The Confusion of Internet Jokes Becoming Money
I still remember the moment when V laughed at me for not understanding that Doge was more than just a meme. “You can actually buy it,” he insisted, while I stared back blankly. The concept honestly baffled me. Why would anyone put real money into something based on an internet joke? What possible benefit could it bring? This wasn’t just confusion. It was a fundamental disconnect between my understanding of value and this new digital reality.
That conversation marked my reluctant entry into the world of meme coins. Not as an enthusiast, but as a puzzled observer trying to make sense of this strange intersection where internet culture somehow transforms into financial assets. It’s a phenomenon I still struggle to fully embrace yet can’t help but find fascinating.
The Characters That Made Meme Coins Mainstream
Dogecoin: From “Much Wow” to Much Value
When I first saw Dogecoin in late 2013, I genuinely thought it was just another internet joke, a parody of Bitcoin featuring a quirky Shiba Inu. The idea that this light hearted creation by Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer would eventually become a serious financial asset worth billions seemed absolutely absurd.
Yet here we are. What transformed Dogecoin from joke to phenomenon? Partly it was Elon Musk’s seemingly random obsession with it, tweeting “Doge” and “Dogecoin is the people’s crypto” to his millions of followers. I remember watching in disbelief as these tweets caused price spikes that defied any rational explanation. The whole situation felt surreal, like watching a meme somehow escape the internet and start affecting the real world.
Learning the nuances of Dogecoin’s supply model was eye-opening. While it is inflationary with 5 billion DOGE added yearly, this fixed inflation actually means its percentage-based dilution decreases over time. This subtle economic model didn’t prevent it from surviving multiple crypto winters when thousands of ‘serious’ projects collapsed. There’s something strangely resilient about it that continues to puzzle me.
My Brief, Painful Flirtation with MBAPPE
Against my better judgment and my own rules about meme coins, I gave in to V’s persistent encouragement and put a small amount into MBAPPE. “Just try it,” he said. “You might be surprised.”
Well, surprised isn’t quite the word I’d use. Horrified, maybe? The investment went horribly south, and I’m still holding those tokens, watching them gather digital dust in my wallet. As they say in crypto circles: HODL (this is another crypto joke that I find hilarious).
This painful little experiment reinforced my scepticism. Yet I can’t bring myself to sell at such a loss, creating this strange contradiction where I’m simultaneously dismissive of meme coins while technically still invested in one. The crypto world is full of such paradoxes.
The MooDeng Phenomenon: Cultural Moments as Currency
Sometimes meme coins capture cultural moments in unexpected ways. While preparing for my trip to Bangkok for Devcon 2024, I stumbled across MooDeng ($MOODENG), a token celebrating the internet-famous pygmy hippopotamus from Thailand’s Khao Kheow Open Zoo that had captured hearts worldwide. The token launched in September 2024 on the Solana blockchain, riding the wave of the hippo’s viral fame. Everyone was talking about visiting MooDeng and there even was an event that people could join to visit Moo Deng, and somehow, inevitably, someone had created a token to capitalize on the craze.
What fascinated me was watching MooDeng’s token price steadily rise alongside the hippo’s social media presence. For a brief moment, it seemed like the perfect alignment of internet culture and speculative investment. Of course, looking at the chart now, it’s predictably crashed, just another reminder of the ephemeral nature of these tokens.
But for that brief window, when cultural relevance, community excitement, and financial speculation aligned, I almost understood the appeal. Almost.
The Psychological Contradictions of Meme Coins
I’ve developed a theory about why meme coins even exist. I suspect they grew from early crypto users who spent their formative years scrolling through 9gag and similar platforms. Now older with disposable income, they’ve found a way to transform internet humour into a bizarre financial ecosystem.
There’s something oddly endearing about that, taking something as ephemeral as an internet joke and trying to give it lasting value. It’s ridiculous, yet strangely human.
My own relationship with meme coins is full of contradictions. I regularly dismiss them as meaningless speculative vehicles, yet I can’t deny the FOMO I felt watching $TRUMP climb for days before its inevitable crash. Something in me wanted to participate in the collective madness, even while my rational brain screamed not to.
I’ve set one personal rule for researching new meme coin projects: just don’t buy them. Yet here I am, still holding MBAPPE, unable to follow my own advice. These contradictions feel emblematic of the entire crypto space, a mixture of scepticism and hope, rational analysis and emotional impulse.
The Community Aspect: Digital Tribes Around Digital Jokes
While I’ve personally stayed away from meme coin Discord servers and Telegram groups, I’ve observed their dynamics from a distance. They function almost like digital tribes, complete with their own languages, rituals, and hierarchies.
There’s something fascinating about watching people rally around tokens with no inherent utility beyond their shared belief. It reminds me of how value has always been, at some level, a collective fiction we all agree to believe in. Meme coins just make this fiction more transparent, and perhaps more absurd.
An Unexpected Avenue for Innovation
Despite my scepticism, I’ve been intrigued by projects like $AI16Z, a Solana-based DAO that integrates AI into venture capital investments. It began with meme-like qualities but evolved into something potentially transformative.
This suggests an unexpected possibility: perhaps some meme coins could evolve beyond their origins to create actual utility. Like jokes that accidentally stumble into profound truths, some of these seemingly ridiculous tokens might pioneer new approaches to community building or governance.
Final Reflections: The Mirror of Modern Value
Meme coins ultimately function as a mirror reflecting our changing relationship with value in the digital age. They challenge traditional notions of what makes something “worth” investing in, highlighting how community belief can sometimes outweigh practical utility, at least temporarily.
For newcomers curious about this space, I offer this advice based on my limited and somewhat painful experience: approach with extreme caution, genuine curiosity, and only money you’re completely comfortable losing. The most valuable thing you’ll gain probably won’t be profit, but rather insights into digital culture and perhaps a humbling lesson or two about market psychology.
I still can’t fully wrap my head around buying something based purely on an internet joke. But I also can’t deny that watching this phenomenon unfold has taught me something valuable about how digital communities form, how modern value is created, and how the line between jokes and assets continues to blur in our increasingly digital world.
As for my $MBAPPE tokens? I’ll probably hold them forever. Less as an investment and more as a reminder of how easily we can get caught up in digital gold rushes, even against our better judgment. Yes, I’m looking at you, V.