'Creating a Meme Coin' in 5 Minutes

Only Pay a Fee of 7,500 KRW

Created on Solana-based Platform

It took less than five minutes to create 'The Korea Economic Daily Meme Coin'. This was done through the Solana-based meme coin creation platform, PumpFun. It took just three minutes to transfer the cryptocurrency Solana to the digital wallet connected to PumpFun. After pressing the meme coin creation button, the name of the meme coin (The Korea Economic Daily) and the ticker name (KED) were entered. A fee of 0.02 Solana (approximately 7,500 KRW) was paid, and the transaction began. Excluding the Solana transfer time, it took less than a minute to create the meme coin.

As soon as the transaction started, three anonymous investors bought and sold KED. They are presumed to be people looking to make short-term profits by buying initial meme coins.

There are quite a few meme coins on PumpFun that are presumed to have been created by Koreans. 'South Korea Coin' has a market capitalization of $39,928. This meme coin surged 56% in just one day on December 3rd last year, the day of the martial law. There are also meme coins themed around President Yoon Suk-yeol and Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the Democratic Party of Korea.

For these meme coins to succeed like the well-known DogeCoin, they need to be listed on actual cryptocurrency exchanges. This is because investors can easily trade them once they are listed on exchanges. However, the probability of a meme coin successfully being listed is less than 1%.

Reporter Jo Mi-hyun mwise@hankyung.com