Meme Coin Trader The Ten Meme Coins You Bought Might Have Been Launched by Me

Authored by: Mia, ChainCatcher
Edited by: Marco, ChainCatcher
When discussing the distribution of memes with ChainCatcher, Old Mike (pseudonym) used an old joke: How many steps does it take to put an elephant in the fridge?
To Old Mike, a meme project is like “putting an elephant in the fridge”, it only needs three steps: preheating the coin issuance, managing market value, and maintaining the community.
During Meme Summer, ChainCatcher spoke with several meme coin operators, who either actively followed the trend by issuing meme coins and managing projects, or wholesale issued meme coins, creating a buzz and constantly shifting focus, or became “shareholders” by buying meme coins and becoming project operators.
In this wealth creation movement, the emotions of humans do not sync.
According to The Block Pro data, in May of this year, there were approximately 455,000 tokens created on the Solana blockchain, 177,000 on the Base chain, and 39,000 on the BNB Chain, not counting other public chains.
Most of the tokens created on Solana are meme tokens, partly due to the popularity of Pump.fun.
It is estimated that at least over 100,000 tokens are generated on the chain daily, creating an environment for one-click coin issuance, becoming a paradise for monetizing meme culture.
Perhaps behind every meme coin you think of buying in bulk, there is a team doing bulk issuance.
However, this carnival seems to show no signs of ending, with many institutions joining in.
Projects are in progress
Recently, Xiao Xi (pseudonym) placed advertisements about a meme coin in various media, announcing their collaboration with a film and television company to create a series of films based on the meme series.
Xiao Xi explained that he has always mingled in various “dog” groups, and many meme projects are not well-prepared, nor have they thought about what to do, they simply latched onto a trend, gained popularity and traffic, and quickly released the coin address and finalized the coin issuance time.
His project is in this situation.
Projects that were originally intended to be built slowly, jumped on the meme trend and quickly issued coins. Without a clear concept and product support, this project still achieved success.
“This success may be more attributed to market hype, as many meme projects now depend on market trends for their success,” Xiao Xi said.
Meme projects endorsed by celebrities are more likely to gain popularity.
The meme coin $Jenner from Caitlyn Jenner, the stepfather of American internet celebrities, rose a thousandfold from Pump.fun to the secondary market.
Musk endorsing Dogecoin became the representative of the last bull market’s surge.
Although former US President Trump did not personally endorse any memes, there are many tokens named after him in the market, which occasionally skyrocket or plummet due to his news.
However, most grassroots meme projects do not have the influence or intellectual property (IP) endorsement, and project traffic mostly comes from market trends.
If the project captures a trend, successfully starts pre-sales, bringing liquidity and initial funds to the project, some projects will begin to act.
“To be honest, we had nothing at the beginning, but users thought we were ‘keeping the project progress secret’,” Xiao Xi said, and later, after having money, the project’s development began.
When asked if this approach is a bit crazy and if users are not worried about the project running away, Xiao Xi said, “This coin issuance process has become the norm in the current meme market. I cannot confirm whether other ‘dog’ projects will run away, but at least we won’t.”
As Xiao Xi said, most meme coins originate from a specific trend or market craze, and project development and planning begin after funds are secured.
Regarding the “runaway” issue, for the “10U War God” investing in meme “dog” coins, it’s more like gambling, as this speculative idea makes the meme market more chaotic.
Senior meme player R (pseudonym) said, “Anything in the early stages will be chaotic, just like the A-shares in the 1990s, where everyone was skeptical. The current meme environment is much better than the previous bull market.”
A meme coin industry chain is emerging.
Meme Coin Industry Chain
From celebrity coin issuance to various animated characters, and even “emoji packs” issuing coins, all meme coins are not accidental.
Old Mike has been involved in the issuance of multiple meme projects. In his view, managing a mature meme project is like “putting an elephant in the fridge”, requiring three steps: preheating coin issuance, managing market value, and community maintenance.
This mature management matrix involves the entire crypto industry chain.
Coin issuance starts with preheating. Meme matrix researcher Ghost (pseudonym) told ChainCatcher that preheating can be done through meme IP self-fermentation, such as IPs like “pepe” and “doge”, which already have traffic, as well as creating resonance with the public to gain public traffic. Another method is through the crazy promotion by crypto KOLs, community leaders, and some industry media.
Old Mike believes that promotion is necessary for memes. If expectations are too high, it may be difficult for retail investors and whales to get involved.
Once the hype reaches a certain level, coins can be issued, with current sales methods being project pre-sales and fair public launches.
Regarding market value management of memes, some project teams choose market makers to intervene, while others choose to build together with the community.
