This is an analogy for the attention economy. A celebrity created entirely by social media, “hawk tua girl” Hayley Welch helped launch a cryptocurrency asset that sparked a viral frenzy that then went under fire.
The Hawk Memecoin was worth $490m (£385m) within hours of its launch on December 4, but has now surpassed its market capitalization (all Hawk meme coins in circulation). The coin's value is $17 million.
Welch, a Tennessee native, shot to fame earlier this year after answering some racy interview questions, but was soon accused of misleading her social media followers. Cryptocurrency commentator Steven Findeisen, known as Coffeezilla, called the launch a “lag pull” (developers hype a crypto scheme for short-term profits, then abandon the project). (a term used to refer to the act of canceling).
However, Hawk is still trading, and Welch said her team “hasn't sold a single token.” Welch's representatives have been contacted for comment.
The uproar comes amid a boom in meme coins, which were worth a total of about $20 billion at the beginning of the year but are now worth $118 billion, according to CoinMarketCap, which monitors cryptocurrency prices. It is said that there is. And they are flooding the market by the thousands. Sometime in November, memecoin platform pump.fun 69,000 tokens issued in one dayaccording to data from crypto analysis firm Dune.
Experts say memecoins, the latest darlings of the crypto space whose true economic value has been endlessly questioned, have no fundamental value.
“It's just a phrase attached to a digital coin. It has no value,” says Carol Alexander, a finance professor at the University of Sussex.
Memecoins reflect two hallmarks of the digital economy: memes and cryptocurrencies. The former are online images and video clips that are endlessly tweaked and reused on social media to capture the zeitgeist (think Moo Deng the Hippo or even more timelessly distracting boyfriends). . Cryptocurrency is a digital asset built on blockchain, a distributed ledger that tracks ownership of cryptocurrencies or other digital assets.
Sam Baker, a UK-based meme coin trader, says many of the coin launches are based on internet trends that he has “never heard of”, and that he is promoting the coins on a variety of channels, from Discord to X to Telegram. He says he relies heavily on influencers who push the brand. .
He acknowledged that memecoins have no “intrinsic value” and there is no “reason or rationale” for them to be successful. Recent launches include Netflix's new squid game series and a coin based on the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria.
“This is pure gambling,” Baker said. “It's like buying a lottery ticket, but some of them are going to go up 10,000% or 20,000%.”
According to Baker, meme coins bring together the foundations of two digital economies spanning different eras of online boom.
“They're monetizing attention from social media,” he says. “It's a crossover from Web 2.0, which is social media, to Web 3.0, which is decentralized finance and cryptocurrencies. Meme coins, while ridiculous, represent a modern monetization of the attention economy. .”
There's also a connection to meme stocks, stocks of publicly traded companies that have made huge profits after being promoted on social media and bought by amateur investors. A classic example is GameStop, the struggling video game retailer whose stock price soared after the Reddit community fueled its stock rally.
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The new popularity of meme coins can be traced back to Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election, and the market has doubled in value since Trump's victory. Trump has strong ties to cryptocurrencies, having promised during his campaign to end the “persecution” of the crypto industry. Bitcoin, the most valuable digital asset, has benefited greatly, with its value exceeding $100,000 for the first time a month after President Trump's victory.
Cryptocurrencies are appealing to influential figures on the American political right, such as Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, because they can evade regulators and seek support from central banks. This is because they avoid the establishment by not accepting it. Meme coins are also cheap for retail investors, with many tokens priced at a few cents.
Alexander said creating a token is relatively easy. For example, all you have to do is mint $4,000 worth of tokens on the blockchain (Solana is particularly popular with meme coin creators), promote it on social media, and hope to sell it for a profit. is. After purchasing, you can also trade on the exchange.
Elon Musk, one of Trump's main supporters, is a longtime supporter of Dogecoin, the first-ever meme coin based on a meme featuring a Shiba Inu. Born as a parody of the cryptocurrency market, Dogecoin is now worth an even more serious $60 billion, even if its direct use in transactions is limited to a few companies, including Tesla, of which Musk is chief executive. There is.
Meraf Ozair, founder of the Emerging Technologies Mastery consultancy, says Trump's victory has sparked a new wave of hype around crypto-related assets.
“The new administration promised to be very favorable to the cryptocurrency space. The new hype is due to the election,” she says.
But the basics about meme coins haven't changed, she added. “You just go to the casino and see which numbers win.”
