Meme culture is a major narrative that has played a key role in crypto adoption in the past ten years. In fact, the advent of meme culture and crypto adoption have gone parallel.
As of writing, there are over 300 memecoins, with a total market cap of $47.5 billion according to Coingecko.
While it may seem like a drop in the ocean compared to the larger crypto market ($2.1 trillion), it is intriguing to observe that memecoins have stood the test of time despite the criticism from Dogecoin’s early days in 2013 to date.
So, just how powerful is the meme culture in crypto? Before diving into the specifics, it would be worth highlighting that memecoins have existed for more than a decade; DOGE was the pioneer, and was designed as a Bitcoin parody. The whole idea was to introduce some aspect of fun in the digital asset industry.
Fast forward to today, we have all sorts of memecoins; DOGs, CATs, Election tokens, and many more. But what’s even more important to note is organic growth of huge communities around some of these memecoins, including the likes of PEPE, WIF, Shiba Inu, and of course Elon Musk “endorsed coins” such as DOGE and LADYs.
How Big is the Meme Culture?
To understand the influence of the meme culture in crypto, the most recent example would be the growth of Solana’s ecosystem since the beginning of 2024. DeFi Llama metrics show that the total value locked (TVL) has jumped from $1.4 billion to $4.8 billion at the time of writing this piece. Even more intriguing, the number of active wallets over the past 24 hours stands at 3.2 million compared to Ethereum’s 349K.
Every other day, there are memecoins that are probably launching on Solana. Most of these projects are based on niche specific concepts that could appeal to a certain category of individuals, it could be dog or cat lovers or election fan tokens. This culture and the appeal to an organic community for purely fun or viral jokes has seen a memecoin such as WIF pump by over 100,000% within a span of nine months.
Another interesting angle to look at the power of the memecoin culture would be their appeal to high profile figures like Elon, and the impact such individuals or KOLs have in the overall crypto ecosystem.
For context, Elon Musk has been one of the biggest Dogecoin fans, dating back to the 2020 and 2021 DeFi summer when he made it a hobby to tweet about DOGE. At some point, he even teased that DOGE would be the official currency on Mars if humanity makes it there in the future.
It is obvious that the “approval” by influential voices has amplified the significance of memecoins in the greater financial ecosystem, attracting more users and capital into the digital asset industry. When Elon Musk tweets about DOGE, it’s not only the degens that take note or throw in a few coins, some traditional entities are now using the same tweets as a signal for their memecoin investment strategy.
This fan-based culture has also proven to be a factor in moving prices, with notable examples such as the LADYs memecoin which pumped by around 11000% in May 2023, thanks to Elon’s “There is no meme, I love you” pic tweet that triggered a huge number of bids into the token.
Beyond Degens: Real-World Adoption
The meme culture is pushing boundaries beyond the fun to more real use cases. What started as a joke with DOGE’s prospects of being integrated as a means of payment is now a reality with some of Tesla’s products. The renowned EV car manufacturer recently added DOGE as an alternative form of payment, triggering conversations around what memecoins can evolve into. Can this crypto sub asset find a footing in everyday payments?
It may be a little too early to make any conclusive comments on the underlying potential but it is evident that as long as a certain “community” agrees that a memecoin holds some defined amount of value, then it could also be used as a form of currency.
And with on-chain lending now in the picture, memecoin investors are longer limited to holding their digital assets for merely speculative purposes. There are crypto platforms such as Youholder which allows those holding a memecoin like PEPE to use their assets as collateral to access USD, EUR, and CHF denominated loans with an LTV of 90%.
Conclusion
The memecoin culture reveals a deeper reality about the modern financial ecosystem, fun is becoming more important than fundamentals. Investors are no longer limited to value-driven products but rather projects that have some aspect of fun in them, this could be for the hype, community, or simply the opportunity to join a movement for the purpose of participating in viral jokes.
