In mid-April 2023, a frog memecoin called Pepe dominated discussions in crypto circles after going up parabolically in the span of a few hours, going up by as much as 21,000%. Pepe follows a long list of memecoins led by Doge and Shiba Inu that made millions for some and lost even more money for others.
In early April 2023, Elon Musk temporarily made the Dogecoin logo the face of Twitter. Again, the value shot up, then went back down again after.
Critics point to the memecoins as the worst of the tokens that have absolutely no underlying and redeeming value. Rightfully so, these memecoins might suddenly skyrocket parabolically, but then just crash down and burn spectacularly. There is no buy-and-hold strategy for memecoins. You don’t really hold these.
I hold zero memecoins and am merely examining these from a cultural perspective. I do agree these have no underlying value. These simply reflect a very short time in history when these are valued, but that value is only because it could make money for the holder. There is no emotional attachment to memetokens.
What possible use could memecoins have?
The only possible use that meme coins can have (and this in no way should encourage people to purchase these risky tokens) is these memes make blockchain and crypto less scary.
Take for example Ethereum (I own some) and the new layer-2 scaling solutions like Optimism, Arbitrum, zkEVM, zkSync, Linea, Base, Starkware, MATIC and others (that I don’t own). Personally, I do not really grasp how these things really work. I do know these have future potential for migrating a lot of Web2 functions owned by giant centralized companies to decentralized Web3.
Join the community where you can transform the future. Cointelegraph Innovation Circle
Read more on cointelegraph.com