Diving into meme culture: Musk, the "godfather" of memes, and those who want to be him

Original author: Day

Recently, with the assistance of Musk’s Twitter, the popularity of meme assets such as Troll and Zuzalu has soared. So, what exactly are memes, why are meme assets sought after, and what do you think about meme assets?

What is a meme asset

The term “meme” is derived from Dawkins’ book The Selfish Gene and refers to the basic unit of human culture. It can be various forms of information, ideas, or behaviors that are passed from person to person through imitation and transmission. “Meme” aims to convey a specific phenomenon, theme, or meaning and resonate in society. After the development of the Internet, “meme” is now not limited to traditional text or pictures, but also includes digital forms such as Token and Non-fungible Token.

These “memes” spread quickly, widely and in a fun way through social media and the Internet, and have become an important part of online culture and popular culture. They can express people’s emotions, opinions, humor and irony, while also reflecting current social trends and cultural phenomena.

The core concept and appeal of meme assets comes from meme culture. Meme assets attract investors’ attention through the use of meme images, concepts, or perspectives that are humorous and entertaining. They are a kind of social infrastructure that spreads quickly within the industry through the co-promotion and virality of the community. Meme assets are unique in that they are community-driven, fairly distributed compared to institutional coins, and community members participate in and promote the development of meme assets, and the success of meme assets is closely related to the activity of the community.

Why meme assets are sought after

The development of the Blockchain industry so far, has long been not a few years ago the reckless stage, a few years ago, you Long projects, investors will think that this is not single, unreliable performance, but now it is the opposite, a new project, but favourable information, because of the previous project endorsement, so the new will not be bad, everyone better understand the relevant situation, the name of ecology.

In such an environment, the industry has long become a giant, the relationship is intricate, the early institutions have gradually grown into a giant existence, there are many mountains, and there is a large number of interests behind each institution. If you have no background, no resources, no one will take care of you, retail investors don’t understand you, and institutions won’t trust you. For example, there are well-known institutions like pradigm, BN and other institutions to vote for you, even if the thing is bad, everyone will seek after it, after all, the endorsement of the institution, even if it is bad, people also have a pile of resources, there are various relationships, you have no products, what to compare with others.

Some head institutions have launched various assembly line projects in batches, and the total Market Cap of the online is tens of billions of dollars (you know, projects with a valuation of more than one billion US dollars are called unicorns in the Web2 world), and under the dumping of large Market Cap and low circulation projects, the Market Cap of high-quality projects continues to increase, but the price is not moving, ordinary investors do not talk about drinking soup, and directly become the last stick, one after another without squeaking.

In this environment, meme assets have replaced the AltCoin a few years ago and become an important part of the entire industry from the bottom up, and the rise of meme assets can be said to be inevitable, behind which the anti-VC movement of retail investors is inseparable. The rise of this year’s BRC 20 assets is partly due to the Bitcoin ecology, and partly because the project chips are relatively scattered and belong to “fair distribution”, and no one institution will monopolize the profits, and this part of the profits will be eaten by retail investors, because everyone makes money and has a wealth effect, so it can be warmed up.

Musk, the godfather of meme

To understand the development of meme, if there are people who can’t get around, then the first one must be Musk. Musk has a close relationship with memes. IT CAN BE SAID THAT THE CURRENT MEME LEADER DOGE CAN HAVE TODAY’S DEVELOPMENT, WHICH IS INSEPARABLE FROM MUSK’S PUBLICITY. HE HAS PUBLICLY SUPPORTED DOGE MANY TIMES, AND EVERY TWEET IS BOUND TO SPARK WIDESPREAD DISCUSSION AND ATTENTION. Since Dogecoin soared to the top ten in the Market Cap in the last round of Bull Market, Musk’s prestige and influence in the Blockchain industry has reached its peak, and one of his tweets can cause huge fluctuations in the price of memes, and sometimes even trigger market madness, as he often tweets related to Crypto Assets and memecoins on Twitter, becoming one of the key targets of retail investors in the industry.

Translation: “Whoever controls the meme controls the universe” - Frank “Tank” Herbert

At present, Musk’s Twitter has nearly 169 million followers, and a small number of people will stare at his Twitter 24 hours a day in order to be the first to discover on-chain projects or batch manufacturing meme tokens, and every tweet he publishes, or changes in Twitter display settings, there will be several earth dogs named after Twitter content on the chain (mainly in Ethereum) in just one or two minutes. Some of the special significance, or repeatedly mentioned, in just a few days, the Market Cap of the project may soar from tens of dollars to tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars Market Cap, the more representative ones are Q*, grok and recent troll.

