Meme Coins: Understanding the Pop Culture Behind Speculative Finance

Wuxia (Amy) Bao
Oct 11
6 min read

Updated: Oct 13

The Rise of a Pop-Finance Movement

A decade ago, few would have predicted that an image of a Japanese Shiba Inu—captioned in Comic Sans—would one day underpin a financial instrument worth billions of dollars. Yet Dogecoin, created as a parody of cryptocurrency, and its many imitators now define a growing class of “meme coins.” Meme coins are a type of cryptocurrency that originates not from technological innovation or economic utility, but from internet culture, humor, or viral trends, such as Shiba Inu (SHIB), Pepe (PEPE), TrumpCoin, Floki Inu. These digital tokens are not merely financial products; they are cultural artifacts shaped by online humor, community identity, and speculative fervor.

The meme coin culture began with GameStop and AMC Entertainment—stocks that surged as retail traders on Reddit coordinated “short squeezes” against institutional investors. Soon after, the same spirit migrated to cryptocurrencies such as Dogecoin and Shiba Inu. By early 2021, Dogecoin’s price had soared more than 12,000%, reaching a market capitalization near $90 billion, fueled by social media endorsements and celebrity tweets. By mid-2025, $TRUMP, a politically themed meme coin launched on Solana, spiked more than 300% overnight and briefly reached a valuation in the tens of billions, driven by segments of political fandom, social media hype, and celebrity endorsements.

Yet, as with every meme-driven cycle, these tokens often soar to dizzying highs only to collapse just as quickly once the viral momentum fades. Despite these sharp corrections, the market continues to witness an unrelenting stream of new meme coins, each capturing fresh bursts of online enthusiasm. What’s striking is that investors remain irresistibly drawn to the thrill — even with full awareness of the extreme risk and volatility. The combination of community excitement, narrative play, and the possibility of overnight gains creates a behavioral loop that is as addictive as it is precarious.

These events were not isolated oddities but part of a broader behavioral and technological transformation in consumer finance.

A New Financial Consumer: Trading as Cultural Participation

In traditional markets, the investor’s motivation is economic: profit, diversification, and long-term gain. In the meme economy, participation is performative — a statement of belonging, rebellion, and humor. That is, to own Dogecoin or Shiba Inu is to join a community, not merely a portfolio. Social media posts, digital art, and in-group jokes form the symbolic capital of this economy. In marketing terms, meme coins represent a brand tribe, a collective of emotionally bonded consumers united by shared symbols rather than product utility.

The consumer here is not buying intrinsic value; they are buying cultural affiliation and narrative inclusion. For example, When someone buys Dogecoin, they’re not purchasing it because they believe it will revolutionize payments or outperform Ethereum’s technology. They’re buying it because they want to be part of the “Doge Army”, a humorous, friendly, and inclusive online community. They’re buying participation in a shared cultural narrative — a meme that celebrates irony, community, and anti-establishment humor. As with streetwear or esports fandoms, the transaction carries social meaning. In the blockchain ecosystem, where decentralization often translates into identity-driven participation, this emotional and symbolic engagement becomes central to understanding behavior.

The Attention Economy as the New Market Mechanism

In meme-driven markets, attention is the currency, and virality is the mechanism of value creation. Meme coins act as “shock transmitters” to broader financial markets during price surges — evidence that collective attention itself now moves capital across systems. From a marketing perspective, this mirrors the structure of digital influencer economies: visibility begets engagement, which begets monetary value. Price bubbles become “campaign peaks,” driven by viral moments — a tweet from Elon Musk, a Reddit meme, a coordinated “pump.”

Therefore, the meme coin is a social product first, and a financial product second. Its demand curve is a function of engagement metrics — shares, retweets, Discord chatter — rather than fundamentals. Price therefore behaves less like a reflection of economic information and more like a sentiment-driven popularity index.

This means that marketing, not mining, is the engine of meme value. The teams behind newer tokens like PepeCoin or Bonk operate less as financial issuers and more as digital brand managers, crafting identities that can sustain community virality. Their task resembles influencer marketing: keeping the story alive, framing participation as belonging, and converting cultural relevance into market capital.

Consumer Behavior in the Meme Era: From Speculation to Self-Expression

Philander’s (2023) research reframes meme investing as a form of recreational risk-taking. Consumers exhibit overconfidence in their skill, underestimating risk while chasing excitement. This behavior aligns with what marketing psychologists describe as hedonic consumption — purchasing not for utility but for emotion, play, and identity.

