The Meme Coin Era: From Gambling Casino to Industry System

In a unique phenomenon within the crypto market, meme coins have evolved from initial jokes into a full-fledged industry chain. Over 100,000 new tokens are created on-chain every day, and the ten meme coins you purchase are very likely to come from the same team’s bulk issuance. This is not a coincidence but a true reflection of how this market has already evolved. According to data from The Block Pro, by mid-2024, approximately 455,000 tokens are created monthly on the Solana blockchain, 177,000 on the Base chain, and 39,000 on BNB Chain. With the support of one-click token issuance tools like Pump.fun, meme coins have become the fastest wealth leverage and the largest speculative scene.

The ten meme coins you bought may come from the same team

In a corner of the crypto world, a seasoned operator promoted a partnership plan between his meme coin and a film company to multiple media outlets. But he openly admitted that most meme coin projects do not have real products to support them; they just happen to hit market hotspots. Such projects can go from creation to token issuance in just a few days, and only after capital flows in do the project teams hurriedly start planning.

Even more interestingly, many operators adopt bulk issuance strategies. When a hot topic catches fire, they quickly launch multiple related meme coins, using different narratives and IPs to attract funds. After a meme coin from a celebrity gains success, similar issuance models are copied to other hotspots. The success of $Jenner from Pump.fun to the secondary market’s thousandfold gains, the former glory of Dogecoin under Elon Musk, and the fluctuations of various Trump-related tokens have all become reference templates for newcomers.

These success stories encourage more and more teams to join the meme coin issuance army. An industry insider observed that the current norm in the meme coin market is: first ride the hot trend to generate traffic, then use the obtained funds to reverse-build the project’s fundamentals. Investors, when buying, are often unaware whether they are supporting a real project or a carefully packaged speculative tool.

The “Three-Step” Operation Law of the Meme Coin Industry Chain

As the meme coin market matures, a standardized operation model has gradually formed. Experienced practitioners summarize it into three core steps: preheating and issuing, market cap management, and community maintenance. This simplified “putting an elephant into a refrigerator” analogy reveals the lifecycle of meme coins from zero to existence, from hot to cold.

Step 1: Preheating and Issuance

Preheating has two paths. One relies on the organic dissemination power of the IP itself, such as PEPE and DOGE, which have cultural recognition foundations and can generate traffic and resonance. The other involves intensive promotion by crypto KOLs, community managers, and industry media to create hype. Proper preheating ensures that initial token prices do not spike too high, leaving room for later participants to buy in.

When the hype reaches a certain level, there are usually two options for token issuance: a presale led by the project team or a fair launch via platforms like Pump.fun. The former gives the project more control, while the latter emphasizes transparency and decentralization.

Step 2: Market Cap Management

This is a test of the operator’s true skill. Some projects involve market makers to maintain liquidity and price stability through professional traders. Others rely on community efforts to jointly maintain the market.

The key is to avoid the “high open, low close” trap. Many failed meme coins exhibit this pattern: overhyped initial valuations, followed by rapid decline due to early sell-offs by project teams or early investors. Experienced operators point out that market maker involvement is necessary because whales continuously arbitrage meme coins. Moderate market operations can help projects achieve relatively stable growth. The so-called “project-controlled” manipulation is mostly small-scale wash trading, which from participants’ perspective is zero-sum, but for the project team, it’s a “perpetual profit” strategy.

Step 3: Community Maintenance

The operational rule is “promote during the hype, push plans during the downturn.” During market enthusiasm, increase marketing efforts to expand participation; during downturns, use this time to develop new directions and optimize team structure.

Many meme coin projects’ ultimate exit is to list on top-tier exchanges. This means the project begins to go mainstream, but also that the fate of the project gradually shifts to the exchanges. Meme coins with low liquidity are at risk of being delisted. Once listed, the project’s positive momentum is often realized, and many speculators choose to sell at this moment, creating another turning point in meme coin prices.

Can community power rewrite the fate of meme coins?

Unlike traditional projects, meme coin communities exhibit a unique decentralized characteristic. When early project teams maliciously run away, some community OGs and KOLs spontaneously take over project operations (often called CTO—community takeover), which has become common in the meme coin world.

They manage Discord and Telegram groups voluntarily, regularly hold AMA sessions to showcase project progress and answer user questions, gradually building genuine community consensus. Some projects revived through community takeover prove that collective consciousness can sometimes surpass the original project design.

Such cases are encouraging but also carry significant risks. True decentralization of a meme coin project requires long-term community persistence and enough builders willing to contribute time and effort without compensation. Currently, most meme coin projects’ official Telegram groups and Discord channels only maintain basic community order and hype, far from genuine decentralized operation.

The boom and crisis of meme coins under speculative psychology

“Take a risk, turn a bicycle into a motorcycle”—this is a classic phrase in the meme coin circle. For most participants, buying meme coins is more like playing the lottery—“I buy ten hot meme coins every day, surely one will surprise me.” But in reality, most of the time, all ten tokens end up zero.

Operators have their own rationalizations. They don’t see themselves as “big cutters” but are just surviving in a market full of speculation. Under this logic, the meme coin market has evolved into a casino full of “one-night stands”—people are arbitraging wildly, but ultimately only leaving behind deeply trapped speculators and exhausted liquidity.

From Solana to Base, and now to Ton Chain, meme coins are leading the narrative of this bull market. More traditional institutions are paying attention to this track, with Avalanche even establishing a dedicated meme coin fund. This seems to imply that meme coins have evolved from mere speculative tools into a recognized asset class.

But what is the cost of this evolution? Is it the gradual formation of real application scenarios, or further expansion of speculative bubbles? In every market cycle, meme coins are always present, attracting investors passionate about specific memes, pushing asset prices upward in a short period. This strategy has become prevalent in crypto, boosting token prices while invigorating the entire ecosystem.

However, once the hype subsides, the only meme coins that survive will ultimately face a fundamental question: what value can they truly provide to the community? In the frenzy of speculation, this question is often ignored. But as the bull market cycle wanes, this question becomes increasingly heavy.