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Hiya, Trista here.
Ahhh memecoins.
The worlds of crypto and an attention economy hell-bent on clicks at all costs have always overlapped. But was it always this dark?
Memecoins used to be fun. Dogs! Frogs! Squirrels! Dizzying ups and downs. Swings so large and values so small that it’s easier to just use the letter x — 10x, 100x, 1000x.
It’s wild and scammy and whimsical and zeitgeisty. And no one really cares, because the memecoin of the moment will probably go to zero next week. (But, you never know, sometimes people are willing to drop millions on silly creations.)
In May, Pump.fun launched a streaming feature to allow users to promote their memecoins. Things got dystopian after that.
Tim Craig chronicled a cherub-faced middle schooler who went viral for elatedly flipping off onlookers while swiping $30,000 in a rug pull.
As Ben Weiss described, a man calling himself Beni appeared on the do-it-yourself memecoin site under a noose, threatening to kill himself unless traders bought his crypto.
The move ignited howls of protest — which is especially notable for a crowd that is typically quite laissez-faire about these things.
“This is out of control,” wrote Beau, a pseudonymous safety manager for the NFT collection Pudgy Penguins.
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao also appeared to weigh in on the grim spiral. Pump.fun quickly shut the streaming feature down. And, as Ben found out, the stunt was all fake anyway.
There were warning signs all along. Take the memecoin mocking Kate Middleton’s cancer or the slew of misogynistic tokens targeting female politicians.
But this can’t possibly be the new normal, can it?
It seems as if older members of the cryptorati long to move away from the bizarre and macabre and get the fun back.
Why Texas’ anti-crypto queen just quit her ‘Sisyphean’ quest to ban Bitcoin mining
Jackie Sawicky tells Liam Kelly how Donald Trump’s election victory prompted the end of her three-year crusade
A shock suicide on Pump.fun prompted outrage and a shutdown. It was all fake
A man appeared to kill himself while livestreaming on Pump.fun to boost a memecoin. Ben tracked down the man behind the stunt.
Why Europeans are foaming at the mouth about crypto
Wolfgang Münchau digs into why Europeans are so against crypto, despite its many victories over the years.
Post of the week
Even Binance’s founder says that memecoins have gone too far.
I am not against memes, but meme coins are getting "a little" weird now.
Let's build real applications using blockchain.
— CZ 🔶 BNB (@cz_binance) November 26, 2024
