to the moon

“To the moon” is a crypto and stock-trading rallying cry meaning a price is about to shoot up, usually posted with 🚀 and 🌕. As a verb, a coin that “moons” is one whose price rockets.

What it means

It’s pure optimism, sometimes sincere, often ironic. Someone posts a chart heading up and the replies fill with rockets and “to the moon.” Know Your Meme describes it as an expression of the hope that a cryptocurrency’s value will skyrocket. “When moon?” is the impatient version, and “this is going to moon” is a prediction nobody should take too seriously.

The phrase itself is older. Wiktionary records “to the moon” as a dated way of saying “very much” (think “over the moon” or “I love you to the moon and back”). The crypto meaning is the one you’ll meet online now.

Examples

• “Just bought more. To the moon 🚀🚀🚀”
• “Everyone in the chat says it’s going to moon. That’s usually the top.”
• “Diamond hands, we’re going to the moon.”

Where it came from

Know Your Meme traces the crypto use to joke accounts in the early bitcoin days, including a Twitter account called Bitcoin Galactic and a Reddit bot that replied “To the moon!!!” to any mention of the moon, both active before the famous 2013 HODL post. The rockets became a fixture again in early 2021, when retail traders piled into GameStop and other meme stocks.

Don’t confuse it with “mooning”

In older slang, to moon someone means to show them your bare backside. In crypto, mooning is just a price going up. Context makes it obvious, but it’s worth knowing both.

Related terms

• HODL: holding on, waiting for the moon.
• Diamond hands: refusing to sell.
• WAGMI: “we’re all gonna make it.”

More terms like this in our crypto slang guide.