Meme Mania

Fueled by unquenchable greed and feverish FOMO, degens are being lured into crypto's volatile wild west of meme coins, where mind-boggling gains and soul-crushing losses are always just one trade away.

March's crypto rally superstars, have returned with a bang, propelled by the buzz surrounding Ethereum Spot ETF approvals.

These unpredictable degen tokens defy conventional wisdom, proving that the meme coin craze wasn't just a brain-melting flash in the pan or some top signal harbinger, it's an unruly force disrupting our anarchic realm.

Richard Dawkins coined the term meme in his book The Selfish Gene to describe ideas, styles or behaviors that spread like plague through cultures.

Basically, a meme is a mind virus that gets replicated from one degenerate to the next.

The wild west of crypto appears to have been infected with this mind virus, as the degen behavior is proliferating like a rampant contagion..

Meme lords are resorting to Jackass-level stunts to get their tokens noticed.

In a hold my beer moment, a meme coin dev (using the term loosely) had fireworks shot at him while doused in alcohol on a livestream as an attempt to pump his token. He’s now being treated for third degree burns.

This is just one example in a string of outrageous tales that underscore the meme coin craze's grip on the crypto world

Are you swept up in the meme frenzy?

Credit: Decrypt, ZachXBT, Crypto.News, Coin Telegraph

The crypto realm is an anarchic mix of visionary builders and full-blown degenerate gamblers.

On one side, you have the nerdy devs and crypto-utopian founders trying to architect the future of finance with their world changing blockchain breakthroughs.

Then there's the insatiable degen horde, the adrenaline junkies chasing the next white-knuckle meme coin pump like it's a game of financial Russian Roulette.

They live for that searing rush when a meme coin moon shots, even if it could just as easily crumble into dust before their eyes.

This schizophrenic culture mashup of brilliant innovators and reckless crypto pyromaniacs is what makes the space such a beautifully chaotic symphony.

Anybody can make a coin with zero to little investment needed, just release a coin and rug if they choose.

The most popular meme coin factory at the moment is pump.fun on Solana.

For a mere $2 in fees and no seed liquidity, so-called devs can mint tokens on the platform, which profits from a 1% swap fee on transactions and a 2 SOL fee for tokens hitting Raydium's $69k liquidity threshold.

Despite claiming to prevent rug pulls with its no-presale, no-insider allocation policy, traders still face major losses due to early allocations by token creators who dump their holdings post-launch.

Even with its closed-source nature and API restrictions, users continue to gamble on Pump.fun, chasing the adrenaline rush of finding that winning meme.

Sometimes, the thrill of the chase is the game itself.

Take the Money and Run

In what seems like ancient history at this point, ZachXBT highlighted a list of Solana presale meme coins that the founders took the money and ran.

This did not stop the madness, if anything it only intensified.

The team for a meme coin named URF disappeared in less than 24 hours with 2,400 SOL, worth $450,000, collected during the coin’s presale.

The team also used the funds raised during the asset’s sale to trade other meme tokens on Solana.

Another rug, the meme coin CONDOM, raised 4,965 SOL, worth $906k, during its presale before abruptly deleting its X page with over 50,000 followers, which included some prominent figures.

The Solana meme coin Catwifhat, launched in December 2023, managed to overcome two rug pulls within 12 days of its inception.

After the initial developer dumped 20% of the supply, crashing the price, remaining investors formed a new team to revive the token.

Despite another rug pull on Christmas Eve, the community's dedication saw Catwifhat bounce back again, testing the nine lives theory.

While some meme tokens pump, dump and rug with very little fanfare, others take center stage with shocking, hilarious and sometimes disturbing stunts.

In a shocking display, the LIVEMOM token's teenage founder used risqué live streams with his mom to lure investors before abruptly pulling the rug at a $300K valuation.

Meanwhile, the HANDS token creator, who claimed he couldn't rug pull because he allegedly had no hands, unveiled his hands at the token's peak, quickly cashing out.