Unlike the traditional investor, the meme coin buyer perceives volatility as a feature, not a flaw. Sudden price swings become part of the entertainment experience. The thrill of “going to the moon” is similar to the anticipation in lottery play or online gaming. The behavioral triggers — variable reward schedules, community celebration, and intermittent wins — mirror the mechanisms of engagement in digital platforms and games.

In this context, meme coin trading represents the gamification of financial self-expression. It merges the dopamine-driven design of digital media with the symbolic gestures of consumer identity. Each transaction is both a bet and a broadcast — a signal to the community that one is “in on the joke.”

The Cultural Logic of Meme Coins

Meme coins draw power from internet culture’s aesthetics of irony. They mock the seriousness of finance while simultaneously participating in it. This paradox is central to their marketing success: investors are in on the irony but still seek real profit. Cultural theorists might call this metamodern participation — a state of being both sincere and self-aware. Meme coin communities sustain engagement through humor, parody, and shared absurdity. Dogecoin’s “much wow” language or Shiba Inu’s self-designation as the “Dogecoin killer” are acts of cultural branding — self-referential, communal, and participatory.

This cultural frame helps explain why traditional advertising fails in such ecosystems. Meme coins do not sell through persuasion; they spread through participation and remixing. Users become marketers through content creation, turning memes into promotional assets. The marketing system is thus decentralized, mirroring the blockchain infrastructure itself.

For marketers, this implies that authenticity and co-creation replace traditional top-down campaigns. Successful meme coin projects harness cultural virality by empowering users to extend the brand narrative — a concept closer to open-source marketing than to corporate branding.

Platforms as Cultural Environments

The ecosystems that sustain meme trading — Reddit, X (formerly Twitter), Telegram, and TikTok — are not merely distribution channels; they are cultural architectures. Their design features — upvotes, hashtags, reward icons — incentivize the same psychological triggers that Philander associates with gambling-like behaviors.

In marketing terms, these are engagement loops. The more often users check prices or react to community posts, the more emotionally and socially invested they become. This environment blurs the boundary between investment, entertainment, and identity performance. Gamification increases engagement but also fosters addiction. It is noticeable that when community sentiment can move billions in capitalization, the “fun” becomes a macroeconomic variable.

Performance and the Problem of Value

Yousaf et al. (2023) demonstrate empirically that meme coins, once marginal, now exhibit measurable connectedness with major financial assets. This integration challenges the idea that they are “harmless entertainment.” Their volatility can amplify systemic risk, creating contagion effects across asset classes.

Yet from a marketing standpoint, this integration also signals mainstreaming. As meme tokens appear on exchanges, payment systems, and NFT platforms, they evolve from cultural curiosities into consumer-facing brands. Their volatility remains, but their narrative matures: from “joke” to “movement.”

This evolution mirrors the lifecycle of digital subcultures that transition from fringe to mass adoption — from punk to pop, from underground crypto to Coinbase listing. The process requires balancing authenticity (community roots) with scalability (institutional trust). Projects that manage this transition — such as Dogecoin’s survival through multiple market cycles — achieve what traditional brands strive for: cultural endurance.

Marketing Implications: Emerging Patterns from the Meme Coin Movement

For blockchain marketers and educators, meme coins offer a live case study in cultural capital monetization. The following principles emerge:

Cultural and Identity Narrative: A compelling cultural narrative can create important emotional value.
Community as Distribution: Marketing no longer “targets” consumers; it mobilizes them. A vibrant community acts as both brand advocate and liquidity source.
Transparency and Responsibility: With rising evidence of gambling-like harm, ethical marketing must integrate behavioral safeguards—clear communication of risk, moderation of hype, and education on responsible speculation.
Hybrid Value Systems: As meme coins intertwine with art, NFTs, and social tokens, marketers must recognize that financial and cultural value now co-exist and co-amplify. Understanding this hybrid economy is key to sustainable growth.

Meme coins illuminate that culture is capital, community is infrastructure, and marketing is governance. The next generation of blockchain professionals must therefore think not only in terms of code or price but in terms of meaning-making — how digital tribes construct, circulate, and sustain belief.

The question is no longer whether meme coins have value, but what they represent, why they appear, and how they may evolve. For some, they are high-risk gambles; for others, they are participatory forms or social experiments. In the meme economy, every trade tells a story.