Recently, with the rise of coins like WallStreetMemes, people have been taking a lot more notice in meme coins with the hopes that they could be the next big crypto to boom. With global figures like Elon Musk taking a direct interest in WallStreetMemes, it only added to the hype factor and made would-be investors get even more excited about meme coins.
Now, for those who don’t know, a ‘meme’ is essentially a term that was originally coined by Richard Dawkins in his book ‘The Selfish Gene’. Essentially, a ‘meme’ is a way of measuring a thought’s impact on society, and is a measurement of its impact on the collective consciousness i.e. how popular it is and how much influence it has. A meme can literally be anything – from a picture of a cat pulling a funny face, to a video of a grandma breakdancing. But how exactly do they make money and what are the top meme coins to invest in 2023? Let’s find out.
So, What Are Memes?
Despite the brief explanation of what memes are in the introduction, it’s important for you to have a thorough understanding of how they work and what they are before deciding to invest in them. You’d likely do the same for a company you were investing in, so doing the same for meme coins is just good business sense.
Now memes have been around for quite a while, and while they did exist in many forms and formats before actually becoming what we know them as today, we can kind of say that they officially started in 1993 and became popular in the mid 2000s. So while it is true that Richard Dawkins claimed the original term, the version we know today was adapted by a man named Mike Godwin when he started referring to the images left on early internet forums as ‘memes’.
Since then, the humble meme has evolved into a cultural and pop phenomenon, with memes around for literally every kind of situation, popular figure, song, unique moment – you name it and there’s likely a meme for it. Because memes actually make up so much of the internet, they tend to garner a lot of traffic for sites like 4chan, Reddit, Instagram, and even Facebook to name but a few. This traffic ultimately means money for these sites and over the years, they’ve earned billions of dollars in revenue simply from hosting funny pictures of cats and break-dancing grandmas on their platform. Weird, yes, but that’s the internet age for you.
Now, meme coins started with Dogecoin which is basically a conventional cryptocurrency, just based on the famous Shiba Inu meme known simply as ‘doge’. This was the first time that a meme had been turned into a currency, and to date, Dogecoin has a market cap of $9.57 billion! The next company to jump in on the craze was WallStreetMemes. They basically turned their NFT collection of memes into a coin very recently, and it’s proving to be quite successful so far. For the first time in history, veritable digital junk can now be turned into a very profitable product and those silly little cat pictures and dancing grandma GIFs can actually become worth a fool’s fortune.
How Do Meme Coins Work?
Thankfully, meme coins are no different from regular cryptocurrencies except for the fact that instead of having all the serious fintech branding, they opt for memes! Basically, these coins are generally sold at very low prices and are designed to act like a cheap digital alternative to fiat money. They offer you a lot more in terms of their affordability, but most are not widely accepted as payment methods at most conventional stores or even online shops. So, you’ll have to convert them into either another, more trusted crypto like Bitcoin, Ripple, or Ethereum to get around with them – or simply back into cash at a crypto exchange.
Most meme coins are based on the open-source Ethereum ERC-20 smart contract protocol. This basically means that they use the same distributed network of servers that Ethereum uses and are based on the same source code that was used to power Ethereum. This definitely helps to give them an added layer of security and trust, as so far, Ethereum is widely considered the most trusted alternative to Bitcoin – the granddaddy of cryptos.
Now, there are literally almost as many meme coins out there as there are memes, and to date, you can find up to 340 coins on different exchanges across the internet. Since Ethereum offers an open-source protocol, basically anyone with enough coding knowledge and experience can start their own cryptocurrency and base it on whatever they want to.
While the variety available is quite a tempting offer to intrigued investors, it’s important to remember that most meme coins aren’t always a great investment. You’ll definitely want to only look at investing at the more popular and trusted ones that are hosted on reputable exchanges and that have higher market caps, as this means that they’re less likely to tank or be highly volatile. On the other hand, knowing how to ride the volatility and get in and out fast on more unpredictable coins can prove to be quite profitable, albeit a bit risky. But in truth, so is trading on more common indices like the VIX – or Volatility Index, and this is a trick Wall Street brokers have used for years to make huge turnovers every year.
Which Meme Coins Should You Look Out For?
So, trying to determine which meme coin is going to be the next big climber or faller is pretty complicated. If you’ve heard that cryptos are unpredictable before, then nowhere is this more true and exemplified than with meme coins.
For more conservative investors, sticking to stable, popular coins like Shiba Inu and Dogecoin is a wise choice. You can see steady, but stable gains on these coins, with relatively low risk. For those looking to capitalize on fast, volatile trading, coins like PEPE and Floki Inu might be more like what you’re after.
It’s also worth browsing around some of the more trusted trading platforms that offer trading on meme coins, as you’ll often find that by both investing in a coin and then simultaneously placing trades on how it will perform can increase your profit by quite a considerable amount. Just remember you’re also spending more money, so your risk practically doubles. But by spending the time analyzing the chart’s historical data, you should get some rough idea of how the coin is performing and can hedge your bets a little.
It’s never a bad idea to spend some time investigating pre-sales on new coins. Generally, when a new coin is launching, the developers offer their coins at a very discounted rate in order to garner investors in the coin. It’s important to note that a cryptocurrency doesn’t have any assets that it can list as collateral or even to help buoy its worth in the marketplace. Essentially all the money invested in the coin is what it’s worth. So you’ll often find that once the coin actually releases at its full market value, you make quite a decent profit if you held a few in the pocket at a discounted price, and then got a quick jump in price. It’s also a good idea to be invested in a coin early on, so that if it does go through any major spikes, you can at least guarantee that you’re already invested in it and will stand to profit.
Conclusion
So, meme coins are definitely the most creative and ‘out-there’ take on cryptocurrencies we have so far. They’re fun, exciting, and quite lucrative if you know how to handle these strange and mysterious oddities.
However, a word of warning to the wise – be sure to do a lot of research on any one of them before you actually invest, as you really don’t want to make the mistake of losing a large portion of your investment on a dud. Do the work to actually study the price yourself and shop around to find cryptoexchanges that don’t have high fees – but are still reputable and not shady – as some have turned out to be utter scams in the past.
Thankfully though, there are lots of trusted exchanges out there, and in most cases, if you get a feel for how the process works on more stable coins, you’ll start to master the art of investing and learning how to ride the bulls with confidence.