Of course, these memecoins are very dependent on Musk, and you can look at their historical trends, most of them are waves, unless Musk mentions them again. Before last year’s BRC 20 broke out, most people liked to play on Ethereum, and Musk’s Twitter was one of the objects they focused on, and even fine enough to find out why it was so posted and what is the background source?

Those who want to be Musk

Recently, with the rise of the industry’s popularity, many project founders have begun to shout orders, and they are shouting meme, focusing on air, here is a simple inventory of a few more well-known ones, follow their Twitter, follow up on eating meat in the early stage, and enter the beaten pick-up plate in the later stage, you can see some characteristics of memecoins from a simple understanding.

1. Matt Furie: matt, the founder of pepe, last year’s hottest meme should belong to pepe and the later catch-up bonk, both of which exceeded $1 billion at their peak, pepe relied on the extremely popular image of the sad frog and excellent team marketing to push pepe to BN in the short term.

In the middle of 2023, as long as the founder changes his avatar, changes his signature, and tweets, there will be related memecoins on the chain in the short term, some of which are pulled from tens of thousands of dollars in Market Cap to tens of millions of dollars in the short term, including dorkl, fine, etc. Later, because he shouted too many projects, the money-making effect weakened in the end, resulting in a weakening of his influence, but sometimes he still shouted for some projects.

2. Toly: Solana founder Anatoly, last year’s good performance of SOL made everyone begin to focus on the development of its ecology, of which the first dog of the Solana ecology Bonk rose in this context, and memecoin Silly is a meme project supported by Solana founder Anatoly on Twitter many times, until the Solana Breakpoint conference, founder Anatoly Appearing at the conference in a dragon costume made Silly completely ignited. In addition, because of the traffic of SOL itself, the content of Anatoly’s Twitter retweets has been paid attention to by everyone.

3. Sandeep Nailwal: Polygon founder, after Silly warmed up, Polygon chain also released memecoin pory, on the day of release, Polygon founder Sandeep retweeted the content, pory’s Market Cap reached a high of more than $40 million that day, and many Polygon officials publicly supported it, but the recent price correction was only a few million dollars.

In addition to these, there are also AVAX chain’s Coq, Bear and inscription markets, etc., all of which have AVAX officials or relevant personnel publicly expressed support, resulting in a large number of short-term investors FOMO entry, and recently Lup and Bake and other project parties began to personally leave the market.

It can be seen that most meme assets are short-term heat, and after a wave of heat, most of them will cool down quickly, and few can last. If you don’t have the ability to continue to “make trouble”, it is easy to wave up, and the latecomers will take over for the predecessors. Most of the people here have a certain amount of attention themselves, and then shout orders with a purpose.

Factors that can be hot

Meme assets emphasize more on the concept itself, rather than on how strong the technology or financial system is, so the low threshold for issuing meme assets is its advantage and disadvantage, that is, anyone can issue it, resulting in a lot of projects, but very few really run out. Why is meme popular, what factors are at play, here according to the currently known projects, after the inventory of some reasons, welcome to add.

1. The explosion brings users outside the circle: memecoins because it is air, so marketing has become very important, and the best marketing is to make people can make money, and when they make money, they will pass from person to person. You ask some outsiders, some people may not have heard of ETH, BNB these mainstream assets, but the vast majority of people know about DOGECOIN. The reason why BRC 20 is so hot is, on the one hand, because it is backed by the Bitcoin ecosystem, and another important reason is that someone makes money, and then everyone pours in.

2. Simple and easy to understand: the more classic is “Bit gold, LTC silver”, before Mr. Li also said that he specifically mentioned, what does LTC have? just because it occupies a good name. The slogan is well shouted and deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and it can be said that a lot of tongues are saved.

3. Familiarity and easy communication: This industry is very similar to the entertainment industry, and 80% of it is successful if there is traffic. The image of the carrier sad frog like pepe itself is widely circulated, the pet concept of various well-known founders, the Musk concept, the sats of BRC 20, piin, etc.

4. Innovation: The story is relatively new and innovative, HarryPotterObamaSonic 10 Inu (Bitcoin) combines elements of Harry Potter, Obama and Sony abstract memecoins, aidoge is 1:1 to Arbitrum users, rats early distribution model and so on.

5. Fairness: Fairness here is relative, which refers to the opportunity for retail investors to get cheap chips at the beginning of chip distribution, and most of the BRC 20 are in this list.

These are some of the characteristics of some of the popular meme assets, all of which revolve around the word traffic, but in any case, there are people behind the project.

Summary

Although meme assets have a variety of high returns, only a few projects can really run out, most of them are short-term projects, after a wave, the popularity decreases sharply, and then there is no then, the latecomer takes over for the former, and only a few projects can really run out. MEME assets have become an important part of this industry, and understanding MEME culture is important for tracking and delving deeper into the crypto industry.