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Memecoins
A memecoin is a token whose main product is attention. Attention is real. It is not a reason to ignore who can mint more, or who holds the supply.
Attention is not a reason to ignore the mint and the wallets that hold the supply.
A worked case
A coin trends for a day. The buyer does not read that one wallet holds most of the supply and the contract can block sales. They buy. The sale button fails, or the large wallet sells into them.
The usual loss
Insiders hold a large share, the crowd arrives, and the insiders sell. Or the contract lets them block your sale. Or the liquidity disappears.
A funny name and a busy chat do not answer who gets paid.
The check, unchanged
Who can mint. Who holds the unlocked supply. Whether you can sell. What the fee on each trade is. If the chat punishes those questions, you already have your answer.
Squid Game: the buy worked, the sell did not
In October and November 2021 a token trading on the name of the Netflix series Squid Game rose to a wild price and then collapsed. The BBC and others reported that buyers could not sell. The website disappeared. The series' owners had nothing to do with it. A name, a logo, and a chart had been enough. The contract, or the pool, had kept the exit.
That is the memecoin shape even when nobody is that crude. Attention is real. A large wallet can hold most of the supply. A function can block sales, mint more, or pull the liquidity. The chart during the attention is the costume. The holder list and the contract are the object. If you cannot read either, you are the person the chart is for.
The BBC piece is a record of a week, not a list of tokens to avoid by name. The next one will not be called Squid. It will still have a buy button that works better than the sell button.
Read it yourself
- BBC: Squid Game crypto token collapses (November 2021)
- OpenSea and the 2021 token boom, for the attention market around it
These links are the record. They are not a recommendation, and they are not instructions. A news story or a court paper can still be wrong about a detail. The check does not change because a famous name is in the story.
Apply the check
Open a question. The line is about this topic. It is not a verdict that anything is safe.
The large holders, when they sell. The deployer, if they mint.
The contract owner, if a mint or a blacklist remains.
That owner, or the pool they can pull.
Check yourself
Is a large community proof the coin is fair?
No. Crowds can be paid, botted, or late.
After this you can ask who holds the supply and whether you can sell, before the joke feels urgent.