10 Best Meme Coins To Watch

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In terms of their current market cap, here's our quick shortlist of some of the best meme coins to watch:

1. Dogecoin (DOGE) – most popular meme coin
2. Shiba Inu (SHIB) – meme coin with its very own DEX
3. Dogelon Mars (ELON) – meme coin with a great backstory
4. Baby Doge Coin (BabyDoge) – deflationary meme coin
5. Pitbull (PIT) – community-themed meme coin
6. Monacoin (MONA) – meme coin based on cats
7. Shiba Predator (QOM) – meme coin representing a dog in god form
8. Hoge Finance (HOGE) – meme coin clone of Dogecoin
9. Vita Inu (VINU) – high-speed dog coin
10. Banano (BAN) – meme coin from Nano hard fork

What Are Memecoins?

Meme coins are digital assets that were developed on the back of funny memes or aspects of pop culture. Many meme coins were initially intended to act as a joke and don't typically carry a lot of value. However, the value of meme coins is usually dependent on the level of promotion and resulting community hype. Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB) are examples of meme coins that have had utility and purpose added to their projects to become some of the world's most traded assets that can be acquired from cryptocurrency exchanges.

Can You Invest In Meme Coins?

For investors that want to buy meme coins, they offer an alternative and high-risk investment option that can be bought on centralized and decentralized exchanges. Often conceived as a joke, coins like Dogecoin have taken a serious route and involved the crypto industry's big players. That being said, there are risks involved that need to be weighed up as there have been many cases of rug pulls within the meme coin ecosystem – making investors wary about investing in meme coins.

Top Meme Coins By Market Capitalization

1. Dogecoin

Dogecoin (DOGE) is the world's biggest meme coin in terms of its market capitalization and popularity among investors. It was inspired by the “doge” meme and features the dog Shiba Inu as its logo. At the time of writing, DOGE is ranked by CoinMarketCap as the 9th largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of over $10.4 billion. Created by Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus, DOGE is an open-source currency that was originally associated with Litecoin.

In 2013, the developers decided to fork Dogecoin from it as a “fun” crypto asset to appeal to the core Bitcoin audience. Recently, Elon Musk has been a public promotor of DOGE, often tweeting about the token and resulting in a surge in its popularity with investors flocking to buy Dogecoin.

Related: How much Dogecoin does Elon have?

Dogecoin is a decentralized token that can be mined using Scrypt technology. It has a block time of one minute which is ten times faster than Bitcoin. That is, depending on the number of confirmations required, the transaction speed for Dogecoin to an exchange can take up to 60 minutes.

When it comes to mining Dogecoin, miners can earn up to 10,000 DOGE tokens per block that are created every minute. There are over 1.44 million tokens created daily, which are then stored in the miners’ wallets or sold on the market. There is no cap on the maximum supply that can be in circulation. The current circulating supply of DOGE is 132.6 billion tokens.

Related: How many Dogecoins are left to mine?

Dogecoin was the first meme coin in the crypto ecosystem that set a precedence for what could be done through creativity and a community. Dogecoin has been used as a reward token on social media websites such as Twitter and Reddit to share quality content. Since the token price is affordable ($0.07898 at the time of writing), digital communities use Dogecoin to tip content creators.

Crypto enthusiasts can also go to Dogecoin Faucet, a website created by the Dogecoin community members that become a part of it. When a user goes to the website, they have to sync with the blockchain using the “MultiDoge” wallet. It is a light wallet that synchronizes with the blockchain by skimming through it. Crypto enthusiasts can also use the Dogecoin Core wallet – a full wallet to store their Dogecoins.

In 2021, the Dogecoin foundation was relaunched to put a renewed focus on the Dogecoin ecosystem. It has established a board of advisors that is in the works of creating three-year funding to create a dedicated team to further develop Dogecoin.

2. Shiba Inu (SHIB)

Shiba Inu (SHIB) is the second biggest meme coin by market capitalization. The coin was inspired by the dog breed Shiba Inu. Initially conceived as a “Dogecoin killer”, Shiba Inu is a highly versatile coin that has its Decentralized Exchange (DEX) known as Shibaswap. Shibaswap allows users to add to the liquidity pool, buy NFTs, stake, swap, join the DAO, and stake SSLP.

