jakiro
author /Jeff WilserCompile / flumen, Centreless
In early 2021, unemployed Torres was trapped at home with a lot of time and he began to try NFTs.In February 2021, he sold an Nyan Cat NFT for 300 ETH (then worth about $590,000).The value sale of 300ETH means that the cryptocurrency bull market has gone too far, but for Torres, the sale is a due recognition of ownership.”I wasn’t able to really make a living until Web3 appeared,” Torres said.Now he works full-time in art and helps other meme creators make their work profitable.
Some believe that the sales of Nyan Cat NFT mark the birth of the cryptocurrency’s “meme economy”, while others attribute it to Dogecoin.Regardless of the origin, Web3 injects energy and money into the memes, and the memes injects energy and money into Web3.
Nyan Cat
The Nyan Cat NFT is an iconic and popular NFT that caused a network sensation in 2011.The original Nyan Cat is a GIF animation of a cat—a geometric shape combined with the image of a cat flying in space, leaving behind a rainbow trajectory.In February 2021, Nyan Cat original creator Chris Torres sold for nearly $600,000 at Christie’s auction.
In 2021, this phenomenon broke out.The price of the original memecoin Dogecoin soared from less than a cent to more than 75 cents and briefly reached a market capitalization of over $90 billion.New yolo investors (more guided by Tik-Tok than financial advisors) are investing heavily in imitations like Shibacoin.Memes like old-school Grumpy Cat, Disaster Girl and Harambe are for sale at amazing prices.
Memes became a new stock for a while.
Dogecoin
“It’s fun, very fun and exciting,” said Gary Lachance, a long-time Dogecoin supporter.Lachance is a popular cryptocurrency field. He organizes decentralized global events such as the “Doge Disco Project” to encourage people around the world to showcase “Proof of Party”.
“The meme economy spreads love, and the meme economy spreads wealth. And these moms were injected with rocket fuel in the last bull market. Some memes (such as Doge) are obvious, and some are more subtle. Michael Seal’s laser eyes(Michael Saylor’s laser eyes) is a meme,” said Serotonin founder Amanda Cassatt.And this meme has an impact.
“One of the reasons that led us out of the last bear market was MicroStrategy’s recognition of putting bitcoin on the balance sheet,” Cassat continued. “The laser eye became a symbol of this strategy, and the symbol was repeatedly emulated.and spread, just like the most infectious memes.(As the bull market gradually loses momentum, the meme of “Laser Eyes” has also begun to tilt towards mockery.)
It’s very likely that none of this would have happened without COVID.“Everyone is watching the screen at home,” Torres said.“This helps NFTs to understand.”
Meanwhile, on the Wall Street Betting Reddit Forum, a group of new investors cheered and made money through “meme stocks” such as AMC and GameStop.For them, investment is an exciting mix of community, social media and gambling, even empowering.Why can only suits and hedge funds make all the money?Magdalena Kala, founder of Double Down venture capital, said that “Wall Street Bet” has a very similar dynamic to cryptocurrency memes, and the philosophy that “we will work together to push something explodes.”
Then comes the macro environment – ultra-low interest rates, stimulus check dividends, and easy-to-get funds from the booming stock market.Cassatt pointed out that in traditional finance, it is very typical and even logical for investors to choose “risk-favorable” assets like tech stocks in this low interest rate environment.The same psychology exists in the cryptocurrency field.Those who hold Bitcoin or Ethereum make money see more risky bets like the “risk-favorite” potential that meme-coins possess.So why not seek more rewards?
All these factors help explain the deeper reason behind the rise of meme-assets: that is, the mysterious charm of memes itself.
New Pop Art
Memes are the earliest part of cryptocurrency.Early Bitcoin users posted “Pepe the frog” on the forum, and like “digital gold” and “magic Internet currency (magic internet money)“Text memes like “HODL” became a shorthand for early adopters. “They are very caring and nerdy, and they are a normal way to express themselves in this geek community,” Scalarsaid Linda Xie, co-founder of Capital.
Memes are naturally in tune with cryptocurrencies.“Cryptocurrency people can almost be defined as extreme online,” Kala adds, “the crypto community has never taken themselves too seriously”, which creates a “cultural consensus point.”
But memes exist earlier than cryptocurrencies, they exist earlier than the internet, and they existed before we were born.“Memes have been part of the culture since ancient times,” Torres said.“There are memes on hieroglyphs.” Julia Love believes that the poster of women’s factory during World War II (wrinkle arm showing “We can do it!”) is also a meme.
The term “meme” was coined in 1976 by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins to describe ideas (or “entities”) that can be easily copied by others.”‘Meme’ comes from the Greek word mimesis, meaning imitation or reflection,” Cassatt said. She believes that communication between people usually takes the form of “visual and language packs.”Map each other.
