Laughter and Revolution: How Memecoins Are Changing the Rules of Traditional Finance

3 hours ago 45

I’m sure you’ve been told that cryptocurrencies are a scam at some point, that they’re just like tulips and serve no real purpose. Well, nothing could be further from the truth, though it’s fair to say that there are certain cryptocurrencies that don’t serve much purpose and yet are highly valued.

You’ve probably heard about a cryptocurrency featuring… a dog? Yes, these are the so-called memecoins. But…

What is a memecoin?

I like to use a little analogy for this: imagine a friend of yours prints out a bunch of paper and calls them DuckCoins (for example). Initially, they’re worthless, but as more people start exchanging real money for these bills, they gain some value. And there’s something that bonds you with others who’ve bought them: you’re another one of the crazy folks who believed in the duck currency.

The cases of $PEPE or $SHIB are some of the most famous — cryptocurrencies created purely for fun that have reached astronomical valuations, as you can see in the image below.

But what are these coins, and what do they represent? Well, I did some research on them, looked at their websites, their communities, and found a few things in common:

A very active community.

All the communities I found had a very engaged crowd, with people sharing memes, chatting on Discord, and making jokes, saying that their coin is “going to the moon.” Each person contributes their skills to the community, whether by sharing art about the coin or their sense of humor. It becomes a serious job because, in some cases, like Shiba Inu, it turned into a community where most of the original members are now working on the memecoin.

A not-so-polished website, but a powerful message.

For this, I looked at the community of a cryptocurrency that was recently listed on Coinbase. To give a bit of context: Pepe is a meme that originated online in 2005 by Matt Furie and was adopted by 4chan. Not long ago (2023), the community created what would become one of the most random rises in history, a coin backed by a huge community that managed to get listed on one of the largest (if not the largest) exchanges in the world.

If there’s something we can’t deny, it’s that this community knows exactly how to convey a message to its people. They’re not trying to sell you their crypto asset. As you can see on their page, their roadmap literally reads:

We can understand why corporations like banks wouldn’t take these types of coins seriously. In traditional finance, everyone has to wear suits, work in PDFs and Excel sheets, talk about boring statistics that no one cares about, and regulate everything. In the internet age, where nothing is taken too seriously, and regulation is more of a hindrance than security, it’s understandable that a group of people would join a community where everything is allowed and nothing is regulated.

Conclusion

More than an investment with future value, cryptocurrencies represent a space where people from all over the world can come together to share memes, make friends, organize events, and ultimately express their collective identity. In a digital age where creativity and freedom challenge traditional structures, these communities manifest resistance to established norms and celebrate the power of self-expression in one of the most significant phenomena of our time: the internet.