Meme Coin: What They Are, Why They Surge, and What Really Happens After the Hype

When you hear meme coin, a cryptocurrency created primarily as a joke or internet trend, often with no intrinsic value but driven by community enthusiasm. Also known as dog coin, it usually starts as a viral joke—think Dogecoin’s Shiba Inu or Shiba Inu’s own meme-driven rise. But behind the laughter, there’s a real market. Meme coins thrive on social media momentum, Reddit threads, TikTok trends, and influencer tweets. They don’t need whitepapers or teams. They just need a crowd that believes—and buys.

What makes a meme coin stick? It’s not the logo or the name. It’s liquidity, exchange listings, and whether people can actually trade it easily. Some, like Dogecoin, got listed on major platforms and kept traction. Others, like Pussy In Bio (PUSSYINBIO), a dead Solana meme coin with zero trading volume and no active community, vanished overnight. These coins often start with a spike fueled by hype, then crash when the creators disappear or the community loses interest. Many are built on Solana or BSC because they’re cheap and fast to launch—but that also means they’re easy to abandon. You’ll find dozens of these in the posts below: coins that exploded, then went silent. Some had airdrops, NFT tie-ins, or fake partnerships. A few even tried to become real games or platforms, like BLOCKLORDS (LRDS), a blockchain-based strategy game where the token powers gameplay and governance. But most? They’re just digital confetti.

What separates the winners from the trash? It’s not luck. It’s timing, liquidity depth, and whether the project stays active after the launch. The SEC doesn’t care if it’s a meme. If it’s sold as an investment, it’s a security. That’s why you’ll see stories about SEC crypto enforcement, record fines targeting unregistered tokens that masquerade as fun projects. And you’ll see why exchanges like Jupiter or MetaTdex show up in the same feed—they’re where these coins get traded, whether they’re alive or dead. The real question isn’t whether meme coins can make you rich. It’s whether you’re prepared to lose everything when the meme runs out of steam.

Below, you’ll find real cases—some coins that died quietly, others that fooled thousands, and a few that actually built something. You’ll see how airdrops, exchange listings, and community drama shape their fate. No fluff. No promises. Just what happened, and why it matters.