Memeland CEO Ray Chan says memes convey powerful cultural meaning as social, finance, gaming, and messaging merge into a “super app.” Welcome to the Meme Age.
Together with your friends, make money while giggling at a practical joke. Is there anything superior to that?
Memes are overtaking finance. Furthermore, something enormous and significant is going on behind the community forums: hilarious amounts of wealth that appear in a matter of days and occasionally vulgar humor.
More memes than JPGs
Memes are images and videos that circulate quickly on the internet and are used in text messages, community forums, and social media timelines. It’s simple to ignore them and rule out the possibility that they’re more than just a joke. Memes are a digital native method of conveying nuanced yet potent cultural meaning. A meme that gains popularity within a community or culture typically represents that group and its ideals at that specific period.
Since blockchain technology makes it possible to financialize almost anything that is digitally native, it makes sense that cryptocurrency has become a meme over time. Meme-ified finance is not exclusive to cryptocurrencies, though. Meme-ified finance has brought together influential online organizations in Web3 and traditional finance. And now, if still in its early stages, financial gamification is opening up new possibilities.
A small Reddit forum called TradFi emerged in 2021 as a warning for a community-first, anti-institutional, anti-sensible finance that is closely associated with the mashup of gamification and funny meme culture. By manipulating the conventional stock market and celebrating their achievements with satirical internet posts, the r/wallstreetbets community “stuck it” to traditional finance.
Memecoins have always been a big deal in cryptocurrency because they appeal to the kind of community-first finance that usually gains traction through memes and market gamification. Next-generation, low-cost blockchains like Solana are accelerating the evolution of memecoins, which began with early incarnations like DOGE and were later followed by use-case-specific variants like NFT collections.
This brings up a continuous discussion: Do memecoins require intrinsic worth to succeed, or might their communities’ emotional support and involvement be sufficient? When we discuss “value,” do we mean a well-thought-out plan and usefulness, or do we tell the thriving communities and the culture they foster that holds actual value? Memecoins’ real value might not be found in following conventional financial measurements but in its capacity to bring people together and promote engagement.
Making money with your buddies is enjoyable.
Everything that is taking place in finance, both conventional and cryptocurrency, points to an emerging and potent force. People are shifting away from opaque, obfuscated, stiff, ivory tower financial services that they were exposed to for decades. Technologies that democratize financial autonomy (like crypto) and connect people on a daily, global basis (like Reddit) go hand in hand with discovering collective financial power and applying that power to markets. All this is encapsulated in amusing, meme-driven communities and financially motivated gamification that is ultimately just enjoyable. It isn’t easy to envision a future in which such amusing, community-driven wealth generation will not continue to expand.
The effect of technology merging into one another is the meme- and gamification of finance. The many ways we’ve used the internet to pass the time have been very diverse thus far. Social media platforms, financial platforms, educational platforms, gaming platforms, and so forth have all been isolated digital silos from one another.
Several of these industries have already merged throughout the past 20 years. Social media and gaming are already closely related, with services like Twitch focusing on their convergence. We are beginning to see the integration of finance into social media due to the influence of cryptocurrency.
APAC is unquestionably far ahead of the West in this folding of technology. Social media, gaming, communication, business, and more seamlessly combine on platforms like WeChat. What will unite these formerly distinct ecosystems when they merge using these technologies? Customs. How does culture propagate on the internet? Memes. Memes are a universal source of enjoyment, even though we may not know what the next great invention will be that will satisfy everyone’s desires.
Giggling as you go
Though it’s not occurring in a technological vacuum, cryptocurrency is revolutionizing the financial industry. Memes and the deep economic gamification at the heart of blockchain systems speed it up. Understanding obscure financial concepts is now what gives finance its power. Even the relationships established in stoic financial firms are no longer relevant. Deep cultural synchronization, virality, and community are the sources of energy.