How to check a memecoin before you buy
You see a ticker flying on X, a friend sends a contract address, a streamer is shouting about a coin that's "about to run". You have maybe a minute before the moment passes. This is the routine we'd want a friend to run before they put money in. It takes about five minutes once you've done it a couple of times.
None of this tells you a coin will go up. It helps you spot the ones that are built to go down.
1. Get the real contract address
Tickers aren't unique. Anyone can launch a token called the same thing as a popular one, and copycats appear within minutes of anything trending. Always work from the contract address, and get it from the project's own channel, not from a reply under someone else's post.
If you only have a link (pump.fun, DexScreener, Birdeye), the address is in the URL. Paste the whole link into Coin Check and it pulls the address out for you.
2. Look at liquidity first
Liquidity is the money in the trading pool that you'll sell into later. It matters more than market cap. A coin "worth" $5 million with $8,000 of liquidity can't actually absorb more than a few thousand dollars of selling without collapsing.
As a rough guide, under $10,000 is very thin and under $50,000 is thin. Read what liquidity means and why it matters for the longer version.
3. Check who can still change the token
On Solana, two settings matter a lot:
- Mint authority. If it's still active, someone can print new tokens whenever they like and dilute every holder.
- Freeze authority. If it's still active, someone can freeze token accounts, which can stop people selling.
Both are normal during a launch. On a coin that's already trading and being promoted, they should usually be revoked. Coin Check shows both.
4. See how the supply is spread
Look at what share the largest wallets hold. If ten wallets hold most of the supply, those ten people decide the price. Bear in mind that the biggest "holder" is often the liquidity pool itself or an exchange wallet, so click through on a block explorer such as Solscan before drawing conclusions.
5. Read the chart and the trades
You don't need technical analysis here. You're looking for things that don't add up:
- Hundreds of buys and almost no sells. That can mean selling is blocked.
- Volume many times bigger than the pool. That can be hype, or the same wallets trading with themselves.
- A vertical line up in the last hour. You'd be buying from people who got in minutes ago.
6. Check the people and the pitch
Is there a website, a Telegram, an X account? Are they older than the token? Do the "community" posts all sound the same? A big promise ("100x", "guaranteed", "next 1000x gem") is a reason to walk away, not a reason to buy.
7. Decide your exit before you enter
If you still want in, decide two things before you buy: how much you're prepared to lose completely, and what would make you sell. Write them down. Memecoins move fast and it's very hard to think clearly halfway through a 60% drop.
Coin Check runs the data parts of this routine for you in a few seconds, then you do the human parts: the people, the pitch and your own limits.
Not financial advice. This guide is general education. Crypto assets are high risk and largely unregulated in the UK; you could lose everything you put in.