Many times, someone comes up with a joke or a witty remark on social media and it goes viral within days. Going viral means everyone is talking about it, people are sharing it, making videos and gifs about it, etc.

We call the popular joke or witty remark a meme. And sometimes, software developers also join in the fun by creating meme coins.

As the name implies, meme coins are a type of cryptocurrency based on memes. Because they are often created as a joke, their creators do not always intend for take to take them very seriously.
But, it sometimes happens that a meme coin becomes very popular and someone decides to buy it. Then, someone else gets interested in it, and the new owner sells it off again, for a profit of course. And on and on like that.

Ultimately, owning a popular meme coin becomes a great way to make easy money. For example, the creators of the first meme coin Dogecoin (DOGE), minted it as a joke to laugh off people’s disbelief about cryptocurrencies.

At the time, many people believed that cryptos were scams, had no value, or were used only for illegal activities. To show how much of a joke Dogecoin was, its creators named it after a Japanese Shiba Inu dog.

But, the coin quickly became very popular. More than one million people visited its website within 30 days of its launch. By May 2021, Dogecoin had reached a market value of over $85 billion by May 2021... https://alabiansolutions.com/blog/what-are-meme-coins/

Meme coins are primarily cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum or Bitcoin, that pays tribute to a specific meme, which is an idea that people find funny or interesting. Memes are usually captured in a video, an image, or any other form of media.

Meme coins are specifically designed to make waves, go viral and be shared, just like the memes they pay homage to.

You can read why it makes sense here: https://blog.bitmama.io/what-is-a-meme-coin/