The History of Memecoins: From Dogecoin (2013) to Elysium (2026)
Memecoins began as a joke in December 2013 with Dogecoin, grew through Shiba Inu in 2020 and 2021, and exploded after Pump.fun made token creation a one-click product in January 2024. Each era lowered the cost of launching a coin and raised the number of coins competing for attention.
Memecoin history is short, and it moves in waves. Each wave has the same shape: a joke or a trend, a burst of attention, a very large rise for a few coins and a long fall for most of them. Seeing the timeline in one place makes the pattern easier to recognise the next time it starts.
Timeline
| Date | Event | What it changed |
|---|---|---|
| Dec 6, 2013 | Dogecoin launches, created by Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer | Proved a joke coin can build a real community. See Dogecoin explained |
| Aug 1, 2020 | Shiba Inu mints 1 quadrillion tokens | Showed a memecoin can live as a token on a general smart-contract chain. See Shiba Inu explained |
| May 2021 | Dogecoin market cap passes $85 billion; Vitalik Buterin moves large SHIB amounts | The first mainstream memecoin season |
| Apr 2023 | Pepe launches with no team and no roadmap | A pure meme that reached a multi-hundred-million-dollar value in weeks. See Pepe explained |
| Nov 2023 | dogwifhat goes live on Solana | Beginning of the Solana memecoin wave. See Bonk and dogwifhat |
| Jan 19, 2024 | Pump.fun launches | One-click token creation, under $2 per token. See Pump.fun explained |
| Jan 17, 2025 | The TRUMP coin launches on Solana | Memecoins reach politics. See political and celebrity coins |
| Jul 2025 | Pump.fun's PUMP token sale raises about $600 million in 12 minutes in the public sale | The launchpad itself becomes a large business |
| Nov 9, 2026 | Elysium mainnet opens with several launchpads | The one-click model comes to Kinetiq's Hyperliquid layer 2. See Elysium mainnet launch |
Era 1: the joke that worked (2013 to 2019)
Dogecoin was made as a parody of crypto hype, using the "doge" meme of a Shiba Inu dog. Its creators did not expect much, yet it built a friendly community and tipping culture, and it survived long after most coins from 2013 disappeared. Other copies appeared but none reached the same scale, because the attention was concentrated on one name.
Era 2: celebrity and social media (2020 to 2022)
Social media changed what moved a memecoin. Elon Musk's first Dogecoin post, "One Word: Doge", came on December 20, 2020, and his "Doge Barking at the Moon" post on April 15, 2021 came with a price rise of more than 100% that day. On May 5, 2021 Dogecoin's market cap passed $85 billion. Shiba Inu reached its all-time high of $0.00008845 on October 28, 2021, with a market cap around $51.4 billion, according to CoinMarketCap's timeline. Lawsuits followed: investors sued Musk, alleging Dogecoin was an unregistered security.
Era 3: pure meme, no pretence (2023)
Pepe launched in April 2023 describing itself as having no formal team or roadmap and "no intrinsic value or expectation of financial return". It passed a $420 million market cap in about three weeks. The pitch was honest in a way earlier coins were not: it said it was a meme, and that was the product.
Era 4: launchpads and the Solana wave (2023 to 2025)
Bonk gained more than 11,000% in 2023 and reached its all-time high on December 15, 2023. dogwifhat went live in November 2023 and later hit $4.83 with a $4.58 billion market cap. Then Pump.fun opened on January 19, 2024. As of January 2025, Wired reported more than 6 million coins launched on it. When creating a coin costs under $2, the scarce thing is not the coin, it is attention and trust. See what a memecoin is.
Era 5: politics, scandals and a reckoning (2025)
The TRUMP coin launched three days before the inauguration and reached a reported market value above $27 billion within a day. Weeks later the LIBRA token, promoted by Argentina's president, fell more than 90% after insiders sold. Surveys of that year were less kind to buyers: a Marquette University study found an equal-weight portfolio of the ten largest memecoins fell 78.74% between January 2025 and February 2026.
Era 6: new chains, same launch model (2026)
With Elysium's mainnet on November 9, 2026, the launchpad model arrives on a Hyperliquid layer 2, and several launchpads compete for creators. See launchpads compared. The market is younger and more concentrated, which is why tools that screen coins by liquidity, holders and creator behaviour matter more than ever.
What stays the same in every era
- A few coins rise a great deal; most lose nearly all of their value. See memecoin lifespan statistics.
- Attention moves faster than fundamentals, because there are none.
- Each cheaper way to launch brings more scams alongside more genuine fun.
- The winners were usually either first with a meme, or good at a community, rarely good at a "roadmap".
Sources
- Wikipedia: Dogecoin
- CoinMarketCap Academy: Shiba Inu timeline and price history
- CryptoPotato: What is PEPE
- Wikipedia: Pump.fun
- Wikipedia: Memecoin
- Wikipedia: $TRUMP
Numbers and dates were checked on November 11, 2026 and can change. Nothing here is financial advice.
FAQ
When was the first memecoin created?
Dogecoin, launched on December 6, 2013 by Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, is generally regarded as the first memecoin.
What started the modern memecoin boom?
Pump.fun's launch on January 19, 2024 made creating a token a one-click action costing under $2, which multiplied the number of coins.
Did memecoins go up in every wave?
A few coins rose strongly in each wave, but most lost almost all their value, and broad portfolios of large memecoins fell sharply during 2025 and early 2026.
Where do Elysium memecoins fit in this history?
They are the newest wave: the launchpad model on Kinetiq's Hyperliquid layer 2, which opened its mainnet on November 9, 2026.
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