Memecoins
Vitalik is not impressed by celebrity memecoins. Here’s how they should change – DL News
- Memecoins are fine, as long as everyone is happy, Vitalik says.
- Celebrities such as Donald Trump and Caitlyn Jenner have been linked to joke coins.
- Memecoins generated over $6.9 billion in trading volume in the last 24 hours.
Vitalik Buterin says he’s far from satisfied with the latest round of celebrity joke coins, but that doesn’t mean the $69 billion market is worthless.
It just needs new direction.
“The north star should be: have a project where even if in the end all the tokens involved go to zero, the average person who participated is happy they did it,” Ethereum co-founder he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Memecoins have a combined market value of $68.6 billion generated over $6.5 billion in trades in the last 24 hours alone.
Buterin said celebrity memecoins must have “some sort of public good goal to serve, beyond enriching celebrities and early adopters. Realistically, either an art project or the celebrity’s favorite charity, or both.”
He said Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis’ 2021 NFT-based animated series Stoner Cats was “much more honorable” than other memecoins launched by celebrities this year.
Non-fungible tokens of the show’s feline stars were sold to raise money to produce the series. In 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged the creators of the project offer unregistered titles.
The second factor that determines whether the Ethereum cofounder can respect memecoins is whether they allow users to do something other than exchange the token.
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“As much as I don’t like token voting DAOs, at least they give people something to do and organize,” Buterin said. “The DAO should not completely decide the agenda, but it can have some influence.”
Decentralized autonomous organizations are communities that lead many crypto projects.
A quick summary of the characteristics that a celebrity crypto project must have for me to be more willing to respect it:
1. Have some sort of public good goal to serve, beyond enriching celebrities and early adopters. Realistically, either an art project or the…
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) June 5, 2024
The third factor?
Whether it will last or not.
“Make something that lasts more than 10 years, instead of sitting around for a few months and then being forgotten about,” Vitalik said.
Meme all the way
Buterin’s comments come as symbols officially or unofficially linked to famous people Donald Trump AND Caitlyn Jenner have ridden the current cryptocurrency bull run.
Australian rapper Iggy Azalea dropped a token on Solana in May. Since its launch, the token has risen more than 520% to $0.1073 CoinGecko.
Market observers expect the current memecoin frenzy to push Solana – the blockchain on which many of these joke coins are traded – to record highs this year.
However, reaching new highs and making celebrities richer is not enough to satisfy Buterin’s high bar for memecoiners.
Drivers of the cryptocurrency market
- Bitcoin rose 3% in the last 24 hours to $70,940.
- Ethereum rises 1.1% to $3,800.
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Eric Johansson is the news editor of DL News. Do you have advice? Send him an email at eric@dlnews.com.