It’s the year 2023, and the meme culture got more popular than anytime. Every industry started to use memes for marketing or purely for fun. The crypto space is not an exception of the rule.

Internet memes turning into crypto tokens is something normal in 2023, but it wasn’t always like this.

Let’s see how it started.

Dogecoin (DOGE) – The original Memecoin that was ahead of it’s time.

Dogecoin (DOGE) is not just a memecoin, it’s the original memecoin. Dogecoin was officially launched on December 6th 2023 and since then, it was one of the most recognizable memecoin.

Having as a logo the famous Shiba Inu, DOGE started the memecoin market in 2020. Dogecoin (DOGE) was created as a joke, but the community liked it and so the crypto market had a new type of cryptocurrencies: meme tokens.

Dogecoin (DOGE) was initially used as a joke in the industry, people were obtaining it by mining on it’s native blockchain or getting them for free from doge faucets. Some people even used it as a gamefi token – playing games where users could win Dogecoin.

It’s humorous characteristic made Dogecoin a sensation among crypto investors – and the fact that people were using it made it a popular memecoin.

What are memecoins?

Meme tokens are basically cryptocurrencies based on internet memes. They are digital tokens with potentially no intrinsic value that relies on a strong community with many crypto investors in it.

All of the memecoins relies on community support, and their widespread adoption is due to the massive growth these coins usually get. Investing in memecoins is quite risky and should be treated with care, as pump and dump schemes are something usually on memecoins that are traded on a decentralized exchange.

Besides this, some memecoins creators rug pull their project after a few hours or days. Which means that the token bought has no actual value anymore – as the creator of the token ran away with the money. That’s why you should be extremely careful when putting money in new meme coins.

Social media was an important factor in the growth of memecoins. Most of them got at the top based on the social media hype, as people tend to pick the popular memecoins instead of other types of projects.

Top MemeCoins in 2023

There are a lot of memecoins that appeared after the massive Dogecoin returns. In fact, memecoins got somehow a legitimacy in crypto space. But the fact is, most of the memecoins ends as a rug pull or an abandoned project.

But there are some that thrived, and we’re going to focus on the best memecoins over the past years. We’ve picked 5 based on the community support, market cap, social media attention and past performance.

Let’s see the best memecoins for 2023.

  1. Pepe Coin

There aren’t many crypto people that haven’t heard about the Pepe coin. Pepe quickly became one of the best memecoins as the community started buying it to ride the massive growth that it had.

Started from almost 0, Pepe coin reached an market cap of 1.6 billion USD on 5th May 2023. Currently, it’s market capitalization is only 443 million.

The crypto community jumped on the hype train on Pepe coin, making it one of the fast growing meme token in crypto history.

Pepe coin claimed it’s spot as one of the top memecoins in the market.

  1. Shiba Inu token

Shiba Inu took the industry by storm in May 2021. Shiba Inu was created in August 2020 – a meme cryptocurrency similar to Dogecoin and based on the same internet sensation.

Since August 2020 until May 2021, Shiba Inu fluctuated but failed to have a pump like most memecoins. Instead, many memecoins saw bigger returns within that period.

But a 457% pump in May 2021 made Shiba Inu one of the best memecoins out there. Shiba inu (SHIB) actually made history by reaching a market cap of over 40 Billion USD – without any real world utility.

Everyone was buying Shiba inu, in a time when multiple utility projects were struggling to get attention on online forums.

It’s meteoritic rise put Shiba Inu in the crypto history book – and make the cryptocurrency market understood that memecoins can grow faster & harder than even legit projects.

  1. DogelonMars

DogelonMars token is a proof that the memecoin market is indeed something else. The cryptocurrency’s main purpose was for it to be used as a main currency once Elon populate Mars.

And of couse the idea was well liked by the memecoins degens, which made ELON one of the top memecoins for a short period. The peak of the ELON market cap was 1.24B and it’s currently sitting under $200 million USD.

A lot of people hoped it could reach it’s past value again, but for now it’s one of the old memecoins. If DogelonMars would reach Shiba Inu’s market cap, it’s value would be $0.00000859 – a 6461% increase from the current price, according to MarketCapOf.com.

  1. Floki

Floki quickly became one of the most popular memecoins as it was called ‘the people’s cryptocurrency’. Their strong community & their massive ad campaigns made the crypto space recognizable FLOKI as one of the top memecoins.

FLOKI also launched a metaverse, an NFT collection and even a prepaid crypto card. While the market capitalization didn’t reached Shiba inu highs, Floki has a strong community and it’s one of the most recognizable memecoin.

  1. Dogecoin

When we write a list with the best memecoins, we cannot forget about the Dogecoin (DOGE).

Elon’s favorite memecoin almost reached 70 billion USD in market capitalization value. This lead multiple memecoins dev to use the Doge name into their cryptocurrency – and coins like Baby Doge Coin appeared that way.

The ‘plan’ was for Dogecoin to reach $1, but it’s massive growth stopped at around $0.75. Currently sittinng at 6 cents, Dogecoin is the original meme cryptocurrency, the first memecoin to ever reach viral on social media and the favorite token of Elon Musk.

Will it reach $1? We can’t know that. But among all memecoins, Dogecoin is still the most valuable based on it’s market cap.

Conclusion

Buying a memecoin can be risky, as a lot of them appear daily. Probably less than 1% of the memecoins that appear don’t fail after a week or two. Survive on the long term? There are probably less than 50.

But the higher the risk, the higher the rewards. If you buy memecoins and hope to make some profit, picking a popular memecoin or two won’t hurt – as they might increase in price again in the future bull market.