Which Crypto Meme Coin Is Best? A Deep Dive Comparison

Meme coins have emerged as an integral and humorous aspect of the global crypto markets, with leading meme-powered cryptocurrencies boasting multi-billion dollar market capitalizations.

In this article, we explore what meme coins are and take a look at the top meme coins in today’s market.

What Are Meme Coins?

A meme coin or meme token is a cryptocurrency that gets its inspiration from internet memes created to grab the attention of social media users and meme lovers alike.

The first meme coin, Dogecoin, was created in 2013, a few years after the launch of Bitcoin. In 2021, the meme coin market experienced incredible growth after the price of DOGE skyrocketed, drawing attention to meme coins.

The coin’s popularity paved the way for newer meme coins like Shiba Inu, Floki, PEPE token, and Bone ShibaSwap to be created.

Another thing that continues to drive the growth of meme coins is the development of Web3. Web3 incorporates concepts like blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to usher in a more decentralized, user-owned Internet. And just like today’s internet, memes are part of the new version of the internet too.

Just like other cryptocurrencies, meme coins can be used through wallets such as Trust Wallet to buy NFTs and more in Web3.

What Is Trust Wallet?

Trust Wallet is secure self-custody crypto wallet anyone can use to buy, send, receive, and swap meme coins, such as DOGE, SHIB, and PEPE..

It allows you to store and manage more than 10M+ digital assets, including non-fungible tokens (NFTs), across 70 blockchains.

With Trust Wallet, you have full control over their crypto assets and private keys thanks to it being a self-custody wallet. With over 25M+ users and more than 60M+ downloads, Trust Wallet aims to make Web3 accessible to everyone.

In addition, Trust Wallet recently integrated its zkEVM into its Browser Extension to allow developers to execute smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain using zero-knowledge proofs.

Top 5 Meme Coins You Should Know About

Now that we know what meme coins are let’s take a look at the top five meme cryptocurrencies that you should know about.

Dogecoin

Dogecoin, which trades with the ticker symbol DOGE, is a peer-to-peer (P2P), open-source cryptocurrency created using an open-source code from Litecoin. It was the first-ever meme coin to be created by two developers, Jackson Palmer, and Billy Markus, and was launched in December 2013.

What began as a joke later went on to gain a substantial number of followers, and by late 2017, four years after its launch, Dogecoin experienced strong investor demand, which significantly increased its value.

DOGE was created as a satire of the popularity of cryptocurrencies and influenced the Shiba Inu meme sensation that blew up the internet in the early 2010s. The Shiba Inu meme features an image of a smiling Shiba Inu dog - a breed of hunting dog from Japan - which later became DOGE coin’s logo.

DOGE operates on its own blockchain that uses the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism and is used for making payments and carrying out instant transactions. With a PoW mechanism, miners can participate in mining Dogecoin and earn rewards in DOGE.

Unlike most cryptocurrencies, DOGE’s mining algorithm lets users mine the meme coin using graphics processing units (GPUs). This is one of the reasons why DOGE is popular amongst its users, as it can be mined at home. Besides being the leading meme coin, it also almost always ranks as one of the top ten biggest digital currencies by market capitalization.

Unlike Bitcoin, Dogecoin has an unlimited supply, and its current circulating supply stands at more than 139 billion DOGE. Dogecoin also has a very active online community supporting it and working to promote its use and adoption.

You can securely buy, manage, store, swap, and transfer your Dogecoin (DOGE) holdings using Trust Wallet.

Shiba Inu

Shiba Inu, which trades with the ticker symbol SHIB, is an Ethereum-based meme coin that, similar to DOGE, features the Shiba Inu dog as its mascot. Because both coins draw their inspiration from the Shiba Inu dog, Shiba Inu was popularly regarded as an alternative to Dogecoin and was, at some point, touted as ‘the Dogecoin killer’ by SHIBArmy, the coin’s online community of users and supporters.

The Shiba Inu meme coin was launched in August 2020 by an anonymous group or individual known as Ryoshi. Little to nothing is known of Ryoshi, a similarity SHIB shares with Bitcoin, whose founder is also unknown.

