Moon
 Image: original illustration, memecoin.wiki | |
| part of speech | verb (moon), noun (moonshot) |
|---|---|
| scene | Crypto Twitter, Solana trenches |
To rise sharply in price, from the phrase "to the moon"; a moonshot is a speculative token believed capable of such a rise.
Moon, in crypto slang, is a verb meaning to rise sharply in price, derived from the exclamation "to the moon." A coin that "mooned" made an explosive move; "mooning" describes the move in progress. The related noun moonshot denotes a speculative token believed capable of such a rise: a low mcap coin (see mcap and fdv) where a small bet could plausibly return ten, fifty, or one hundred times its cost.
Moon versus moonshot
The two words look at the same hope from different ends. Moon describes an outcome: the price event itself, as in "if this moons I'm out at 10 million." Moonshot describes a candidate: a token selected in advance for its lottery like upside, as in "my moonshot for this cycle." Calling something a moonshot concedes that failure is the likely case; the word borrows from aerospace usage, where a moonshot is an audacious long odds project, an image sources trace to the Apollo program. In the trenches, hunting moonshots means buying fresh launches near the bottom of the bonding curve and hoping one survives to graduation and beyond, a strategy in which most picks die and the rare winner pays for the rest. Related usages include "wen moon," a self mocking question about when profits arrive, and mocking references to "moonboys," perpetual bulls who promise every coin will moon. Moonshot is also the name of a meme coin trading app that gained prominence in 2024 and 2025, an unrelated commercial use of the word.
History
"To the moon" circulated in Bitcoin forum culture in the early 2010s and became mainstream during the 2017 and 2021 bull markets, alongside HODL and "when Lambo." Glossaries note the phrase's association with Dogecoin communities and the GameStop era of early 2021. The moonshot sense for speculative small caps followed naturally and is now standard across crypto media.