Should You Invest in Meme Coins?
For every Dogecoin, there are countless other meme coins that are leaving retail investors underwater. Even Dogecoin has dropped 91% from its all-time high, while Shiba Inu is down 84%. Both still have market capitalizations of $8.7 billion and $6.5 billion, respectively.
Unlike Bitcoin, which is limited to 21 million coins, meme coins often have a high or unlimited supply. There are over 135.5 billion coins in circulation for DOGE, and every minute a successful miner receives around 10,000 DOGE, worth around $660. This is a huge difference in issuance volume compared to Bitcoin, where about 6.25 BTCâworth about $143,000âis mined every 10 minutes. Meme coins also typically do not have mechanisms like âburningâ that remove coins from circulation, so the number of coins in circulation continues to increase.
Shiba Inu, for example, has over 590 trillion coins in circulation at the time of writing this article. Shiba Inu and Dogecoin are considered success stories among meme coins. The fact is that most meme coins eventually disappear. âNo one remembers the names of Dogecoin's peers from 2013-2014, which now trade nowhere and cost untold amounts of speculators' money,â said Jonathan Zeppettini, head of international operations at Decred.
