How To Find Meme Coins Early
Every would-be meme coin hunter from each corner of the globe wants to know the same thing - how to find the next meme coin?
While there’s no exact science (far from it), there is a method to the madness in this downright bizarre and eccentric space.
In pursuit of your first or next moonshot, pore over this guide (you can bookmark it too) to prepare yourself.
How to Find Meme Coins Early – 7 Top Methods
To start with, here are seven proven methods to help you find meme coins early and improve your odds of catching the next 100x.
1. Presales
Presales are often the first opportunity to buy into a meme coin project, before it's listed on any exchange.
Why it works:
You’re buying at the lowest possible price
Projects offer discounts or bonuses to reward early investors
You get allocation before public FOMO kicks in
But here’s the catch:
No trading history means no liquidity safety net
Anyone can launch a presale, so scams are common
What to check before buying in:
Verified smart contract audit
Locked liquidity post-launch
Transparent and active dev team
A real roadmap and community engagement
Recent examples of presale hype:
TOKEN6900 (T6900): A nostalgic meme-meets-market play with a $5M hard cap
Bitcoin Hyper (HYPER): A Bitcoin L2 layer with meme coin branding and utility
Bonus tip: Sign up for launchpad alerts like CoinList, Polkastarter, or DAO Maker as they often feature pre-vetted presales with added security layers.
2. Launchpads
If presales are the wild west, launchpads are the gated communities.
Launchpads provide structured access to early-stage projects. They vet the team, technology, and tokenomics before opening the gates to investors.
Pros:
Added security and vetting
Built-in community and KYC checks
Cons:
You’ll need to verify your identity
Allocation is limited (lottery or tier-based)
High demand = tough competition for slots
Top launchpads to explore:
MemePad
Pump.fun (Solana)
DAO Maker
Launchpads don’t guarantee success, but they help reduce the odds of getting rugged.
3. Coin Aggregators & DEX Scanners
If you want to find meme coins as they go live, DEX aggregators and scanners are essential.
These tools pull real-time data from decentralized exchanges like Uniswap, Raydium, and PancakeSwap to show what’s launching, trading, and trending.
Go-to tools:
DEX Screener
DEXTools
CoinMarketCap DexScan
CoinCodex
CoinGecko
What to look for:
Token age (under 48 hours = early)
Liquidity (> $10K = not a rug)
Buy pressure (5-min buys > 10 = trending)
Locked liquidity and verified contracts
Holder count growth over time
Power filter setup:
Launches under 48h
Liquidity over $10k
Active buys in last 5 minutes
For revival plays, try:
Age < 3 months
Liquidity > $50k
1-hour txns > 50
4. Whale & Smart Money Tracking
Whales move markets. When large wallets ape into a new meme coin, it’s usually for a reason.
How to track them:
Use tools like MemeCoinTracker, BullX, Birdeye, or Nansen
Watch for large buys in low-cap tokens
Follow known smart-money wallets to copy their strategies
Read out indepth guide on how to track crypto whales
Seeing a $250K buy in a coin that launched two hours ago? That’s a signal worth investigating.
But always follow the money with caution since whales can exit just as fast as they enter.
5. Social Signals & Influencers
Meme coins live and die by the meme, and the memes live on social media.
Where to watch:
Twitter/X: trending hashtags, engagement, meme virality
Telegram: project groups, token launch updates, dev chatter
Discord: early community chatter, bot alerts, launch countdowns
Reddit (e.g. r/MemeCoins): hidden gems and honest feedback
What to look for:
Organic buzz across multiple platforms
Real comments (not bots)
Trusted KOLs
Avoid:
Obvious shilling from accounts with no prior crypto history
Copy/paste hype tweets or threads with no substance
Social confirmation can be a powerful filter, but use it with other tools, not instead of them.
6. On‑Chain & Tokenomics Analysis
Before buying any coin, especially a fresh meme token, you need to get under the hood, and for this you will need a basic understanding of tokenomics.
Key things to check:
Token distribution: If one wallet holds >2%, that’s a red flag
Liquidity lock: Is liquidity time-locked or can the dev pull the plug?
Holder growth: Are new wallets joining daily or is it stagnant?
Developer activity: Look at GitHub commits, contract updates, and deployer wallets
One great token check can be done on tools like RugCheck, TokenSniffer, or even directly in explorers.
7. Advanced Tactics: Bots, MEV & Sniping
Meme coin launches are often a race against the bots, and the bots usually win.
Sniper bots execute buy orders at the very first block, often beating human users by milliseconds.
MEV bots reorder transactions in blocks to extract profit, sometimes front-running or sandwiching retail buys.
How to stay competitive:
Use BONKbot to automate trades
Pre-set your slippage, gas, and speed to avoid lag
Follow bots, but don’t fight them.
If you’re not automating your execution, you’re already behind.
The earlier you find a meme coin, the more potential upside you have, but the risks are real. Use these 7 methods together: presales, launchpads, aggregators, whales, socials, on-chain audits, and execution bots.
No one tool will give you all the answers. But combining insights gives you an edge. And when the right meme coin hits, that edge can be life-changing.
Ready to hunt?
The Ultimate Strategy for Meme Coin Discovery
There is one strategy that the top meme coin aficionados swear by, and we’re going to reveal exactly how it works (even if they don’t want us exposing their clever techniques).
