Are memecoins merely emblematic of the degeneracy that’s come to define the cryptosphere, or do they instead represent a powerful, Internet-native fusion of culture and finance? Is this the future of both, or simply a Present we must escape?

Unless they’re making you stupidly rich, memecoins are obviously and undeniably stupid; a violent affront to any self-respecting incarnation of intelligence. Besides the inevitable envy that follows from seeing a bunch of people print millions out of nowhere, that’s why so many within crypto, specifically, find themselves so viscerally aggrieved by the recent memecoin mania.

The idea that someone could spin up a coin called #PEPE (named after the Internet frog) and that it would, in very short order, find itself with a market cap of >$1B is so egregiously low-IQ that one could be forgiven for thinking that by simply engaging with the idea one would be at risk of brain damage. While there’s as of yet no definitive medical evidence suggesting either way, it’s nevertheless a reasonable enough concern on its face. And so we proceed with caution.

While memecoins stress the tolerance of the entire bell-curve of intelligence, they’re particularly offensive to the crypto intelligentsia -- those gigabrains working on the frontier of the cryptoeconomy, doing super serious stuff, working on the bleeding edge of cryptographic and distributed thingy-ma-jiggys, not to mention reinventing political economy from the ground up! Over recent times, such gigabrains have been discussing the merits of decentralized sequencers, the concept of restaking, and the ever-existential topic of US regulation. Meanwhile, the biggest news in crypto this week is a coin named after a frog! The idea is triggering, even if you have a smol brain, so it’s not hard to sympathize with the plight of those more cognitively endowed.

Of course, the highly allergic reaction to the current memecoin meta is, at least in part, an entirely justified response from an industry struggling to maintain any semblance of outside credibility, especially as the Damocle’s sword of regulation looms. In the eyes of the world, crypto is yet to establish itself as a legitimate enterprise, and the past ~18 months would appear to have set the whole affair back at least twice that. Though the space is quick to draw the distinction between such shitshows as Terra-Luna, FTX and crypto in earnest, it’s far from a good look however you slice it, and so the infidels ought to be pardoned for their lack of faith. Indeed, if the future of finance really is crypto, given recent events, the future would appear to be -- to all but the most convicted -- decidedly bleak. Against this backdrop, the past week’s events have been received by many as an entirely unnecessary and awfully unwelcome insult; another depressing setback to be added to an already impressive list of such.

While this response is understandable, and not at all disconnected from the underlying Reality, the question we ought to ask is whether there isn’t something this response is missing? Is there, one wonders, a more subtle and redeeming quality of memecoin mania that lies below the surface of the glaring greed and stupidity?

No matter how unimpressed one is by the phenomenon, it’s not hard to appreciate how remarkable is our ability to co-construct value -- to the tune of $1B -- around something as patently absurd as a frog named Pepe who lives on the Internet. Not to mention in only a few months. This is the power of tokens, the world’s first Internet-native asset. With respect to Pepe, specifically, the notion of taking what is arguably the most potent Internet meme and crystallising cultural value around it, such that anyone can “own” part of this meme, is -- even if not universally compelling -- certainly an interesting one. If one permits the idea a little flexibility, owning some $PEPE can be viewed as akin to owning a piece of Internet culture itself. Even if you’re not a fan of the degeneracy that propels this Reality into existence, you have to admit it’s kinda cool.

Of course, this notion isn’t limited to memecoins. The idea of cultural ownership is one of the long-espoused value propositions of crypto, and is most obviously expressed in the form of NFTs. However, memecoins appear to be a particularly potent expression of this concept and evidently there is something about the form factor (the tokens without a picture) that makes them at once capable of capturing the imagination, and pissing people off, such as they have.

In many ways, memecoins capture the essence of crypto better than most “serious” projects. Unfettered, bottoms-up expression of financial value, community ownership, community currency, community coordination. Did I mention cOmMuniTy? In the context of a bunch of overhyped L2s and new, definitively soulless and self-serious L1s with opaque token distributions, one can’t help but empathise with those who consider the honest absurdity of memecoins a breath of fresh Internet air. Indeed, what was once a community that prided itself on its defiance and rebelliousness has since become a veritable “industry” (even if not quite a respectable one). In this context, where acceptance from the establishment has become the primary objective, memecoins are just about the only punk thing going, a reminder that crypto does whatever the f*ck it wants, a middle finger to the very idea of legitimacy.

The beautiful thing about memecoins is that they reminds us that value is something subjective, a shared construct that we constitute voluntarily as communities of sentient carbon-based bi-peds. It doesn’t matter how fancy your tech stack is, how credible your investors are, sh*t you could even invent your own programming language. No matter how meritorious you deem yourself to be, unless people find a reason to care, your thing won’t be worth a single #PEPE. Conversely, no matter how prima facie absurd your thing is, if people care, your thing will be worth many. That’s just how it goes.

For those left dissatisfied by this -- admittedly lazy -- attempt to reconcile the virtues of memecoins, it’s worth appreciating that they nevertheless hint at an opportunity that, as of yet, remains largely unrealised. That is, the opportunity to represent, in the form of a token, some valuable social or cultural cause -- and to take the value captured therein and direct it towards said cause. Where memecoins are hardly about to reconfigure the world for the better, they represent something of a blueprint that just might. Before tokens, never have we had a truly Internet-native means of coordinating the world to produce real value around some sense of shared meaning. Now that we do, the question becomes, what should we use it for? What should we value? Memecoins are the current meta, but perhaps we can do something even better.