Shiba Inu was created in 2020 by an anonymous individual under the pseudonym “Ryoshi”. The original goal of Shiba Inu is to be analogous to Ethereum for Dogecoin’s mining operation. As one of the most popular meme tokens in this list, Shiba Inu was once able to outperform Bitcoin and yielded 30% returns for crypto investors.

Shiba Inu has multiple use cases other than trading on cryptocurrency exchanges. Most of these cases, however, are concentrated in Shibaswap, the official decentralized exchange. The exchange highlights three flagship tokens: Shiba Inu (SHIB), Leash Dogecoin Killer (LEASH), and Bone (BONE). Here are the utilities of Shiba Inu within the tokens:

• DIG: Dig is the name given to the liquidity functionality of the ShibaDex. Investors can add Shiba Inu to the liquidity pool to mint 1000 BONE per block.
• Bury: Burying means staking. Staking tokens allows investors to earn the derived assets. For instance, users can stake SHIB to earn xSHIB.
• Swap: This functionality allows investors to swap their tokens. Currently, there are hundreds of options available.

Like Dogecoin, the popularity and investment appeal of SHIB has also benefitted from public opinion from notable figures in the crypto industry. Shiba Inu has gained enormous support from Ethereum's founder, Vitalik Buterin. The price of SHIB saw a massive surge after the founder decided to burn 90% of his SHIB supply, and the remaining 10% was dedicated to charity.

At the time of writing, Shiba Inu is ranked by CoinMarketCap as the 16th largest crypto asset with a market cap of $5.1 billion. The current circulating supply is around 550 trillion and its current price is $0.000009304. To find which exchanges support the meme coin, read this article on where to buy Shiba Inu.

3. Dogelon Mars (ELON)

Dogelon Mars (ELON) is a meme coin that pays homage to Dogecoin and one of the biggest supporters of that crypto asset, Elon Musk. The token's name was inspired by the famous mars theme and has garnered a lot of attention in very little time. The token represents Elon Musk as a dog who is traveling the galaxy looking for home. Little is known about the developers of the token.

ELON attempts to leverage Elon Musk's prominence in the cryptocurrency market for its value. The meme coin in itself doesn't have much utility beyond buying and holding, however, it can be purchased from several reputable crypto exchanges that we have reviewed such as KuCoin, Gate.io, Gemini Exchange, and Huobi.

Following its founding, 50% of the original Dogelon Mars tokens were sent to Vitalik Buterin, who then donated them to various foundations and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations. It has been noted that ELON is being heavily used for donation purposes. The price of ELON reached an all-time high in November 2021, and its price became $0.000002279 due to its combination of “memeable” entities such as Elon Musk and Dogecoin. At the time of writing, the ELON price is $0.0000003034, with a maximum supply of 1 quadrillion and a circulating supply of 550 trillion.

4. Baby Doge Coin (BabyDoge)

The BabyDoge coin is an offshoot of Dogecoin. It was created by the fans of the Doge online meme community. It was initially designed to improve the transaction speeds when Dogecoin is being transacted on the blockchain. BabyDoge is added to the user's wallet each time a DOGE transaction is made. BabyDoge was built on the Binance Smart chain by creators whose identity is still unknown. It was launched in June 2021 and is currently held by over 1.3 million investors.

The BabyDoge is a deflationary meme coin. That is, it is designed to grow scarce over time by reducing the diluted market cap. Every time a transaction happens over the BabyDoge ecosystem, 5% of that transaction fee is transmitted to the user's wallet. Experts claim that the token is hyperinflationary because of the following three functions it performs to reduce the token supply:

• Coin Burning: Coin burning is the process common among developers and communities who seek to limit the supply of cryptocurrency – increasing the value of the remaining assets. Tokens are sent to the burn address from which they can never be recovered; this process eliminates the tokens from existence.
• Reflection: BabyDoge coin is added to the user's wallet using the method of reflection. That is, of the 10% fee that Baby Dogecoin pays during the transaction process, 5% is sent to the wallet. At the same time, the remaining is sold to a smart contract into the Binance coin and added as a liquidity pair on PancakeSwap.
• Liquidity Pair Acquisition: Baby Doge Coins are added to the liquidity pairs on the PancakeSwap DEX.