Firstly, there are some things you need to know before you enter ‘the trenches’ (a slang term used to describe the sometimes abhorrent conditions of the meme coin market).
Crucial Initial Knowledge
Rule number one for a strong meme coin discovery strategy is that you need a system and you need to be consistent.
Finding that consistent system won’t happen right away, so, paradoxically, you will need to try different systems and be inconsistent at first.
That kind of backwards thinking is a useful attribute in this space, which doesn’t always work the way you think it should.
Beyond that, these points must all be considered:
The odds of finding a meme coin that will 1000x is low and not everyone gets lucky.
Meme coin trading is a form of “attention trading” which means being on high alert as you follow trends while they unfold.
Having an exit strategy is just as important as being early - if there’s no liquidity, your investment is not worth what you think it is.
Solana and Base are the best blockchains to find meme coins in this cycle - anywhere else, and you’re entering the unknown.
Meme coin trading can be a full-time job, and anecdotal evidence suggests that those who eat, sleep, and breathe this space 24/7 will get the biggest rewards. . . but at what cost?
There are meme coin influencers, but not all of them are reliable or trustworthy. Take them all with a pinch of salt and, over time, build up a list of accounts that you can trust.
Telegram, Twitter, and Discord are all necessary. Get in the right groups and you can cross-reference information quickly. If 5 groups are all talking about the same coin, it’s time to do some due diligence.
Read those points again and then move on.
Let’s Begin Meme Coin Hunting
Firstly, you’ll want to filter good meme coins from bad ones, and while this is quite subjective, the experts tend to agree on the following points.
Good:
Visually appealing AND a good community following
Widely used meme on Twitter/Telegram/Discord
Memorable tagline with viral potential
Bad:
Doge and wif forks
Lazy meme coins (like random cat images)
Coins being shilled* by random celebrities
Now you know what to look for, here’s how to find the next meme coin, using a very popular and powerful tool.
*shilled = promoted.
Introducing DEX Screener
We already mentioned Dex Screener above in our favourite tactic, and with the highly populated market means a new approach is required, and that’s where DEX Screener comes in.
DEX Screener is a price analysis platform with data streams updating every 5 minutes across multiple decentralized exchanges and chains.
For meme coin hunting, DEX Screener is your new best friend.
Setting Up Filters on DEX Screener
Assuming that you’re a novice meme coin hunter, you probably haven’t had your big victory yet that allows you to quit your day job.
Until you get that big win, you probably won’t spend too much time hunting for tokens. So, this first filter setup is designed for those who don’t want to attach themselves to a screen all day long, but still want to be early to the best opportunities.
Timeframe: <48 hours - a decent coin will have traction after two days
Liquidity: >10k - wave goodbye to rugpulls
5m Buy: >10 - active trading on small timeframes is a good indicator
The above filter will show you decent meme coins that are building momentum, receiving regular investment, and are on their way to going viral.
Reminder: There are no guarantees, and this is not financial advice.
An alternative filter takes a wider look at the market to identify another type of opportunity - revivals.
Being early to meme coin movements doesn’t just mean finding hot tokens that have recently launched. It also means being early to the recovery or subsequent rise of a previously popular token.
Timeframe: <2160 hours (3 months) - anything older than this is either centralized or long gone
Liquidity: >50k - these settings help you find sleeping giants that have a lot of liquidity, but it also doesn’t filter out new projects that are performing well
1hr txn: >50
These two DEX Screener setups can help you get started in finding good opportunities early, but you may want to play around and tweak the settings to your liking.
Explore higher level meme coin trading strategies here.
Token Distribution: Perform a Quick RugCheck
If you’ve used the DEX Screener settings and think you’ve found a diamond, you should perform a quick RugCheck using a free tool on it and see what comes up.
Pay particular attention to token distribution. If you see that one wallet is holding more than 2% of the supply, that is a red flag. For many, that would stop from them buying the token, but it depends on how much risk you can tolerate.
Where there are whales, price manipulation is more likely to occur, but this can also work in your favor when the whales are the same influencers shilling the token.
How Can You Check if a Meme Coin Has a Strong Community?
The first thing to do is check for a strong meme coin community is head to their Twitter, Telegram, and Discord accounts to see if they are active and have a good following.
For Twitter, you can perform a follower audit to see if their audience is real or bought (bots). Some analytics services even offer a similar procedure for Telegram groups.
At this time, it appears quite difficult to access Discord as a bot, so audit tools don’t yet exist as far as we can tell.
How Can You Check If a Meme Coin Has a Strong Community - Part Two
For a deeper look at a coin’s community, find its Subreddit, YouTube, and any other social media accounts they might have.
In the Subreddit, flick through the posts and scan the comments both to see if there’s legitimate interaction, or to see if there is anything particularly positive or negative that stands out.
For YouTube, views are the obvious metric, but again, you’ll find more information by scanning the comments, and also searching for videos about that meme coin from other creators.
Use a Telegram Bot to Trade
Now that you know how to find coins early and verify if they’re good investments or not, it’s time to trade.
When it comes to the execution stage, Telegram Bots like BONKbot have removed 99% of the confusion and room for error.