When Satoshi Nakamoto invented Bitcoin (BTC), the anonymous cryptographer envisioned a world where people would free themselves from the iron shackles of banks and tyrannical governments.
What he probably didn’t expect, though, was a crypto industry teeming with badly drawn frog, cat and dog tokens, along with a sprinkling of racist memes.
With coverage of the fourth Bitcoin halving overshadowed by a speculative mania in meme coins — including on the Bitcoin network itself — it’s not surprising to see a very vocal debate over the value of meme coins to the crypto industry.
Which we can answer — they now have a combined value of $51 billion in market capitalization.
What is a meme coin? The “dumpster of crypto”
Many vocal critics, including popular anonymous crypto commentator Polynya, are disillusioned and angry about the recent meme coin surge, arguing they have no place in the crypto ecosystem.
In his final blog post on Medium, where he essentially rage quit crypto, Polynya decried meme coins as “merely a vehicle to transfer wealth from the many to the most obnoxious people on the planet.”
The analyst highlighted reports of a wave of racist meme coins (dubbed “SlurFi” by some) as representing the token form’s nadir.
“Things have hit an all-new bottom with 2024: racist, sexist, and other shitheaded memecoins.”
“At this point, this evil in crypto is banal and normalized. This has become the identity of crypto — sure, some useful stuff, but mostly just infested with scams and absolute degeneracy,” Polynya added.
Redditor complains the latest line of racist meme coins is going too far. (Reddit)
Meme coins are also infested with rug pulls, scams and malicious taxes and are often run by inept founders who don’t know what they’re doing.
A recent investigation from Magazine found that 1 in 6 new Base meme coins are outright scams, while almost 91% of them had at least one security vulnerability.
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