Ghost believes that if a project team focuses too much on publicity in the early stages of meme issuance, starting with excessively high market value, it may lead to participants, airdroppers, or the project team losing control and abandoning the ecosystem.
Most “dead” meme projects on the chain show a pattern of starting high and falling low, either due to sell-offs by pre-sale investors or bad project teams “scamming” money.
In this regard, Old Mike stated, “Market value management should involve market makers, as whales continuously profit within a meme, making it difficult to achieve a steady rise. Regarding the so-called ‘project control’, most of it is small-scale trading, which for the project team is a ‘perpetual profit’.”
For project maintenance, R’s approach is to “promote during peaks and plan during lows”.
During market peaks, more promotion should be done to expand the market; when the market faces a downturn, plans need to be prepared, and the team optimized.
As memes develop in the later stages, Old Mike admits, “Going public is the only way out.”
Going public means going mainstream, but very few meme projects can survive to the secondary market; the primary market is the main battlefield for memes.
Going public also leaves some of the life and death of memes to exchanges because “if the liquidity is average and cannot generate fees, meme coins face the risk of being delisted by exchanges.”
So, when the benefits of going public start, project teams will also cooperate with listing promotions to boost prices. At this point, meme coin prices will reach new heights.
This height may become a new starting point or a final destination.
“Right now, there will be a lot of selling off in the public markets,” Old Mike said. Currently, most meme speculators tend to sell off when the benefits are realized, “they don’t care about selling high, after all, selling high is a perpetual profit.”
Speculators are the main audience in the meme race, and how to maintain this wave of speculators is the most challenging issue for project teams in meme coin development.
Bargain hunters or community consensus
Whether successful in becoming wealthy or hindered by memes, the real active participants behind each project have always been grassroots users in the crypto community.
R explained, “In the early stages, retail investors who like to engage in quick trades may eventually become more united.” Meme coins can be seen as a symbol of decentralization, and the community represents the manifestation of decentralized collective consciousness. When collective consciousness turns into consensus, the decentralization of meme coins can become complete.
Successful meme coins are not just led by project teams but also come from the collective consciousness of the community.
Community takeover (CTO) is common in the meme field, and R is also one of them.
When faced with early team malicious acts, R and a group of like-minded community OGs, KOLs, and volunteers began to voluntarily take on the entire operation of the meme project.
R said, “Our strength and influence, along with powerful KOLs, have led to the success of the current long-term team.”
In R’s view, saving a project from a malicious team is the power of community consensus and injects vitality and vitality into meme projects.
Currently, each meme project will have official TG and Discord groups, in addition to setting up official administrators to create an active atmosphere and answer user questions.
Most mature meme projects conduct regular AMA activities, showcasing project developments and answering user queries, while allowing the community to provide suggestions.
Compared to the centralization of mainstream coins, the top-down and bottom-up connections established by the meme community are more decentralized.
Excessive decentralization—Memes become a speculative casino
While meme coins push decentralization to the extreme, speculation thrives within it.
For Old Mike, he never thought he would issue coins at first, but the profit-driven and speculative nature of memes attracted him here.
The public transparency and decentralization on the chain make it a natural breeding ground for speculation.
Here, Old Mike has witnessed the emergence and disappearance of too many meme projects.
“For me, projects are like pets; I have no high expectations for them, and I see their entire lives from birth,” he said.
Few projects truly break through, with most projects starting and being cut, restarting, but perhaps with the same team behind them.
Old Mike defends himself, “I never consider myself a big loser; in the meme race, most are speculating, so there are losses and gains.”
In the meme casino, human desires are magnified infinitely in high leverage gains, attracting more and more profit-seeking speculators.
Ghost believes, “There are many ‘one-night stands’ in the meme market, where people are crazy about profiting. But afterwards, only trapped speculators and depleted liquidity remain.”
“Take a gamble, turn a bicycle into a motorcycle,” is a common phrase in the meme community. For most players who buy memes every day, buying coins is more like buying a lottery ticket.
“I buy ten popular memes every day, and one will bring a surprise,” but in most cases, all ten tokens end up empty.
As an investor and “builder”, R looks at memes from an investment perspective, “Many meme coins now have certain use cases and are gradually moving towards a good long-term development. As long as the investment is reasonable, I still have confidence in this area.”
In each market cycle, meme tokens are closely intertwined. A group of investors enthusiastic about a specific meme will gather and drive up the price of a particular asset in a short period, a strategy that has become popular in the crypto field, boosting token prices and revitalizing the entire ecosystem.
From Solana, to Base, and now to Ton, meme coins are leading this round of the bull market, with more and more traditional institutions turning their attention to memes. Avalanche has even established a specialized meme token fund.