By mid-2021, Dogecoin had spawned imitators. The most successful was Shiba Inu — a self-described “Dogecoin killer” that launched in August 2020 with a supply of one quadrillion tokens. By October 2021, SHIB had pumped 46 million percent from its lows. Someone who invested $1,000 at launch briefly held over $5 billion worth of tokens.
Then came SafeMoon. It marketed itself as a “hold-to-earn” token with a 10% tax on every transaction — half redistributed to holders, half burned. The math was dubious. The marketing was legendary. Celebrities pumped it. YouTube influencers promoted it. At its peak it had over two million holders, most of whom watched it collapse to zero. Class-action lawsuits followed.
The shitcoin era exposed the dark side of meme culture. For every Dogecoin that became a billion-dollar community, there were a thousand rug pulls — projects that existed only to enrich their creators. The memes were the bait. The contracts were the trap. And yet, the cycle kept repeating, because hope — and the dream of the next 1000x — was the most powerful meme of all.
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