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Memes are inherently coded. Social trends, outrageous humor, and the lure of outrageous profits are all wrapped up in tokens that do nothing. It’s not for Warren Buffett, it’s for the millions of regular people looking for fun, community and the lottery in the underprivileged places they live.
“Memes are alpha,” says Danny Yang, founder of OnChainMonkey, citing crazy returns compared to other indicators. Memecoin gamifies the investment process as investors follow the intangible trends of election results or dive into the latest minted coins. 10 minutes After the suspect in the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO was arrested. Very 4Chan-esque.
Community building, social connection, and fun are all part of Memcoin’s appeal. “Humans are social animals, and memes are about people finding enjoyment in the same things,” Yang says.
“The meme itself is not relevant. It’s a social game that needs a lot of players who judge memes based on how many people want to play that game.”
But other than good fun and the opportunity to make money, what are the real-world use cases for useless memecoins?
Use Case 1: Circumvention of U.S. Securities Laws
First and foremost, the uselessness of memecoins is a special use case in itself. They avoid the U.S. securities regulations that suppressed the ICO boom. Additionally, Memecoins are specifically not captured by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s proposed expanded cryptocurrency mandate. How could that be? They don’t do anything.
“It’s actually safer to launch a memecoin with no use case today than to launch a useful token,” a16z Crypto managing partner Chris Dixon wrote.
U.S. securities law focuses on the Howey test to determine what constitutes an investment contract. Memecoins that do not represent anything more than an idea and do not promise any return on the efforts of others will not be caught in the test. This regulatory friendliness saw memecoins spread like wildfire during the Great War on Cryptocurrencies (2022-2024).
Memecoin is the largest cryptocurrency in 2024, accounting for 14.3% of CoinGecko market share in the second quarter. With Donald Trump becoming president-elect and new SEC boss Paul Atkins possibly allowing “real” projects to raise money again through something like Hester Peirce’s 2020 “safe harbor” proposal, these Will the phenomenon go away?
2. Speculation about politics
In a world where people use technology to create first-hand social bonds, memecoins allow holders to participate in and capture the political zeitgeist. Memecoin was created to support and oppose both candidates in the US presidential election.
Argentina’s liberal president Javier Milei also has a memecoin commemorating his reforms. The social utility of allowing people to express their political views financially can be viewed as similar to text message donation efforts run by major campaigns.
But social engagement or usefulness should be better understood as capturing the ‘zeitgeist’, argues Daniel Drescher, vice president of business development at influential recruitment agency Sal’Ad Labs. He told the magazine that Elon Musk, Trump’s new best friend and future head of the Department of Government Effectiveness (DOGE), is a prime example.
“How did Dogecoin become the standard in this uncertain Web3 space? They have perhaps the most powerful KOL in history: Elon Musk, the undefeated and richest man in the world. He was the inspiration for Iron Man. To Ayn Rand aficionados, he is the godlike John Galt, who invented a motor that provided enough power to light up the entire world.”
Drescher prefers to think of memecoins as “brandcoins.” Often they need a key opinion leader or personality cult to bolster that coin. Every successful memecoin “has a passionate following that lives and dies by it. “It’s what gets me up in the morning.”
I can relate to the metaphor of the zeitgeist. For example, Kamala Harris memes surged when then-presidential candidate Joe Biden fell down the stairs, and was soon eliminated as a candidate by Democrats.
3. Charitable Trojan Horse to rescue the governor
Memecoins could become a Trojan horse to raise money for more meaningful projects, such as charity fundraising, launching a casino like Iggy Azalea’s Motherland, or launching an exchange like ShibaSwap.
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, well known for donating memecoins to charity, wrote:
“Some of the most interesting coins I’ve seen are those where a significant portion of the token supply (or some ongoing fee mechanism) is used for some kind of charity.”
“It seems like there is an unknown opportunity here to create something more positive and long-lasting.”
NEIRO, the Neiro Foundation’s memecoin, is trying to become the next Dogecoin by blending utility and speculative advantages.
The question is, what is a Trojan horse? Is it philanthropy or speculative merit?
The memecoin is named after Neiro, a rescued Shiba Inu adopted by Atsuko Sato, the original owner of “Doge” Kabosu.
The Neiro Foundation is a collaborative effort to fund Shiba Inu rescue and welfare work around the world, providing essential resources and financial support to dog shelters and charities that improve the lives of Shiba Inus. Dog breeds are susceptible to a number of prevalent health problems, including hip dysplasia, eye diseases such as glaucoma and cataracts, and progressive retinal atrophy.
