How To Trade Meme Coins on Solana

Welcome to BonkBOT’s beginner-level guide to meme coin trading, where we’ll improve your understanding of on-chain trading, walk you through the steps required to trade meme coins, and explore popular beginner strategies.

Let’s get started! 

How To Find Coins

Caution advised - Due Diligence 

Before getting into the weird and wonderful world of meme coin trading, you must take some necessary steps to protect yourself and trade safely. 

Experienced meme-coiners check and analyze tokens before they ape in, but what are they looking for exactly?

These three primary pieces of information are a great starting point to check when finding coins:

1. LP Burnt

   
   

   When the liquidity pool (LP) is burnt, it means the developer can’t withdraw the funds. This protects your investment. You can use Birdeye or RugCheck to see if the liquidity pool has been burnt or not.

   
   

2. Mint Authority Disabled

   
   

   If mint authority is enabled, the creator can mint infinite tokens and dilute the value, so it’s crucial to use a service like RugCheck to ensure it is disabled, as to protect your meme coin investment.

   
   

3. Freeze Authority Disabled

   
   

   If a token developer or creator can freeze your tokens at will, it’s bad news for you. Make sure freeze authority is disabled (again, RugCheck will help) before making any meme coin trades.

   
   

Once you’ve found a token that meets these criteria, you should also check their social media presence and also analyze the token’s performance.

Gut instinct can only take you so far, so it pays to be detail-oriented and data-driven when investing. 

Check our docs for more information and guidance about due diligence. 

Where To Find Meme Coins?

The best place to start is by looking at popular crypto charting websites, such as Birdeye or DEX Screener.

These platforms detail coin performance, such as trading volume, number of traders, and price movement, to help you make informed decisions.

Many meme coin traders are looking for tokens that are early in their lifecycle and present the biggest opportunity, which are often known as “gems”.

Birdeye provides a “find gems” page, which allows you to filter through even more data related to coins they believe are trending. 

Beyond charting sites, the next best place to find meme coin gems is through social media, in particular, Telegram, Twitter, and Discord.

It might take a while and some research to find the right communities, but once you’re in them, they can be a gold mine for token recommendations.

Warning, these places are ripe for scammers looking to pump and dump their tokens (refer back to due diligence).

Meme Coin Trading Strategy

So, how to trade meme coins on Solana? 

There are dozens of strategies that you can find online, many based on anecdotal success stories.

You can choose to rely on what has worked for others, or you can test different ideas to find what works best for you. Ultimately, however, you must do your due diligence, understand your own level of risk, and make sure you’re not setting yourself up for failure. 

Here are three crypto trading strategies that balance research and risk, giving you a good chance of success while avoiding common meme coin mistakes. 

Strategy One: Meta

The Meta strategy is a way of finding which tokens have the best chance of attracting liquidity, which helps you to filter out poor quality tokens with low potential. 

This strategy asks four questions:

1. What theme does the meme coin fall into? Dogs, Cats, AI, PollFi etc

2. Where is the liquidity concentrated? Solana, Ethereum, Base, etc

3. Which influencers are talking about this meme coin? Elon Musk, Martini Guy etc

4. What IRL events are connected to this meme coin? US Election, War etc

When applying the meta strategy, you must look for the meta leaders and where attention is most concentrated at that time.

If a meme coin answers the questions above well, it might be good to get involved in, however, there are no guarantees. This strategy essentially allows you to invest in the latest trend and follow the liquidity. 

Strategy Two: Three Tab Trader

This Solana meme coin trading strategy requires you to open three tabs:

1. Your favorite Solana meme coin trading platform

2. DEX Screener

3. RugCheck

Once you have the three tabs open, you need to start your token analysis. Using your token trading platform of choice, switch the time frames to 30m or 1h and look for coins that have big 30m gains, large liquidity locked, and a mix of green and red candles.

Now it’s time for due diligence, so run that token through RugCheck and DEX Screener and see if any red flags pop up.

Red flags include:

• LP not burnt

• Mint authority enabled

• Freeze authority enabled 

• Low number of makers

• A recent price dip of 90% or more (they rarely recover)

Next, use your trading platform or trading bot to buy the coin. Once you’ve bought it, don’t take your eye off the charts. Try to sell it within 10-20 minutes when the price is up, to lock in your profits.

Strategy Three: Free Riding

Crypto trading strategies won’t work every time, but when they do work, they feel great. This particular strategy is great for quickly negating your risk.

Put simply, you wait until the meme coin you’ve purchased has increased in value, let’s say 60-100%, and then you sell your original investment.

At this point, you have no capital in the game to lose, and everything you hold in that meme coin is pure profit, which means you are “free riding”. Keep following the coin to sell it at a position you’re happy with. 

The flip side of free riding is knowing when to cut your losses. You won’t be able to free ride every investment, as some purchases will dip after you buy them.

You’ll need to do your own analysis on the coin’s signs of weakness to decide whether you think the token will recover or whether you need to sell and move on. 

Some extra tips for how to trade meme coins using this strategy:

• Avoid purchasing during big green candles

• Trade without emotion

• Learn from each trade

• Use tools and bots to help you

• Time your trades for high liquidity (Asia morning, Europe evening, US trading hours)

• Continually improve your technical analysis skills

• Check Rugpull, Dex Screener, and social media for more information

• Use different chart filters to extrapolate information

• Stay logical and don’t buy into meme coin hype

Now that you know how to trade meme coins on Solana, let’s look at how not to trade…

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Meme Coin Trading

Here are some tips from meme coin veterans about what NOT to do:

• Don’t FOMO

• Don’t buy low and sell high

• Don’t buy when everyone is paying attention or being euphoric

• Don’t overlook technical analysis and just “ape in”

• Don’t forget to DCA out of big positions to avoid slippage

• Don’t think that this will be easy - the best traders are plugged in to socials and alert to opportunities 24/7, treating this as a full-time profession

• Don’t trust all influencers - they are paid to create meme coin hype

• Don’t overlook Telegram - this is where the best tips, interactions, and bots are

After reading this guide, we think you might be ready, but before you make that final step into this volatile industry, do some more research to give yourself the best possible chance of success.

More Resources 

Once you’ve read about how to trade meme coins on Solana, here are some logical next steps:

• Go to YouTube and watch some long-form videos about Solana meme coin trading

• Research the most reliable meme coin influencers and follow them on Twitter/X

• Join some recommended Telegram groups

• Research different Telegram trading bots and how they can help you

• Use Reddit to ask for advice, read anecdotes from other traders, or learn how others do their technical analysis or apply their crypto trading strategies.

Good luck to you!