What is NiHao (NIHAO) crypto coin? Facts, risks, and why most experts warn against it

NiHao (NIHAO) is a meme cryptocurrency that launched in mid-2023 with no official team, no whitepaper, and no clear purpose beyond its playful name and viral appeal. It’s not a project built to solve a problem or improve technology. It’s a gamble wrapped in a greeting - a digital token that says "hello" in Chinese, hoping someone will buy in before it vanishes.

What you actually get with NiHao

NiHao operates as an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain. Its smart contract address is 0xc368...dc605d, and it has a total supply of 888 trillion tokens. That’s 888,000,000,000,000 coins - more than 6,000 times the total supply of Dogecoin. The idea behind such a massive supply is simple: make the price look absurdly low so it feels "affordable." You can buy a single NiHao coin for less than a billionth of a cent. But here’s the catch - that low price doesn’t mean value. It means there’s almost nothing backing it.

Some platforms claim NiHao is on Solana, but that’s misleading. The only verified version is on Ethereum. The Solana version appears to be a copycat or scam token using the same name. If you’re buying NiHao, you’re almost certainly buying the Ethereum version. And even then, the contract is dangerous.

The contract is a ticking time bomb

Most legitimate cryptocurrencies have "renounced" their contracts - meaning the creators can’t change anything after launch. NiHao’s contract hasn’t been renounced. That means the person or group who created it can still do things like:

• Mint new coins and flood the market
• Block people from selling their tokens
• Change transaction fees to make trading impossible
• Transfer all tokens to their own wallet

That’s not a bug - it’s a feature. And it’s exactly why CoinMarketCap flags NiHao with a high-risk warning. If the creator decides to pull the plug, your entire investment disappears overnight. There’s no recourse. No customer support. No legal protection.

There’s no market - just noise

As of June 2025, NiHao’s market cap hovered between $23,000 and $146,850. For comparison, Bitcoin’s market cap is over $1.2 trillion. NiHao is less than 0.000001% the size of Bitcoin. It’s ranked #7,334 out of over 25,000 cryptocurrencies tracked by CoinMarketCap.

Trading volume? Sometimes it’s $0. Other times, it’s a few dollars. On June 20, 2025, CoinGecko reported $5.35 in 24-hour volume. That’s less than the cost of a coffee. When volume is this low, prices can swing wildly based on one person buying or selling. You might see a 50% price jump one hour and a 90% crash the next - not because of news or demand, but because someone dumped a few thousand tokens.

Who’s holding it? And why?

There are only about 2,000 people holding NiHao. And most of them own less than 1% of the total supply. That means a tiny number of wallets control the majority of the tokens. This is classic pump-and-dump behavior. A few people buy early, hype it on social media, then sell to newcomers who think they’re getting in on the ground floor.

Reddit has two scattered threads asking if anyone still holds NiHao. One user warned: "Avoid NIHAO - contract renounced but still shows modifiable on CoinMarketCap." Another asked: "Anyone holding NIHAO? Saw it on MEXC but volumes look suspicious." No one answered with success stories. Only warnings.

It’s not a community - it’s a ghost town

NiHao claims to be "community-driven." But there’s no community. The official Telegram group has under 1,250 members - and it’s been shrinking. The Twitter account @Nihao_Coin has 87 followers and hasn’t posted since April 2025. No roadmap. No updates. No team announcements. No GitHub activity. No developer commits. Nothing.

Compare that to Dogecoin, which started as a joke too - but had Elon Musk tweeting about it, real developers building tools, and exchanges listing it properly. NiHao has none of that. It’s a hollow shell with a catchy name.

Why do people still buy it?

Because it’s cheap. Because they saw a 10x return on a meme coin last month. Because they think "if I buy now, I’ll be the next big winner." But NiHao doesn’t have a story. No utility. No innovation. No team to build anything. It’s pure speculation - and the kind that gets people burned.

Some exchanges like MEXC and CoinSwitch list it because they don’t vet every token deeply. They just let anyone upload a token and charge trading fees. That’s not a stamp of approval - it’s a warning sign.

Experts say: Stay away

No financial institution, analyst firm, or crypto researcher has endorsed NiHao. Messari rated its long-term viability at 2.1 out of 10. CryptoQuant called it a "high-risk token with near-zero chance of survival beyond 18 months." Binance Research found that 92% of ultra-low-cap meme coins become completely illiquid within two years.

The SEC has already warned about tokens like NiHao - those with modifiable contracts and no transparency. They’ve flagged them as potential unregistered securities. That means if you’re caught trading it, you might not have legal protections if things go wrong.

Bottom line: Is NiHao worth it?

No.

If you’re looking for a fun, low-stakes gamble - and you’re okay losing every dollar you put in - then maybe you’ll buy a few trillion NiHao coins. But don’t call it an investment. Don’t call it a project. Don’t pretend it’s anything more than a digital lottery ticket with no winning numbers.

There are thousands of meme coins. Most of them fail. NiHao isn’t even close to being the most dangerous one. But it’s one of the most transparently risky. If you see it on an exchange, walk away. There’s nothing here but a name, a contract, and a countdown to zero.