Other than the token’s deflationary nature, there are also use cases that make BabyDoge a unique meme coin. It has a robust roadmap. There is a BabyDoge mobile application and a card. The token's foundation has been establishing a partnership with Coinpayments to implement Baby Doge on e-Commerce platforms such as Shopify and Magento. Moreover, the token is also used to fund charitable donations related to animal rescue causes.

While other meme tokens rely purely on speculation and the community's general consensus to generate traction on their value. Their utility is typically limited. In the case of BabyDoge, however, there are real-world use cases in its pipeline. Due to these reasons, the token has received a lot of traction in the market, going as high as 3,500% of its original value at one point. The BabyDoge market capitalization is currently $121,681,719 million, and the maximum current supply is 420 quadrillions. At the time of writing, the BabyDoge price is $0.000000001057.

5. Pitbull (PIT)

Pitbull (PIT) is a dog-themed meme coin that is hosted on the Binance Smart Chain. It is a BEP-20 token that the developers consider to be a unique social experiment that pushes the investors to focus on the development of the community. Pitbull has an auto-staking mechanism in place to reward investors when transactions are conducted using PIT.

Much like the other meme coins on this list, the founders of the Pitbull project are anonymous. However, the ownership has been given to several community members and over 130 additional members voluntarily work on the project. The Pitbull project is backed by a strong community and a highly developed ecosystem that aims to give the meme coin a purpose. It has several use cases and has a detailed roadmap that consists of:

• PitTracker: A tool for investors to keep an eye on their PIT holdings and the profits they earn from auto staking.
• PitCharts: A charting and analysis tool that can be used for all the tokens in the Binance Smart Chain. When the full release happens, the team will sell advertising and premium membership of this tool to generate additional income.
• PitFarm: A liquidity pool for Pitbull tokens. The rewards farmed from this pool can be used to buy Pitbull NFTs. These NFTs are tradeable. The funds earned through trade will be divided among PIT Liquidity pool, marketing, shelter donations, minting, and designing.
• PitSwap: The AMM (Automated Market Maker) aims to make it easy for PIT investors to trade in the ecosystem. Future developments in the pipeline include staking, farming, and DeFi features.
• PitStore: The Pitbull merchandise shop.
• PitStop: A social network within the Pitbull ecosystem.
• PitFund: A fundraising platform.
• PitGames: A browser gaming center with card and lottery games.

Pitbull endeavors to continue developing a robust ecosystem for the DeFi space. While it started as a meme coin, the community backing the token consists of bullish developers about DeFi. The strong roadmap and the fact that the project has no centralized body aid in its popularity.

There are a total of 100 quadrillion Pitbull tokens our which 50% were burned when generated. The maximum supply now remains at 100 quadrillion. At the time of writing, the PIT price is $0.000000000413. Currently, PIT has a low market cap and is ranked #602. Despite its low market cap, PIT can be purchased from cryptocurrency exchanges such as Gate.io, OKX, Bitrue, and CoinTiger.

6. Monacoin (MONA)

Monacoin (MONA) is a coin inspired by cat memes. However, it is now open-source, decentralized crypto platform and P2P payment network. It was launched in 2014 with no pre-mine process and was built on the Lyra2RE algorithm. Much like Dogecoin, the Monacoin was developed off Litecoin and can be mined. For every 90 blocks processed, miners earn 25 MONA. Monacoin was launched in Japan by a person using the alias “Mr. Watanabe”. Nothing else is known about the founders, and no social media pages are dedicated to them either.

Monacoin is a regional cryptocurrency. That is, it has gathered a reputation in Japan and is supported by the local community. To increase the utility of the coin, various Monacoin-based web apps and services have been added to the project. Here are the facts about Monacoin.

