$2.7 billion in trading volume in 24 hours. This is more than what Polygon, Avalanche and Chainlink, cryptocurrencies that have been established for years, can manage together. And more than the daily trading volume on all decentralized exchanges on Ethereum, the second largest blockchain in the world.
And all for a token called…Slerf. Exactly: Slerf.
The name sounds stupid, the story behind it is even stupider. The rise of Slerf is emblematic of how this crypto bull market is about to get even crazier than its predecessors. And could be dominated by the most controversial form of tokens: memecoins.
Memcoins: the magical internet money
They have been flooding the market for years and embody the crypto industry in its most irrational form, are in the truest sense of the word: magical internet money. Memecoins often increase in value by thousands of percent in a short period of time and flirt with the fact that they actually have no point. White papers, teams or a business plan – you’ll look in vain. What you get instead: provocative memes and pop culture references. Current total value: $67 billion. More than any other hype topics of this cycle so far, blockchain games, DePin, AI coins or real world assets. Who currently has the charts of Dexscreener or scrolls through your crypto Twitter timeline, you see one thing above all: memecoins. And a mania that reaches new heights. On average, the sector’s market capitalization increased by almost $750 million every day in March 2024.
At first glance, the memecoin market seems as if Rick & Morty had taken over Wall Street and turned it into a virtual 24/7 casino – real satire. Or as one popular Twitter account itself says, Wall Street Bets: “As if 4chan found a Bloomberg Terminal.” His investors call themselves “Degens”, short for Degenerates. They don’t invest, they “ape” in coins – so they don’t behave like analysts, but like monkeys. There are Degen DAOs, Degen News, Degen NFTs, Degen Influencers, Degen Memes. The sword has long since become a cultural archetype, frowned upon by the majority in the crypto space, but celebrated among its peers. On social media, traders and finfluencers with hundreds of thousands of followers celebrate each other for how “stuck” they are.
“I’m bored. I ape in a few shitcoins on base. Who’s joining in?” asks trader Eunice D Wong with 163,000 followers. “If you’re still buying Memeocins after being scammed twice, you’re officially allowed to park in a disabled spot. There is no higher degree of disability,” posted crypto trader van00sa with 170,000 followers. Self Description: “I’m building generational wealth on a broken iPhone.” The Solana trader Jakey (almost 80,000 followers) posted a video of himself: He’s standing on a roof in front of his laptop in his underwear with sunglasses (in bad weather), no T-shirt, but memes posters as tattoos on his upper body. He wears a golden glove with a built-in banana holder (because he’s a monkey). Caption: “These are the people you are trading against.”
The newest memecoin Slerf became extremely successful because it took “stuck” to a whole new level. The launch: a complete disaster. The developer collected ten million US dollars in 24 hours via presale. That already “stuck”: strangers sent their crypto money to his address in return for the vague promise of his tokens at a good price. But they never came. Slerf destroyed his tokens – and accidentally those of his investors too. And then tweeted: “Oh, fuck.” The reaction: Slerf was named a “blue chip meme” on Twitter and classified as particularly valuable, reaching record volumes and pumping by hundreds of percent. “Oh, fuck” and the whole story is now its own meme: the “Slerf Saga”. Donations are now being collected as compensation, including through crypto exchanges. Current total value of the project: $370 million.
Before the rise of Slerf, it was Bome, short for Book of Memes. Before Bome it was Dogwifhat. Before that, Bonk and Pepe. It took Bonk eight months to become worth $1 billion. For Dogwifhat it was three months. Bome – three days. Slerf only peaked at $500 million. But that in just a few hours. While exactly two memecoins made it into the top 100 in the last bull market of 2021, Doge and Shiba Inu, there were now eight of them (now there are six).