According to its white paper, dubbed the ‘Woof Paper’, Shiba Inu was created as the answer to a simple question; ‘What would happen if a cryptocurrency project was 100% run by its community?’. The paper also credits the fact that the origins of the SHIB meme coin stemmed from ‘an experiment in decentralized spontaneous community building,’ which is why the Ethereum blockchain was chosen to host the coin instead of developing its own blockchain.

2021 was the year that catapulted SHIB into the meme coin frenzy. Slightly a year after its launch, SHIB’s price significantly peaked, giving it a market capitalization of nearly $41 billion. It even went ahead to surpass its biggest rival, DOGE, at the time.

Today, SHIB is the second largest meme cryptocurrency by market capitalization and boasts of a current circulating supply of over 589 trillion SHIB tokens. SHIB is loved in equal measure as its price point makes it attractive for users to buy a large number of the tokens. Similar to DOGE, it also has a very active and supportive online community - SHIBArmy - backing it.

SHIB’s tokenomics are quite different in comparison to other meme coins. Its tokenomics is largely dependent on three additional tokens; Shiba Inu (SHIB, Leash (LEASH), and Bone (BONE), which all work together to support the operations of its ecosystem. SHIB is the predominant digital currency that had 1,000 trillion tokens when it was launched. 50% of the SHIB tokens were locked in Uniswap for liquidity purposes, while the remaining 50% was sent to Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s founder, for safekeeping. Buterin, in May 2021, donated over 50 trillion SHIB coins to India’s COVID-19 relief fund. Shortly thereafter, he ‘burned’ 40% of SHIB’s total supply to what was termed as a dead wallet.

LEASH, which is the second token in the Shiba Inu ecosystem, has a total supply of 107,646 tokens only. It was designed as a rebase token whose price was pegged to that of DOGE. However, the rebase function was switched off, allowing the token to revert back to its default ERC20 design.

BONE, which is the third token in the Shiba Inu ecosystem, has a total supply of 250,000,000 tokens. It's only available on ShibaSwap and is considered an in-between token between SHIB and LEASH in terms of circulation supply. In addition, BONE is a governance token that allows the AHIBArmy to vote on various proposals. You will learn more about BONE further down in this guide.

You can securely buy, manage, store, and swap your Shiba Inu tokens using Trust Wallet.

Floki

June 2021 saw the entrance of a new meme coin, Floki, which refers to itself as ‘the people’s cryptocurrency.’ Floki is a DOGE copycat multi-chain token that started out as a meme coin running on both the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and Ethereum blockchains.

Floki’s founders hoped that the coin would dethrone both DOGE and SHIB tokens and take the lead as the most popular meme coin in the crypto market. So far, this desire is yet to be achieved.

Floki’s origin can be traced back to June 2021 when tech mogul, Elon Musk, tweeted that he would name his Shiba Inu pet ‘Floki.’ Musk has been a long-time fan of meme coins and has voiced his opinions severally on Twitter, supporting meme coins such as DOGE and SHIB.

The project originally started as a dog-themed meme coin known as Floki Inu. With the continued growth of the project, it grew from a simple meme coin project into something more notable, then finally rebranded to ‘Floki.’ Floki’s developers, however, remain unknown.

Although Floki started out as a meme coin, it's currently shifting away from the meme coin narrative and has expanded to become a fully-fledged Web3 project cutting across decentralized finance (DeFi), the Metaverse, and the NFTs industry.

With its utility, Floki further aims to build its own blockchain ecosystem and develop different projects such as Flokiplaces and Valhalla, where users will be able to utilize the FLOKI token for payment to buy physical goods and trade NFTs. On the charity front, Floki has made an ambitious pledge to build a state-of-the-art school in every continent, then in each underdeveloped nation of the world. The latter is one of the reasons why people have been known to like it.

While there is no denying that FLOKI has a long journey ahead, its performance is slowly but steadily growing. Unlike DOGE and SHIB, FLOKI has a maximum supply of 20 trillion tokens, a total supply, as of the time of writing, of over nine trillion tokens, and a market capitalization of more than $300 million.

You can securely buy, manage, store, and swap your FLOKI tokens using Trust Wallet.

PEPE Token

One of the most recently launched meme coins to make it to our list is the PEPE token, which trades with the ticker symbol PEPE. PEPE is a new Ethereum-based meme coin that describes itself as the ‘most memeable memecoin in existence’ as seen on its official Twitter page.