• A better alternative for the Japanese audience: Monacoin was conceived in 2013 and has been trying to become an entry-level cryptocurrency for the Japanese audience.
• Transaction speeds: The 1.5-minute blocking time of MONA is one of the fastest cryptos to send than most Proof-of-Work (PoW) networks due to its unique hashing algorithm.
• A dedicated community: Monacoin is a community-driven project with a focus on decentralization.
• Ensuring transparency: Monacoin works on Lyra2RE and Dark Gravity Wave algorithms to provide users security, fairness, and transparency.
• No pre-mining involved: There was no pre-mining involved with Monacoin, protecting users from pump and dump schemes that have grown prevalent in the meme coin ecosystem.
• No hacking incidents: Monacoin is one of the few crypto assets that have not suffered any hacking incidents. It was partly because the meme coin is more insulated than the others on the list.

At the time of writing, the Monacoin price is $0.373, with a CoinMarketCap ranking of #475. There is a cap of 105.12 million tokens, and the circulating supply is 65.7 million. Monacoin is not readily available on the most popular crypto exchanges, however, it can still be bought from platforms such as BitFlyer, BitBank, CoinEx, BTX Pro, and Probit Global.

7. Shiba Predator (QOM)

Shiba Predator (QOM), or Shiba Doge Predator, is one of the latest additions to the meme coin ecosystem. Descending from Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, the project was launched in 2022 to compete with the most popular meme coins – Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Dogecoin (DOGE). The goal of the project is to redefine and redistribute the finance in meme tokens, which has led to the coin building decent interest from investors since its release.

As outlined on the project’s website, the Shiba Predator coin’s motives are clear from its name and logo. The image of a predator holding Shiba Inu, with the website stating: “Shiba Flipped DOGE…Now We Flip Shiba.” To achieve the financial freedom promised, Shiba Predator is building a community of like-minded people with a common goal – attaining financial freedom by leveraging the drawbacks of Shiba Inu and Dogecoin. With these changes, Shiba Predator aims to become one of the top meme coins on the market.

For example, the deflationary token is built on the Ethereum network, and it has a maximum supply of 5 quadrillion tokens, compared to Shiba Inu’s 1 quadrillion and Dogecoin’s no supply cap.

During our research, we discovered that the Shiba Predator team is anonymous. However, the team is believed to contain blockchain experts, which is one of the reasons the project has reached a large investor base. The project has also embarked on various marketing campaigns and has reached large audiences to increase its awareness since its launch.

Shiba Predator has no whitepaper, but here are some facts about the coin:

• Launched on 29 March 2022
• Has a maximum supply of 5 quadrillion tokens, which is massive for any meme coin
• Built on the Ethereum blockchain (ERC-20 token)
• Peaked on 3 April 2022, 4 days into its launch, to reach $0.000000380 (up by 165% from launch value)

Other than QOM’s goal to flip SHIB and become one of the biggest meme coins, the token lacks in utility, and it’s simply social media-backed. At the time of writing, Shiba Predator (QOM) has declined from its $0.000000380, and the token is now valued at $0.00000002038. Although, its value has increased by 5.4% in the past 24 hours from press time. The coin currently ranks at #671, according to CoinMarketCap.

8. Hoge Finance (HOGE)

Hoge Finance (HOGE) is another ERC-20 token that has garnered lots of attention on social media since its launch in February 2021. Despite just a brief run, HOGE has managed to attract a large number of community members and investors who believe in the project’s vision.

Hoge Finance has an exciting tokenomics that incentivizes holders to HODL and not sell the token. To achieve this, HOGE levies a 2% tax on every transaction. Token holders receive half of the tax income, while the other half is burned forever. In addition, HOGE has a maximum supply of 415,202,711,786 tokens, which makes the asset deflationary, and its future, promising to investors.

HOGE is a decentralized and community-owned project. The development team purchased their own tokens instead of getting a token allocation when the project launched. This decision is one of the most appealing aspects of Hoge coin, as it showed that the developers did not build the project to make quick money

Here are some key facts about HOGE:

• Launched in February 2021
• Listed on exchanges in the second quarter of 2021
• Price surged by 223% immediately after listing
• Price dropped after hitting an all-time high of $0.000943848311 in May 2021
• HOGE gained a +913% increase in September 2021
• HOGE is valued at $0.000023 USD and ranks at #719 at the time of writing.