The memecoin mania is quite literally an attention economy in Wild West mode. Likes and followers, retweets and quotes and sensational stories are converted into cold hard cash. And their rapid rises seem to thrive on one resource: vibes. At least the stars among them like Dogecoin or Dogwifhat: “In the last half decade, vibes have become a ubiquitous word that many people turn to when it comes to describing the emotion emanating from a place or a thing,” writes the historian Tom F. Wright in the Atlantic. “It is the prevailing shorthand for a cultural atmosphere, mood and zeitgeist.”
In the case of the memecoin mania, many are talking about the rise of financial nihilism, popularized by crypto VC Travis Kling. The mentality behind it: Prosperity through traditional means is out of reach for most young people. Wages are stagnating. Prices are increasing. Houses are unaffordable.
“Why not invest $500 in a memecoin that could make 50x? Even if you know you’ll lose most or all of it. It’s not like the $500 is enough to make a difference, any more than $1000 or $5000. This mindset that is becoming more and more prevalent in America is financial nihilism. This is the zeitgeist of young Americans. You are naive if you believe otherwise. And it’s a big driving force for shitcoining.”
Memecoins are gambling without hypocrisy
You don’t have to see it as darkly as Travis Kling. Crypto as a large virtual casino – basically nothing new. The ICO boom of 2017 was similar. People chased pre-sales and private sales of coins that promised to revolutionize some industry – only this time the hypocrisy is missing. “When I came into the space, I thought Substratum would change the internet and Basic Attention Tokens would revolutionize the advertising industry,” explains blogger Stephen Cesaro in an interview with the podcast, The Bankless: “With the crash of 2018, I realized: I have “I just paid very expensive tuition fees.”
“When you buy Dogecoin or Dogwifhat, you know what you are doing. You won’t be fooled by a Substratrum founder who promises to change the internet. You are literally buying a coin with a dog wearing a hat.” Dogwifhat launched three months ago and is now worth around three billion US dollars. It parodies exactly what Cesaro is talking about. On the website you read in capital letters:
“WIF IS NOT ONLY LITERALLY A DOG WITH A HAT, BUT ALSO A SYMBOL OF PROGRESS, FOR FUTURISTIC TRANSACTIONS, A LIGHTHOUSE FOR THOSE WHO THINK FORWARD. IT IS CLEAR THAT THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO ADOPT INNOVATIONS LIKE WIF, BREAK BOUNDARIES AND USAGE A NEW ERA IN FINANCIAL AND TECHNOLOGY.
Dogwifhat
Except that as you read this, everything gets crossed out until all that’s left is: “It’s literally just a dog in a hat.” At Solana, the joke became the leading memecoin trend in three months: influencers post photos of their dogs or cats or themselves – wearing a hat. Or put it on Gary Gensler, the hated head of the US financial regulator. The movement has its own slang: Get Wif It. The Hat Stays On. And so forth. There are now Dogswifpants. Or Catswifbags. Someone knitted a gigantic hat and put it on the Wall Street bull. Even Forbes, Bloomberg and Die Zeit have already reported on what amuses their followers. The example shows: The best memecoins create collective entertainment. And create a community.
“There is no better way to introduce people to this ecosystem than this Memecoin framework,” says Stephen Cesaro. “People can’t go on Coinbase and trade Popcat, or whatever the meme of the day is. You have to learn: How do I set up a self-custodial wallet, how do I use Jupiter and all of these things.” Memecoins create a collective memory: “A lot of these people are going to burn their fingers. But in five to 10 years, when crypto is a big thing and you ask them how they got into it, everyone will have a similar story.”
All of this is still a long way away. “If my thesis is correct, then this cycle is going to be pretty crazy,” Travis Kling predicted last month. Reality seems to have caught up with him long ago. Over 2,000 memecoins are created daily on Solana alone, where most of this madness happens. Part of the Degen circus is now moving to Base, Coinbase’s Layer2 blockchain, where the Degen token has already increased by hundreds of percent. Just like a “stuck” version of the boss, Brian Armstrong (here: briun armstrung). Despite Slerf: Degens continues to throw millions at presales. One on the Binance Chain reportedly recently raised around $280 million.
All you can say is, “Oh, fuck.”
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