There have been some oddball moments in our industry.
The state of memecoins right now is: You log on to Twitter and see a teenager livestreaming his mother seductively dancing in front of the camera to pump a token dubbed $LIVEMOM.
That happened not even a week ago. But that’s far from all.
The term “meme” was coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins to define a unit of culture. Memecoins, in some ways, are the pinnacle of the concept, as they’re a unit of internet culture you can also own and trade.
And with the arrival of platforms like pump.fun, anybody can push out these tokens in minutes. Combine the already irreverent nature of memes with the ability to permissionlessly create meme-related tokens, and pretty bizarre moments will inevitably follow.
Here are some of the top crazy moments in memecoins.
Doge Community Installs Dog Statue
Who let the doge out?
Fans of OG memecoin, Dogecoin, took their enthusiasm for the Kabosu dog to the next level and worked with authorities in Japan to erect a monument in tribute to their community’s canine idol.
Located in the city of Sakura, Japan, the tribute shows a Kabosu dog lying on a sofa with its paws crossed, much like the Dogecoin image, accompanied by a trio of cats–likely a tribute to cat culture, which also pervades the digital world.
The monument came to “furrition” last year on Nov. 2, when fans celebrated Doge’s birthday.
DOGE Takes Over Twitter
Doge, which was launched in 2013, has become a staple of the irreverence of the crypto community, gaining traction when renowned internet troll and billionaire Elon Musk began spreading the dog-inspired gospel.
In an absurd yet entertaining turn of events, Musk purchased Twitter–renaming it to X–and briefly changed the classic blue bird logo to one depicting Doge. At one point, Musk’s Twitter bio said he was the former Dogecoin CEO.
Musk has caught flak over his unwavering support of Doge, and he was sued in a class-action lawsuit for market manipulation – Musk’s tweets have pushed the price of Doge up more than once.
Doge is now the 10-largest cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of $21 billion.
Definitely not a number to bark at.
Boden And Politicians
Washington, D.C.’s political class has not been spared by Solana memecoin creators.
And with 2024 being an election year, it seems political memecoins are in for a wild ride.
One token that has far exceeded anybody’s expectations is Jeo Boden – a parody of the sitting U.S. President, Joe Biden.
“Boden the 46th pres of soluna. His jeb is te mäk three hundred trillion million billion dollars,” developers wrote on the token’s official website after its March 9 launch.
Boden has seen wild success. It briefly surpassed the $1 mark, although it has since dropped 70% to $0.30. The token’s market cap is still a whopping $212 million, down from its peak of $665 million.
But Boden is only one of a plethora of politically charged tokens.
One of the staunchest crypto adversaries, Senator Elizabeth Warren, saw her token launch under the ticker “Whoren,” as did famed political commentator Tucker Carlson with “tooker kurlson.” Former White House resident Donald Trump was also thrown into the mix with “doland tremp.”
Other famous figures also got the memecoin treatment. “Olen Mosk” was spawned, as was “Drek” in a tip of the hat to musician Drake, and Mona – a meme rendering of the Mona Lisa.
The list is endless.
No Hands Rug Pull
The most recent rug pull is straight out of a David Copperfield show.
A man created a token called “No Hands No Rug” with the ticker $HANDS. He posed on camera with a sign under his chin that read, “I have no hands, I can’t do a rug pull.”
But when the token peaked, he pulled his hands out from behind his back and sold 67 million HANDS for 7 SOL, pocketing $1,050.
Most thought he had no hands, but in reality, he was packing one big ace up his sleeve.
Degens Bet On Animal Racing
As the summer doldrums waged on, bored traders resorted to betting on animal races towards the end of July 2023.
The most famous pastime for degenerate crypto gamblers was HamstersGG, where users could bet on the outcome of pre-recorded races between unfortunate rodents. Thousands of players took part in a game in which the winners split 95% of the wagered funds, with HamstersGG taking a 5% cut.
As expected, degen crypto punters were inspired to create an entire category of animal racing tokens on CoinGecko. These included the Rabbits Club, Snails Race, and Rat Roulette, although at the time, HamstersGG – which was purportedly a rug pull – accounted for 85% of the sector’s market cap.
Some were fast, while others were “wheel-y” slow.
LIVEMOM
Here’s a twisted take on some mother-son bonding.
A teenager and his scantily-clad mother begged viewers on a livestream to buy their memecoin called LIVEMOM as she suggestively showed off her figure.
Mother and child urged viewers to “run up” their token, promising degrading and perverted activities at different market cap milestones. These included eating dog food if the market cap reached $200,000 or the boy pouring milk on his mother’s breasts if it reached half a million.
The top gag was shaving the boy’s head if degen traders pushed LIVEMOM’s market cap to $2 million market cap.
However, the pair abruptly terminated the live stream, and the token subsequently crashed.
Only two days after the LIVEMOM livestream, several copycats popped up, including LIVESIS.
But this took it a step further than LIVEMOM.
