How to invest in stupid memecoins
Your guide to trading fundamentally worthless tokens and winning the glorious battle of onchain PVP.
All crypto investment carries a substantial amount of risk, but in a sea of volatility and shiny new vaporware, memecoins stand above the rest as the most perilous.
Still, a well-timed memecoin investment can be disgustingly profitable if an investor is early, convicted and knows what to look for.
While many rational and so-called reasonable critics bemoan memecoins as “stupid,” “pointless,” “worthless,” etc. — they’re unironically making themselves the butt of the broader memecoin joke.
Memecoin enthusiasts are hyper-aware that memecoins lack anything that comes remotely close to being called ‘value’ or any reason for investment other than “haha price go brrrrrrr.”
All good memecoins encapsulate the meta-irony of the crypto industry — which take the “UGH isn’t crypto just a giant Ponzi scheme?” critique, respond with “yes” and launch a token anyway.
Here’s a quick breakdown of what to look for when picking a stupid coin upon which to gamble your hard-earned cryptocurrency.
Memecoin investment checklist
This tweet from Virotechnics came in extremely handy when building out a quick checklist for good/bad memecoin projects.
Good memecoins
Strong identity: Good projects have an insanely strong sense of identity and wider memetic traction. They appeal to a wide group of people but are also still on the more niche side.
Massive cult followings: solid memecoins will have thousands, of community members who are willing to hold the token for extended periods while relentlessly spamming every last social media post with gifs and tickers.
$BITCOIN, SPX6900 ($SPX) and MOG are great examples of memecoins that have the right kind of utterly unhinged and fervently dedicated community.
Doesn’t take itself seriously: any project that brings a ‘holier than thou’ attitude by dunking on other projects or seems remotely earnest in any way, qualifies for an immediate and unforgiving sell order.
Younger appeal: As Viro points out, every good project should appeal to the meta-consciousness of the terminally online Zoomer (GenZ). The more self-referential and absurd the better. He — like many others — believes that Zoomers will soon form the new total addressable market (TAM) for absurd shitcoins.
Bad memecoins:
Too niche: There’s a very fine line between picking a culty coin and accidentally picking something so niche no one will ever care. Sometimes the best play is to find something you like and try not
Flip flop community: If you spend enough time terminally online and looking at projects you’ll start to see a lot of similar names and faces circulating throughout memecoin land. If the same people are slinging new tickers every few weeks, they' ain’t it.
Tries to have utility: Memecoins that try to have too much utility typically fail. Ultimately, any sense of real severity about the project runs counter to the real utility of the memecoin: being entirely worthless.
Cringe: Any memecoin that invokes a strong sense of cringe won’t do well, however during times of peak bull mania — relatively cringe tokens like Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Floki (FLOKI) tend to do pretty well, usually to do with a retail frenzy propped up by millions of dollars in real-world advertising.
Too literal: Don’t let a project like Memecoin (MEME) fool you. It’s not a memecoin. The premise is nauseatingly literal and fundamentally humourless.
The return of the Elon meta
The power of Elon’s tweeting once again carries a significant amount of weight. For the uninitiated, Elon was once able to send a token like Dogecoin surging well over 10-15% on the back of a single tweet, but after he purchased Twitter and saturated the app with his insane
For reasons unknown, Elon’s ability to pump shitcoins fell out of style and traders looking to newer, slightly more whacky approaches to pump their fundamental-less bags.
DBD and the author are of a similar mind when it comes to dog coins. Dogecoin is turbo-cringe, and I’m usually chronically averse to anything related to Elon, but BDB is right about one thing: retail loves dog tokens, and the memories of the last cycle stand strong.
Keeping in mind that the Elon meta seems to have returned, there’s something to be said for throwing a few pennies at Elon coins here and there.
Again, it’s important not to go too niche with these.
There were hundreds of tokens to do with Elon Musk’s starship — all of which imploded in a similar fashion to the rocket itself. While the rocket’s combustion was caused by an engineering failure, the memecoins’ failure to launch was caused by price momentum being too tightly-bound to a fleeting headline.
The new memecoin landscape
The most interesting new & shiny piece of pointless vaporware to cross my timeline has been a token called “Go fuck yourself” ($GFY) — based on Elon’s blunt message to advertisers in a recent interview.
This token treads a fine line of being slightly too “news-based” but the chart (as of 1:30 pm Dec. 2 AEST) looks every sendy - if my (shoddy) on-chain analysis is correct - the GFY token seems to have support from a large portion of holders that backed Pepe.
For those looking at other Ethereum (ERC-20) memecoins that also look alright in current conditions include: Harry Potter Obama Sonic Inu ($BITCOIN), Mog (MOG), Joe (JOE), SPX6900 (SPX).
On Solana, the author (the CIO of NGMI Capital) suggests taking a look at Bonk (BONK) Myro ($MYRO) and Toly (TOLY). Solana memecoins are potentially some of the best-leveraged plays on the broader Solana uptick. TLDR: if you think Solana will keep going up, then Solana memecoins may go up even more bigly.
Taking profets
Any significant investment in a new memecoin is never a '‘set and forget” kind of trade. Once you’re in you’ll need to keep a fairly close eye on charts the entire time you hold the position. If you’re in extremely early - set yourself target zones where you’re happy to take profets.
It’s worth noting that most mid-sized memecoins of the recent cycle typically top out at the $20 - $30 million market cap range: so that region stands as a very good place to take the bulk of profit and leave yourself a moon bag just incase.
A few exceptions ($grok, $mog) have reached higher than $100 million+ but they’re not the standard case.
Obviously, this is the author’s own subjective take on this. If you’re happy with riding it Valhalla or holding to zero then so be it.
Regardless of how high you think it’ll go, whenever you’re healthily in profit - remember to at the very least sell your principal, so that you’re at the very least covered for when the token inevitably comes back down to earth.
There is only one winner
It’s important to remember that all on-chain memecoins are completely PVP investment-wise (meaning that you or someone else will inevitably become exit liquidity — something you must avoid becoming at all costs).
It’s also worth noting that there’s only one or two major winners in the memecoin slaughterhouse in the long-term.
With that in mind, the author views Pepe (PEPE) as the next major normie-friendly memecoin of the next cycle.
Enjoy your memecoining anon - the author hopes this helps on your gambling (sorry, investment*) journey.
Disclaimer:
The authors’ own memecoin wallet is a treacherous graveyard of appalling memecoin investments, intermingled with the occasional giga send.
Even if investors stumble across a “good” token (ticks all the boxes of the aforementioned checklist) at a $200k market cap, approx. 70% of new memecoin investments will not be “the one” and investors should allocate accordingly.