Unlike other popular altcoins, HOGE is unavailable on centralized exchanges and most crypto marketplaces, so investors cannot purchase it with fiat currencies. One must first purchase Ethereum (ETH) and then swap for HOGE on decentralized exchanges like Uniswap, PancakeSwap, and Gate.io.

9. Vita Inu (VINU)

Vita Inu (VINU) takes pride in being the world’s first high-speed meme coin for smart contracts. The token powers the VINU ecosystem, including a unique Metaverse for an impressive non-fungible token (NFT) experience.

The coin aims to function like traditional meme coins, such as Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, but it offers more utility to drive its value and longevity. One of the biggest perks of investing in Vita Inu coin is that the token rewards holders a stake in the decentralized world. It offers users more security with its smart contracts and high speed.

In addition, the token’s enormous real-world use cases, including its Metaverse access that allows users to make friends, have fun, and learn about crypto, set it apart from many meme coins built around hype rather than their actual utility, which is why VINU has attracted thousands of investors, who have helped increase its value over time.

Here are some facts about VINU:

• Created in 2021
• Has a circulating supply of 759,880,011,619,644 VINU tokens at press time
• Has a maximum supply of 1,000,000,000,000,000 VINU tokens
• Powers the Vinuverse (the Vita Inu Metaverse)
• At the time of writing, VINU is valued at $0.00000001054 and ranks at #779, according to CoinMarketCap.

VINU is available on reputable exchanges like Coinbase, Binance, Bitmart, and MEXC Global.

10. Banano (BAN)

Banano (BAN) was created from a hardfork of the Nano (XNO) token. However, Banano is renowned for its fast and free transactions, as well as its unique design that offers users free BAN tokens. The coin was launched in 2018 by the creators of Nano and runs on the Nano blockchain. Therefore, it shares many qualities with the Nano coin such as its transaction speed and free transactions.

The main features of Banano are:

• Kalium mobile wallet for instant transactions
• Banano Vault desktop wallet for account balance tracking
• Hardware wallet for asset storage
• Tipbots for sending and receiving tokens from friends and community members

Banano has a total supply of 1.91 billion tokens, and about 1.43 billion BAN tokens are currently in circulation. At the time of writing, BAN is valued at $0.005437 and ranked at #790. BAN can be traded on exchanges like Hotbit, Coinex, and PancakeSwap (V2).

What To Look For When Buying Memecoins

Here are the factors to keep in mind before investing in meme coins.

1. Understand the project goals. Memecoins don't lay a lot of stress on utility. However, it is a good sign is the project aims for something other than generating profits. A red flag emerges when the community behind the tokens – often the developers themselves – creates false hype around the coin to pump its value and encourage investors. These “pump and dump” schemes have often been seen in the memecoin ecosystem. Therefore, it is vital to have a thorough understanding of the project to help identify a pump and dump. On the other hand, memecoins such as Shiba Inu have differentiated themselves by providing more to the community than just an inspired crypto asset. The Shibaswap is continually growing in terms of value.
2. Check the team behind the project. The most unexplained aspects of memecoins are that the development team is often hidden behind some social media pseudonym or a false narrative. While crypto investors often tend to play it up as a joke, regulations in crypto are coming. And it has become more important for cryptocurrencies to be more transparent.
3. Avoid meme coins that the developers mostly hold. Malicious developers often hold most of the tokens before pumping their price and selling them on the market to make inflated profits. Such memecoins are often “shitcoins” with no value. Therefore, it is important to know how much of the total supply the developers hold. Ideally, developers should not hold more than 5% of the total supply.
4. Verify the validity of the liquidity pool. It is crucial to verify the validity of the liquidity pools. The developer can withdraw from the liquidity if a security system isn't in place. Therefore, investors must always only engage with pools held by a burn address (addresses that start with 0x0000). It means that the liquidity has been permanently locked – stopping the developer from withdrawing from it pre-emptively.

Frequently Asked Questions