Iggy Azalea knows the facility of a meme. On Wednesday afternoon, the Grammy-nominated rapper divided a Photoshopped image of her breastfeeding Vitalik Buterin, the founding father of Ethereum. The caption: “He was just hungry.”
The meme was developed to challenge Buterin after his Rebuke of their Solana-based “memecoin,” Mother Iggy ($MOTHER), which went on sale last week. Celebrities should only launch cryptocurrencies in the event that they serve “some public good,” moderately than “financialization as an end product,” he wrote.
He was just hungry pic.twitter.com/AlTwEtfIKd
— IGGY AZALEA (@IGGYAZALEA) June 5, 2024
Memecoins are a not-so-serious subculture of cryptocurrency. Anyone can launch a currency under any name they need. By merging finance, web trends, and gambling, investors flock to those highly speculative assets in viral moments.
“I don’t think peace is very profitable when it comes to the memecoin landscape,” Azalea said in an interview with Assets. “This is what drives virality, this is what drives my community, this is what drives our market cap, and this is what I’m here to do. So respectfully step out of the way.”
I’m pretty dissatisfied with the “celebrity experiments of this cycle” to date.
“Financialization as a means to an end”, I can respect if the tip is worthy (healthcare, open source software, art, etc.). Financialization *as an end product*, 🤮
Ashton and Milas …
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) June 5, 2024
“Cash rules, I make my own rules”
Six years after the rap of the text “Money rules, I make my own rules,” which is strictly what Azalea is doing. After the primary week of trading, Mother Iggy’s price has increased by 1,200% to around $0.20, reaching a market cap of over $190 million. after on CoinMarketCap from June seventh.
This highlights a broader trend where celebrities are turning to memecoins to earn a living and interact with their fanbase with no middleman. While some find the trend off-putting, for some celebrities it appears to be each profitable and an efficient technique to get back into the highlight.
“I’ve listened to more Iggy Azalea in the last few days than at any other time in the last decade – maybe there’s a lesson to be learned from that,” said Teddy Fusaro, President of Bitwise Asset Management, Assets.
Mother Iggy’s launch was each accidental and deliberate. After spotting a scammer on Telegram posing as Azeala to launch a memecoin, she was compelled to act. “If this guy says he’s launching my coin in 24 hours, I’m launching mine in 23 hours,” she said.
But she’s been watching crypto from the sidelines since 2020. As she watched non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and Web3 art projects come and go, she knew the industry had something in store for her—she just wasn’t sure what. Memecoins struck her as a trend driven by a language she will be able to speak.
“I’m someone who has naturally had so many memes throughout my career; things go viral intentionally or accidentally. I felt like this was a space that I could really successfully engage with,” she said.
Considered the currency of microtrends, memecoins have themselves turn into the trend of the recent crypto renaissance, arguably taking on the role of NFTs through the previous bull market. The value of the favored Pepe ($PEPE) and Shiba Inu ($SHIB) has increased by 363% and 201%, respectively, over the past 12 months, in response to CoinGecko data. Some of the craziest hits this 12 months? Jeo Boden, Doland Tremp, MAGA Hat, Elawn Moosk, and even Good Gensler trolling SEC Chairman Gary Gensler.
Economic nihilism?
Omid Malekan, associate professor at Columbia Business School, said Assets that he sees memecoins because the “ultimate proof” that blockchain technology is the financial infrastructure for the digital age. “Where else could celebrities issue a fan asset without having to go through a gatekeeper and reach so many people?” he says.
However, as with all types of democratization, it’s a corner of cryptocurrency that is usually rife with scams. Issuers can deposit large amounts into their account, promote the coin to drive up the value, after which pull the rug out from under them.
“These celebrity-backed coins are scams and will go to zero pretty quickly. While anyone should be able to use any platform, these coins lack essential information, are misleading, and often violate securities laws,” said Terrence Yang, Managing Director at Swan. Assets.
But Azalea insists she’s not a rug-puller. She says she wants to search out a long-term use for the coin and believes the celebrity buzz presents a chance for retail to partner with Solana. The two startups she co-founded – a fee-for-contract phone data provider and a gifting and crowdfunding website – will allow customers to pay with Mother Iggy coins. But her ultimate goal is to show Mother Iggy right into a stablecoin. “That would be like the Holy Grail,” she says.
But not every memecoin project has been successful, suggesting that a big online following is not any guarantee for investors. Last week, Caitlyn Jenner ($JENNER) also dealt a blow to Solana, but was overshadowed by Azalea, reaching a market cap of under $10 million, with only 7% growth previously week.
In the realm of critical memecoin theory, Azalea posits two pillars of success. One is a willingness to have interaction with the crypto community where it’s at. In her case, the primary involved organising a Telegram channel inside days of trading. The second is playfulness – tailored to Azalea’s provocative memes – and capitalizing on the trolling culture of the crypto world.
So removed from becoming a typical tool within the arsenal of celebrities, Azalea predicts that there’ll only be a handful who will give you the option to hit the best note and earn a living from it.
Another hurdle celebrities could have to beat is regulation. Malekan argues that unlike Bitcoin or Ether, memecoins must be legally treated like gambling, “otherwise it will be very easy for celebrities to abuse their own Namecoin and consider it a money-making scheme,” he adds. He wants issuers to be transparent in regards to the amount they’re holding and the high likelihood of volatility.
But ultimately, he sees the expansion of memecoins, meme stocks and gambling as indicators of economic nihilism: “People feel like they have to do risky things with their money to get ahead.”
