It's meme coin time, and honestly, where would we be without them? Despite the general skepticism around meme coin investments, they have helped more people on their way to millions than any other token, except maybe Bitcoin. Their typical rising and falling could be a real pain, but if you enter the market when a meme coin is on a spike, it could change your life. 

But then, what are meme coins? And where do they stand in the crypto market? These questions, and more, have answers below. Stay tuned!

What Is A Meme Coin?

Meme coins refer to the class of crypto tokens that use animated images and cartoons for their logos while cultivating a large following on social media. The original idea behind meme coins was to provide some laughter and humor in an otherwise dry cryptocurrency market. The trading atmosphere can become charged and tense at times, and a little joke helps to lighten up the circumstances.

For the most part, meme coins simply exist in the cryptocurrency market for fun and often have no intrinsic value. Major financial advisor pages, like Forbes Advisor, list meme coins as very risky business, and for good reason. Meme coins are notorious for their volatility, rising and falling seemingly at will. The market is unstable, and you have to invest cautiously, armed with enough research and professional advice, to make profits in the meme coin market.

But meme coins weren't always investment options. Sure, they existed in the cryptocurrency market, but no one thought they were coins to be reckoned with until Dogecoin's massive spike in 2021. From mere laughs to serious business, meme coins definitely made quite the transition. 

Let's look at a brief summary.

Meme Coin History!

The history of meme coins started in 2013 in a college dorm room where Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer were toying with a code for a meme platform. Dogecoin was born in that room, and Markus claims to have written the entire code for the meme coin in his toilet!

So, Dogecoin was the pioneer meme coin, and it brought in the idea of supplying memes and cartoons for traders to view and laugh about while they analyzed coin charts and indices. By 2014 Dogecoin was up and about in the cryptocurrency market, spreading a little cheer everywhere. 

It pulled a moderate following over time. The dog logo was endearing to many traders, and the crypto jokes kept coming in steadily. Then, in 2021, Elon Musk announced that Dogecoin could be the next global currency, and that changed the face of memes forever. Dogecoin saw its market capitalization spike to over $80 billion in a month as celebrities and huge investors bought into the project.

But as a typical meme coin, lacking much in utility and use cases, it soon stagnated, and its rise to the top was short-lived. But the spike was so huge Dogecoin stayed in the top ranks of the crypto charts for months. 

With Dogecoin's newfound fame, many meme coin projects launched that year–and even the existing ones got boosts–aiming to take the top spot from the meme coin king. Shiba Inu, Floki Inu, Dogelon Mars, Anarchy, and Baby Doge Coin are some of the other prominent meme coins that launched in 2021, following Dogecoin's time in the limelight.

The Meme Coin Sector Today

The meme market trades over 300 tokens, as listed by CoinMarketCap, with a total market cap of about $15.39 billion at the time of writing. Dogecoin commands slightly more than half of that, and the Shiba Inu ecosystem sits at $4.86 billion. 

Since Dogecoin's popularization in 2021, the meme coin market has been expanding in terms of tokens. There have been many more launches since then, and many millionaires have been made from those launches. Pepecoin is the most recent success, as the token rallied up to 150,000% ROI for its investors between April and June. 

Like we said, sometimes, the meme market is a gold mine. Other times, it's a minefield. You have to do extensive research on a prospective investment before going in at all. 

Well, here are the top tokens in the meme market today, along with some background on them.

• Dogecoin (DOGE)

There isn't much to say about the top meme coin anymore, except that it has certainly had better days in the cryptocurrency market. Dogecoin is in a fix at the moment, mostly because it has not moved on with the rest of the market. 

• Anarchy (ANA)

Anarchy (ANA) is beyond just memes and laughs. It’s a meme coin project that is focused on true decentralization and building a community of like-minded people that are challenging the corrupt people in power.  By holding the $ANA token, you’ll earn passive rewards and be an active member of the community where you can propose and vote on decisions to move the project forward through the Anarchy DAO.

• Shiba Inu (SHIB)

Shiba Inu launched in 2021 and went on to make one of the most historic price rallies in the cryptocurrency market. The token rallied over 300,000% in about ten months, making many millionaires out of its earliest investors. 

Shiba Inu's development plateaued soon after–still no utilities!–but the introduction of a community in 2022 has worked wonders for the meme coin. 

• Pepe coin (PEPE)

Pepe coin made a grand entry this year, and the run threatened the top two coins in the meme coin market, Shiba Inu and Dogecoin. The token launched piggyback-style on the fame of Internet meme, Pepe the Frog. The Pepecoin project intends to launch into NFTs and animation generation, although it is making a slow start to life after its price dipped in July. 

Conclusion

Investing in meme coins is one of those businesses that could go either way. Meme coin whales are known for their uncanny ability to sense when to enter a meme coin project and when to 'dump' the project. 

It is always important that you carry out thorough research before opting for a meme coin. 

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If you're new to the crypto space, seek financial advice from a professional and don’t invest what you cannot afford to lose. This article is for educational purposes and is not financial advice.