Cassatt sees memes as the “Darwinian evolution” of these visual and linguistic packages, and “the more contagious they are, the easier it is to spread (she sees stories from the Bible as a kind of meme).In her opinion, “Darwinism” means to survive the most viral one.The things that leap around the world are the most attractive, and boring people will be eliminated.It makes perfect sense for Cassatt to become so important, “We are in an increasingly virtual world.”
This “Darwinian theory of evolution” can even explain the clever power of memes.The world’s first “meme agent” Ben Rushs said, “Memes are new pop art, and he helps creators monetize their works. Anyone can make a meme and there will be no response.. But what about the memes we share with friends? They rise because external groups have emotional resonance and intuitive reactions to them.”
At its peak in 2021, Lachance believed that Dogecoin was the “modern version of Mona Lisa”.Now he is seriously and thoughtfully treating memes as art—the modern version of Warhol.He noted that the first photo of the “Grasty Cat” was shared by someone who had never posted it.They are not influencers and have no platform, and they have received thousands of likes overnight.”When you see something and react to it, there is this X factor. It forces you to react. There is no other choice in your soul.”
If memes are an effective art form, why is it considered wrong or ridiculous to be paid by creators?Why does collecting artworks make people feel ashamed?$590,000 is indeed a lot of money for a pixelated cat.It is also true that “Nyan Cat” brings joy to hundreds of millions of people, or at least makes them feel relaxed and pleasant at some moments.You can think Torres hasn’t been paid enough yet.“Art doesn’t always have to be serious,” Lashes said. “Art can be fun, it should be fun.”
Lashes is committed to getting these creators paid.As a former frontman and musician of The Lashes, he has helped meme makers get compensated over the past decade.Taking the example of “Disaster Girl”, it shows Zoë Roth taken at the age of four (now in her twenties), Lashes describes “Disaster Girl” as “one of the greatest photos ever.”, but Roth received nothing.In 2021, she sold it as an NFT and received compensation for paying her college tuition.
Disaster Girl
The “Disaster Girl” memes and other similar memes have power beyond language – whether you’re in San Francisco or Bangladesh, you can understand the jokes in it.This helps strengthen communities scattered around the globe, and as Xie puts it, “it’s always the process of finding communities in the culture.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, people need such communities.“I think people are looking for something that can connect to and feel they are purposeful,” said Julia Love.
More people like meme as a way to make money.The meme economy expands the scope of your investment.Prior to memes and NFTs, the main way to invest in cryptocurrencies was to buy Bitcoin, Ethereum, or other cryptocurrencies.
The memes feel different.Not that daunting, more fun.“I love that it makes investments more approachable,” Ms. Xie said. “I know a lot of people who have had great success in investing in NFT art and collectibles, but they don’t care about DeFi, Bitcoin and Ethereum.” Ms Xie added that the meme economy has introduced a more diversified and inclusive group into this area.
For example, Ms. Xie mentioned that the “Crypto Coven” NFT community (who personally invested) is extremely inclusive and full of playful memes about witches.“Almost all women and the community is very friendly,” Ms. Xie said.
The meme economy has made young people interested in finance.Kala believes that through memes, it continues to advance towards finance as a hobby, “Now entertainment is not just about watching movies on Netflix or going to concerts, but also as a shared experience of gambling or investment.”
Kala said that like Reddit users of WallStreetBets, most of the people who buy memes are “retail traders” — average people have small accounts, not big institutions like hedge funds.”The higher proportion of people are just for jokes,” Kala said.“They come to seek entertainment, yolo and digital growth.” By contrast, Bitcoin has now attracted institutional investors such as MicroStrategy and Cathie Wood’s Ark Investments.But cryptocurrency memes aren’t.The meme value is only supported by a shared belief in a story, and as Kala says, “It’s like a casino. Everyone knows that at some point the concert will stop.”
Memes are flexible:
For example, Julia Love and Gary Lachance (Doge couple) won a “Dogeclaren” at a cryptocurrency conference. They are currently on a pilgrimage to Japan to see the real 17-year-old Shiba Inu who inspired Doge’s birth (although Lachance doesn’t care about the priceor speculation, but Dogecoin’s value has risen by 40% since October).
For example, the emerging memecoin PEPE (at least temporarily) caused a sensation, and there were even early experiments trying to generate memecoins using artificial intelligence.
Not everyone thinks that the meme economy goes too far or becomes “too” important.Lachance seems surprised by the idea and thinks that the rise of Dogecoin makes more sense than the “dominate the world war currency”.
“Ideally, Doge will be the future of all trade and commerce in the world,”LachanceSaid without any humor.He finally made a figurative metaphor: Imagine going to an authoritarian country and looking at the currency there, you will no longer see the face of the dictator, but the cute smile of Dogecoin.
LachanceSmiled.”Is this too much? We are still far from ‘too much’.”