One COST hodler is truly putting his money where his mouth is, eating a $1.50 Costco hot dog daily until the token hits that price. Despite holding just $3k of the coin, Joe now shoulders the immense burden of continuing his discounted frank-fest, until COST does a 4,000% moonshot.

In a dramatic twist, pump.fun suffered a $1.9 million exploit on May 16. Ex-contractor Jarett Dunn, aka STACCoverflow, abused his inside access for a flash loan attack, draining funds from fresh meme coins in just 100 minutes.

Amidst a storm of confessional and tumultuous tweets about personal turmoil and a desire to "change history," Dunn was allegedly arrested and bailed in the UK.

While awaiting his court date, he may be continuing his shenanigans, leaving many to wonder if his digital antics spell further trouble.

History should have taught us to be wary of celebrity meme coins, especially when Sahil Arora may be involved.

Lessons had to be learned after the fact again, as Caitlyn Jenner and Rich the Kid claim to have gotten caught up in Sahil’s pump and dump scams early this week.

In a situation that resembles the Spiderman pointing meme, Sahil launched the IGGY token, a meme based on musician Iggy Azalea just a few hours before she launched her own MOTHER token. Both have been questioned as scams.

Coin Telegraph’s Magazine obtained a list of high-profile celebrities and adult film stars, with endorsement prices ranging from $6,000 to as high as $315,000, allegedly circulated by Arora.

To add fuel to the fire, pump.fun just introduced live streaming, should we be afraid to look?

While Solana has been getting alot of the attention in the current cycle, for good and bad reasons, Coinbase has been teasing at onboarding 100M users on to their L2 Network Base.

Launched at the end of last summer, Base already has more than $1.7 billion in TVL and it didn’t take them long to make it into the Top 10 chains.

It also did not take long for onchain shenanigans, an investigation released by Coin Telegraph’s Magazine in April revealed that 1 in 6 new Base meme coins are scams and 91% have vulnerabilities.

In Mid-May, a meme coin factory launched named base.fun, where it costs less than $1 and just 1 click to create and launch a coin.

Promising no risky dev-owned tokens, no hidden fees and even making the statement that you can't rug on base fun and also get a 10% dev kickback.

Only time will tell if the Jackass mind virus infects the meme coin culture over at Base and this nascent ecosystem becomes the next degen Wild West.

With Coinbase aiming to onboard 100 million new users to this ecosystem, will the degen horde treat Base as the next frontier ripe for meme coin colonization?

The recent meme coin frenzy has divided the crypto industry into two opposing factions.

To the critics, the meme coin phenomenon represents the worst excesses of crypto, a Lord of the Flies environment where bad actors run rampant, scamming naive investors through a potent mix of hype, FOMO and crude marketing tactics.

Conversely, meme coin supporters view this surge as crypto's gateway drug to mainstream adoption.

To them, the rallies are ushering in a new generation of investors who may start with degen punts on shitcoins, but will inevitably get pulled deeper into the wider cryptosphere.

The more eyeballs and dollars flooding in, the better chance crypto's transformative opportunities get realized.

The supporters argue that creative destruction has always been crypto's way, for every hundred vapourware projects, a diamond-in-the-rough protocol emerges that spawns innovation.

Why lament the growing pains of an industry still finding its footing?

The scam risks are part of the price of admission to a monetary revolution.

Although ideally, devs and creators could rely on publicity stunts alone to garner hype instead of putting on an outrageous show only to mercilessly rug their audience.

Wherever you fall on this debate, one truth is undeniable, crypto's off-the-rails meme coin casino represents both the brightest hope and darkest underbelly of this movement.

It's an anarchy-fueled convergence of entrepreneurial dynamism and unabashed greed. A beauteous shitshow that's an intoxicating watch, regardless of which side you're on.

The craze tests the tolerance of regulators and the resolve of crypto purists.

But in the crucible of chaos, new futures are being forged. For better or worse, meme mania is crypto's next frontier.

Buckle up and embrace the degen within, this ride's just getting started.

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