As the token tagged $100,000, the brother took his alleged sister’s bra off, played the crypto-classic tune, “Pump It Up,” and proceeded to dump his entire bag on screen.
It all stays in the family, right?
Racist Memecoins Darken The Mood
Memecoin mania was well underway when some less savory tokens surfaced.
Some of these included derogatory terms and symbols based on race and religion, as well as other hateful language, forcing the platform DEX Screener, a real-time DeFi token analytics platform, to review its token profile moderation policy.
Racist tokens underscore a peculiar situation in the crypto ecosystem. On one hand, they shine a light on a dark underbelly, with people interested in creating and buying these types of tokens. Meanwhile, they show the permissionless nature of open blockchains and the fact that the technology enables the freedom to create anything a developer or user wants – for good or bad.
DogWifHat Goes To Vegas
DogWifHat might be the darling memecoin of this cycle, characterized by a cute dog in an orange beanie.
Its community is diehard. Fans raised a whopping $690,000 to put the meme on the famous Las Vegas sphere, a feat that still hasn’t come to fruition, however.
But it remains among the top 50 largest cryptocurrencies with a market cap of $3.5 billion — not bad for a token that didn’t exist a year ago and whose only utility is being meme-ably cute!
Just more proof of the staying power of memes in crypto culture.
Non-Memecoin Bonus
Bizarre moments in crypto are not reserved for the memecoin sector. We have compiled a few of them here.
J.K. Rowling Gets The Muggle Guide To Bitcoin
Wingardium Bitcoinosa!
Famed Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling caught the brunt of bitcoiners’ wrath in May 2020 when she posted on X, “I don’t understand Bitcoin. Please explain it to me.”
Big mistake.
As expected, Bitcoiners descended on her like Voldemort’s Death Eaters, berating Rowling for not understanding it straight away.
It wasn’t all bad, though.
The account Bitcoin posted “Wizards still need to trust Gringotts Bank [in reference to the goblin-run financial institution that holds most of the wizarding world’s gold]. Bitcoin fixes this.”
Other Bitcoiners got creative and created the “Muggle’s Guide to Bitcoin” in reference to non-wizarding people (dubbed muggles in the book series), weaving the wizarding world with Nakamoto’s creation.
But the flood of responses became too overwhelming, and the author decided to drop out of the conversation with: “This started as a joke, but now I’m afraid I’ll never be able to log in to Twitter again without someone getting angry I don’t own Bitcoin. One day, you’ll see a wizened old woman in the street, trying to trade a Harry Potter book for a potato. Be kind. She did try to understand.”
SBF Takes The Rich and Famous For a Ride
One of Sam Bankman-Fried’s claims to fame is how he managed to entice celebrities far and wide.
FTX imploded in late 2022, bringing the industry to its knees. But one overlooked scar that SBF left was on Hollywood movie stars, NBA athletes, and top-tier comedians.
Just to name a few: Brazilian model Giselle Bündchen and her now ex-husband Tom Brady; actor Matt Damon; Golden State Warriors basketball player Steph Curry; and rappers Lil Yachty, Soulja Boy, Akon, Ne-Yo, and others are now associated with the failed exchange.
One of the top moments was Larry David’s 2022 FTX commercial. The famed comedian and co-creator of the Seinfeld sitcom dressed up as several historical figures and criticized notable inventions in history.
These included the wheel, lightbulb, dishwasher, moon landing, and FTX, and he claimed he was never wrong about them.
It seems, however, he was very right on one of them.
Comedians Roast Tom Brady
Everybody knows that 7-time Super Bowl winner Tom Brady lost millions in the FTX collapse.
Brady was reminded of his financial misfortune during a Netflix roast on May 5. The super athlete was burned by Kevin Hart and Nikki Glaser, among others.
Kevin Hart opened the show with some friendly fire, asking, “Why didn’t we go to the Crypto.com Arena downtown? Well, the reason why we didn’t go there is because we didn’t want to remind Tom’s fans of how much money he owes them.”
His comedic counterpart Nikki Glaser was up next and she didn’t hold back either, although Glaser took a larger shot at his teammate, and tight end Rob Gronkowski.
“Tom also lost $30 million dollars in crypto,” she opened, asking, “Tom, how did you fall for that?” But her next punchline was a headshot to Gronk, when she said in a Tarzan accent imitating the tight end, “Me know that not real money.”
Brady didn’t need to throw an interception for this to be a massive turnover.
What’s Next, Degens?
Irreverence is a feature, not a bug, in crypto.
Degens take the time to troll, create a token about it, speculate, and set it free on the internet. They don’t spare politicians, famed authors, or cute furry animals.
And the memecoin sector’s market capitalization proves it. It boasts a $53 billion market cap, and some of its top tokens – such as Dogecoin or Shiba Inu – land in the CoinGecko top 15.
The proliferation of memecoins is set to continue, along with some of the absurd situations we have seen. When permissionless technology meets the internet culture, anything can happen.
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