo and set the supply to be unlimited—a heretical move at the time.

Who would’ve thought? Joke or not, a group of people on Reddit actually took it seriously. They started tipping fun posts with this coin, organizing charity events, and even pooled money to sponsor a NASCAR driver and the Jamaican bobsled team. There was no fancy whitepaper, no technological breakthrough—just pure enthusiasm from a group of people, and this “joke coin” survived through several bear markets.

By 2021, it soared to $0.74, with a market cap exceeding $85 billion.

Elon Musk’s tweets certainly played a huge role, but the real heroes? It’s the ordinary holders who year after year created memes and organized online events. While other altcoins faded away, the Dogecoin community was still alive and kicking, having fun.

How Cultural Symbols Get Monetized

Shiba Inu, which launched in 2020, took a much smarter approach—it wasn’t a lucky accident, but a deliberate replication of this playbook.

Calling itself the “Dogecoin killer,” it also used a cute Shiba Inu image and rallied under the slogan “SHIB Army.” Every buyer felt like they were part of some grand cultural movement. The result? The price skyrocketed 120,000x in 2021, reaching a peak market cap of $36 billion.

Even crazier was PEPE in 2023.

This token, based on the “Sad Frog” meme, had no official team, no roadmap—just internet users spreading memes across platforms. In just two weeks, its market cap shot up to $7 billion. Can you believe it?

These cases prove one thing: The price of a meme coin doesn’t depend on how good the code is, but on how widely the cultural symbol can spread.

Disney makes money with Mickey Mouse; meme coins turn memes into tradable cultural assets. As more people recognize, use, and share a symbol, its value naturally rises.

Pressuring Project Teams to Pump? You Might Be Missing the Point

Many newbies, after buying a meme coin, immediately go to the community to ask: “When will you pump the price?”

Bro, if you really understand the logic behind meme coins, you’d know that’s totally missing the point.

Stocks are backed by company performance, Bitcoin is underpinned by blockchain technology. Meme coins? Their only “fundamentals” are community consensus and cultural virality.

Project teams are at best the spark; the real “market makers” are every single holder.

Just look at PEPE. It has no founding team, no operating company—just internet users spontaneously creating memes and spreading jokes on Twitter and Telegram. Every time you share a PEPE meme, every time you tell a friend how funny this frog is, you’re actually “adding value” to it—every act of sharing expands the influence of this cultural symbol.

On the flip side, if a community just waits for the project team to pump the price, it’s like sitting by a stagnant pond hoping the fish will breed on their own—you’ll eventually run out of luck. Hundreds of new meme coins pop up every day on Pump.fun, but 99% don’t last a week. The reason? They have code, but no culture—and no passionate community willing to spread the word.

Attention Is the Real Currency

In this era of information overload, what’s the scarcest resource? Attention.

The essence of meme coins, simply put, is the securitization of attention—packaging users’ views, discussions, and shares into tradable assets.

Social media algorithms naturally favor entertaining content, and meme coins are born for viral spread. A funny meme travels further than ten pages of whitepaper; a simple “To the Moon” excites FOMO much more than technical specs. When you share a SHIB meme in your friend circle, you’re helping it grab a share of others’ attention—and that attention ultimately turns into real buying power.

Meme coins on Solana and Base chains are especially active because these platforms are fast and low-fee, making them perfect for retail traders’ high-frequency trading and sharing. Technology is just infrastructure—the real engine is the “social currency” created by the community.

Three Survival Rules

If you decide to join this cultural game, there are three things more important than watching the charts:

First, choose a cultural symbol you genuinely resonate with.

Don’t buy a meme coin you find boring yourself. If you think a meme is dumb, don’t expect others to spread it like crazy. Most PEPE holders grew up with this frog meme—they spread it because they truly like it, not just to make money.

Second, be a spreader, not a bystander.

Instead of constantly asking “When will it go up,” think about how to get more people to know about the meme. Make a funny graphic, write a witty joke, or make your presence known in relevant discussions. Every creative output you make increases the value of the coins you hold.

Third, treat investing with an entertainment mindset.

At its core, a meme coin is a “cultural lottery ticket.” It has a bit more cultural value than pure gambling, but it’s still highly speculative. Never invest more than you can afford to lose—treat it like buying a ticket to an amusement park. Having fun is what matters; making money is just a bonus.

The Rise of Grassroots Culture

When we turn memes into cryptocurrencies, we’re basically doing an IPO for internet culture. Every meme coin’s explosive growth is a grassroots culture ambush on traditional finance.

But remember: Without spreading, there’s no value.

No matter how big a project team’s promises are, or how loud a KOL shills, nothing is more powerful than that meme in your phone, ready to be posted.

Instead of waiting for someone else to pump the price, why not open your image editor now and create a financial cultural symbol for this era?

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