Iggy Azalea knows the power of a meme. On Wednesday afternoon, the Grammy-nominated rapper. general a photoshopped image of her breastfeeding Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum. Caption: “He was just hungry.”
The meme was created to troll Buterin after his reproach its Solan-based memecoin, Mother Iggy ($MOTHER), began trading last week. Celebrities should only launch cryptocurrencies to serve “some social good” and not “financialization as an end product,” he wrote.
He was just hungry pic.twitter.com/AlTwEtfIKd
— IGGY AZALEA (@IGGYAZALEA) June 5, 2024
Memecoins are a tongue-in-cheek subculture of cryptocurrencies. Anyone can launch a currency in the name of anything. Combining finance, internet trends and gambling, investors are flocking to highly speculative assets in moments of virality.
“I don’t think the world is very profitable when it comes to memcoin,” Azalea said in an interview with the publication Luck. “That’s what drives virality, that’s what drives my community and our market cap, and that’s what I’m doing here. So respectfully, get out of my way.
At this point, I’m feeling pretty dissatisfied with the “celebrity experiments this cycle.”
“Funding as a means to an end” is something I can respect if the end is worthy (health care, open source software, the arts, etc.). Financialization *as an end product*, 🤮
Ashton and Mila…
— Vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) June 5, 2024
“Cash rules, make your own rules”
Six years after rap lyrics “Cash rules, make my own rules,” Azalea does, well, exactly that. After the first week of trading, Mother Iggy’s price rose 1,200% to around $0.20, reaching a market capitalization of over $190 million. according to on CoinMarketCap as of June 7.
This highlights a broader trend of celebrities turning to memecoins to monetize and interact with their fans without intermediaries. While some find the trend distasteful, for some celebrities it appears to be both a lucrative and effective way to return to the spotlight.
“I’ve listened to more Iggy Azalea in the last few days than at any time in the last decade—maybe there’s a lesson in that,” said Teddy Fusaro, president of Bitwise Asset Management. Luck.
The launch of Mother Iggy was both accidental and deliberate. After noticing a scammer on Telegram posing as Azila to launch a memcoin, she was forced to take action. “If this guy says he’ll launch my coin in 24 hours, I’ll launch mine in 23 hours,” she said.
But she has been watching the cryptocurrency from the sidelines since 2020. As she watched non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and Web3 art projects come and go, she knew the industry had something for her—she just wasn’t sure what it was. Memcoins felt like a trend, fueled by the language she could speak.
“I’m someone who naturally has had so many memes throughout my career; things go viral either intentionally or accidentally. I felt like this was a space that I could really work in successfully,” she said.
Considered the currency of microtrends, memcoins themselves have become a trend in the recent cryptocurrency resurgence, perhaps usurping the role that NFTs played during the previous bull market. According to CoinGecko, the value of the popular Pepe ($PEPE) and Shiba Inu ($SHIB) has increased by 363% and 201%, respectively, over the past year. Some of the craziest successes this year? Geo Boden, Doland Tremp, MAGA Hat, Elon Musk and even Good Gensler trolling SEC Chairman Gary Gensler.
Economic nihilism?
Omid Malekan, associate professor at Columbia Business School, spoke about this. Luck that he believes memcoins are the “definitive proof” that blockchain technology is the financial infrastructure of the digital age. “Where else could celebrities release fan property without having to go through a gatekeeper and reach so many people?” He says.
However, like all forms of democratization, this corner of cryptocurrency is often rife with scams. Issuers can deposit large sums of money, promote the coin so that its price soars, and then go astray.
“These celebrity backed coins are a scam and will go down the drain pretty quickly. While everyone should be able to use any platform, these coins lack essential information, are misleading and often violate securities laws,” said Terrence Young, managing director of Swan. Luck.
But Azalea insists she is not a carpet maker. She says she wants to find the coin’s long-term utility and believes the celebrity buzz provides an opportunity for retailers to engage with Solana. Two startups she co-founded—a contract-free phone data provider and a gifting and crowdfunding site—will allow customers to pay with Mother Iggy coins. But her ultimate goal is to turn Mother Iggy into a stablecoin. “It would be like the Holy Grail,” she says.
But not every Memecoin project has been successful, suggesting that a large online following does not guarantee investors. Caitlyn Jenner ($JENNER) also hit Solana last week, but she was overshadowed by Azalea, reaching a market cap of less than $10 million with just a 7% gain over the past week.
In the realm of critical memcoin theory, Azalea theorizes about two pillars of success. One of them is a willingness to engage with the crypto community where they are. In her case, the first option involved creating a Telegram channel within a few days of the auction. The second is playfulness (with provocative Azalea memes) and the use of cryptocurrency trolling culture.
So instead of memecoins becoming a common tool in the arsenal of celebrities, Azalea predicts that there will only be a handful left who can set the tone and monetize them.
Another obstacle that celebrities may face is regulation. Malekan argues that, unlike Bitcoin or Ether, memcoins should legally be treated as gambling, “otherwise it will be very easy for celebrities to abuse the presence of their own namecoin and treat it as a money grab,” he adds. He wants issuers to be transparent about the amount they have retained and the high likelihood of volatility.
But ultimately, he sees the rise of memecoins, meme stocks and gambling as indicators of economic nihilism: “People feel like they need to do risky things with their money to succeed.”