Prior to its launch on April 14, 2023, PEPE’s founders secured and registered the project’s domain, pepe.vip. This was followed by the creation of a Telegram group and Twitter account. While barely a month old in the meme coin market, PEPE has grown in popularity and is easily namedropped among other famous meme coins such as DOGE and SHIB. And like the already mentioned meme coins in our guide, PEPE was also endorsed by Musk on Twitter.

Similar to other meme coins, PEPE also draws its inspiration from an animal. However, unlike all other meme coins in this guide, PEPE draws its inspiration from an internet frog meme that blew up in the 2000s. This is one of the factors that make it appealing to most meme coin lovers and distinguishes it from other meme coins. The PEPE token features Pepe the Frog as its mascot. Pepe is an internet cartoon character and meme that was initially created by Matt Furie in 2005. However, the actual crypto meme coin does not have any affiliation with Matt Furie but only pays homage to the well-recognized and popular meme.

While PEPE’s website describes the coin as a ‘meme coin with no intrinsic value or expectation of financial return,’ it has an informal road map that has three phases. In addition, the PEPE token does not have any known founders, with the team of developer(s) behind it opting to remain anonymous.

Shortly after its launch, PEPE’s price skyrocketed, which resulted in its listing on various crypto wallets, such as Trust Wallet.

Its price has also continued to experience an upward trajectory, with a current market capitalization volume of over $344 million. Additionally, PEPE has a maximum and total supply that’s slightly over 420 trillion tokens and centralized and decentralized exchange volumes of more than $210 million combined. PEPE’s supply number is allegedly a reference to the 4/20 cannabis culture.

You can securely buy, manage, store, and swap your PEPE token holding using Trust Wallet.

Bone ShibaSwap

Bone ShibaSwap, which trades with the ticker symbol BONE, is an Ethereum-based governance token that’s used in the ShibaSwap ecosystem.

ShibaSwap is a decentralized finance platform that features a decentralized exchange (DEX), liquidity pools, staking, and yield farming in its ecosystem. ShibaSwap was launched in July 2021 after a fork of SushiSwap and Uniswap, which are both DEXs.

We briefly touched on BONE when discussing the SHIB meme coin. As the third token in the ShibaSwap ecosystem, BONE owners are able to vote on upcoming proposals in the ShibaSwap ecosystem, primarily on which trading pairs get introduced to the platform. The more BONE tokens you hold, the more weight your vote will carry in determining ShibaSwap’s future.

BONE fits perfectly as the in-between meme coin as its sits alongside the very popular SHIB token and limited-supply token, LEASH, in terms of circulation with a total supply of 250,000,000 tokens. BONE, just like SHIB, was created by Ryoshi, a pseudonym used by the individual or group behind the tokens.

BONE’s tokenomics are pretty much the same as that of the SHIB token, as the two, together with LEASH, complement each other to ensure the ShibaSwap ecosystem functions as it should. However, it's a naturally scarce token thanks to its limited supply. In September 2021, the minting of the BONE token was halted after the supply reached 230 million tokens. The remaining tokens (20 million) have been reserved as rewards for validator roles which will be part of Shiba Inu’s upcoming layer-2 blockchain technology dubbed Shibarium.

Ranking at number 146 on CoinMarketCap with a market capitalization of over $220 million as of the time of writing, BONE’s centralized and decentralized exchange volumes are slightly under $9 million combined.

You can securely buy, manage, store, swap, and transfer your BONE token holdings using Trust Wallet.

The Key Take Away

Deciding on which crypto meme coin is best always comes down to your preference. Meme coins generally derive their value from internet memes. In addition, their success is tied to their virality - the ability to go viral on the internet.

What this means is that if you choose to invest in any meme coin, you are pretty much betting on whether other crypto enthusiasts will find any of the meme coins mentioned in our guide funny and for a long period of time to keep it afloat in spite of a bad foundation.

Moreover, meme coins are similar to other cryptocurrencies in that they are highly volatile, and their prices can experience extreme highs and lows in a fraction of a second.

It’s always important that you always do your own research (DYOR) before investing in any meme coin.

Download Trust Wallet today to buy, manage, and transfer meme coins with ease.

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Note: Any cited numbers, figures, or illustrations are reported at the time of writing, and are subject to change.