SlumDOGE Millionaire gained public recognition after converting $180,000 into more than $3 million in DOGE, which was captured in a documentary. This is not financial advice. He is now the face of the coin and says, “The growing popularity of memecoins has led to a lot of skepticism, but many critics are overlooking the fact that some of these memecoins have clear, positive mandates.”
“In addition to viral humor, certain memecoins support philanthropic causes and, as a result, receive enthusiastic support from the community. The best memecoins are backed by a powerful narrative that resonates with the growing number of socially conscious Web3 users. At the same time, it shows the tremendous potential that DeFi has to drive philanthropy.”
4. Funding the launch of AI agents
AI agents have the potential to be incredibly useful. Imagine an AI agent that automatically rebalances your cryptocurrency portfolio so that your profits are automatically moved into high-quality coins like Bitcoin, Ether, and SOL, so that you end up holding 90% of your shitcoins.
It is likely that one day AI agents will lead to truly autonomous DAOs. However, currently they are focusing on the memecoin robotic trading end of the spectrum. Bots like Truth Terminal interact with users on platforms like
Take Fartcoin, an AI-inspired memecoin that skyrocketed to a market capitalization of $900 million through the immutable comedic law of “hot air rises.” It is quickly catching up to GOAT, another Truth Terminal shield memecoin.
The whole idea of autonomous AI agents launching memecoins is a bit of a meme in itself. Because many “AI agents” are humans in disguise and the GOAT is man-made. However, as the number of real-world agents increases, its potential is emerging.
Masa co-founder Calanthia Mei says there is a big difference between “intelligent AI agent memecoins and dumb memecoins.” Mei, who was previously a founding member of PayPal’s venture capital arm, talks about the “memecoin sensation.” This implies a crossover between AI and memecoin, where AI agents perform tasks such as trading.
“Aside from making money, a side effect of memecoins is making technology cool. “They shine a spotlight on technologies that few people care about.”
Memecoins is helping to fund and launch agents on the Virtuals Protocol, where AI agents can be programmed to interact with token economic designs. It also enables code-free AI agent building, tokenization, and deployment along with more sophisticated designs.
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Mei’s company, Masa, is a “decentralized data miner network” that leverages Search Augmented Generation (RAG) and relies on “emotional intelligence” based on pre-planned prompts to provide real-time data to power context-aware AI agents. . Agents can learn new things and gain new memories in real time, she told the Magazine.
Therefore, in this context, these RAG-based AI agents are equipped with dynamic data retrieval, emotional intelligence, and memory capabilities, allowing them to recognize and adapt to situations in real time.
May is confident that memes will accelerate the experimental combination between AI and cryptocurrency. Since the GOAT story broke, she said, “Over the past few weeks, we’ve received three times more inbound inquiries about developing AI agents.”
“Think about it. Create an intelligent AI agent memecoin on Cryptocurrency Twitter, the home of cryptocurrency market sentiment. “It’s an almost unstoppable investment thesis.”
5. Fair token launch without retail industry being ruined by VCs
Retail cryptocurrency investors have been massively shamed by VCs for years. These investors participate early and secure a large supply of tokens at a fraction of the final market price. This makes the fully diluted value absurdly high, and retail investors lose out as VCs dump their tokens. It is not surprising that users harmed by unfair token economics have turned to memecoins that can be released fairly (although they often are not).
“For some projects, memecoins provide much-needed financial resources to develop their technology around the frozen VC market and Web3 echo chamber,” says Masa’s Mei.
In Murad Mahmudov’s viral supercycle talk at Token2049, he argued that a fully unlocked memecoin means the tokenized meme is a real product. There is no VC or lock-up period. The advantage is that the value of the asset cannot be assessed because there is no revenue.
Ultimately, memecoins are useful for new types of funding vehicles, says Zhen Yu Yong, CEO of Web3Auth. Web3Auth is a white label wallet company that has built wallets for Trust Wallet and numerous Fortune 500 companies and has 20 million monthly technical users.
“Of course, most memecoins fail. “But now you can launch a tokenized project without a VC or a market maker with a chance of success without backroom equity deals.”
The lack of VCs backing most memecoins is clearly part of their retail appeal. Degens who missed out on Bitcoin or ETH or any other major coin in 2010 could get rich instantly without any VCs participating in a pre-seed round. It is an ideological investment thesis, Degen’s dream.
Simply put, memecoins are like a cartoon version of an ICO without the pretense that someone might try to develop and launch a product.
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max parasol
Max Parasol has worked as a cryptocurrency and AI researcher at the RMIT Blockchain Innovation Hub, a private equity lawyer, and was part of an overly ambitious early-stage cryptocurrency startup.
Follow the author @maxparasol