Meme coins have been an odd commodity in the world of cryptocurrency since 2015. However, in 2021, a surge of meme coins took over the crypto market by storm. Even up to the point that the crypto investors took control of huge companies around their fingers and bigger companies backing them up on their cause.
As crypto investors, we should know about these integral events in the market. However, there is an critical factor in how this Black Swan gets used by several investors and turns it to their own advantage. Will Shiba Inu coin reach 1$? In this article, Shibanatics will guide you into the billion-dollar overnight online commodity of Meme Coins and how it dominated our 2021.
What is a Meme Coin?
Meme coin is basically meme currency. In 2013, two crypto investors named Billy Markus, and Jackson Palmer invented Dogecoin. In 2016, as Ethereum failed to detect a million-dollar data breach, its committee created several processes to retain its million-dollar market value income. One of these processes was NFTs.
In 2016, the market value of Ethereum (ETC) collapsed because of a data breach in their blockchain. As a result, the crypto company rebranded their main crypto to ETH and maintained ETC as Ethereum Classic. This event led to a rapid paradigm shift and the said rebrand of the company. This triggered the creation of limited edition cryptos like Non-Fungible Tokens and the like.
Different Kinds of Meme Coins
Since 2016, there has been a surge in the invention of Meme Coins that created monumental milestones in the crypto industry. The most notable was NFTs in 2016, but other exemplary ones were relevant to the industry. Here are a couple of Meme Coins that charged into the market and skyrocketed to the moon:
DOGE
Doge has been on the radar since 2013. During the GameStop Incident last year, it became one of the two Meme Coins used to primarily short the market to retain GameStop’s ownership.
Besides the Nostalgia factor that the Shiba Inu meme had brought to society, DOGE was symbolic of the impending change that came last year. It took eight years before crypto investors noticed, but finally, the world went along with it.
SHIBA
On its creation in 2017, the Shiba Inu price prediction until 2025 was at a low point. SHIBA was a dormant meme coin that made fun of DOGE’s unsuccessful tenure as an entity in Crypto. On April 20th, 2021, Crypto Investors had decided to short GameStop’s alleged buyout and shutdown.
After the short, SpaceX, Dallas Mavericks, and GameStop, among other huge companies, treat SHIBA and DOGE seriously and widely accepts these cryptos as payment for their products.
With this public reaction, the “Shiba Army” formed and created an incognito following for the joke coins. These two Litecoins became a needle-driving name in crypto overnight.
Axie Infinity
Axie is technically the cheapest NFT on the market. Non-Fungible Tokens are a huge deal in the Crypto Market. We’ll get to that later, but what if it was in Pokémon-styled graphics and it’s a game? That’s what Axie Infinity is.
Axie is the gateway drug from your local gamer to crypto. The gist in NFTs is not the investment but the accessibility of the medium and its communal effect that embraces different art forms. An NFT game is one of those mediums of Art.
NFTs
After Ethereum’s data breach, the company experimented with the sales of limited-edition art. These were worth 1-18 USD and only exclusively sold in trades. A few years later, in 2018, CryptoPunks sold its first million-dollar trade, and it began a new era of meme coins.
As the hype of the first-era NFTs like CryptoPunks and Veve, CryptoPunks is a well-curated, minimal art piece traded through the blockchain for millions of dollars. In 2016, that amount started initially for a dollar.
On the other hand, Veve is the comic book counterpart of the minimal CryptoPunk-styled NFT. Veve is what Marvel endorses for the rights of their comics, their 3D models, and their characters. Even other retro entities like Power Rangers and Ghostbusters are on Veve too.
Other Meme Coins
With the virality of NFTs, even one of the most popular wrestlers in three generations, Chris Jericho has had his limited run of NFTs worth 250 USD. Other entities that ventured into NFT were Nathan Apodaca and Fleetwood Mac, who plan to sell the “Dreams” Tik Tok viral video for 500,000 USD.
In addition, Budjette Tan, the Trese Animated series and graphic novel co-author, currently has a limited run of NFTs under Cryptopop via OpenSea.
Besides art, the Rap collective and Hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan released two limited issues of their record, Once Upon a Shaolin. Martin Shkreli, the Pharma-related convicted felon, purchased one of these records during controversy PleasrDAO. The other copy is located secretly in a hotel in Marrakesh, Morocco.
There are overnight sensation cryptos that just pull up randomly and earn millions of dollars in a short period of time. One of these examples was Grimace Coin which was hinted at by McDonald’s, Elon Musk, and Dogecoin.
The main caveat is that a Fake Coin was created and charted in the market a few minutes after the announcement. The fake “Grimace Coin” skyrocketed into 2 million USD before the servers shut it down.
Conclusion
In retrospect, 2021 has been a revolutionary year for meme coins and crypto in general. People have profited and lost a lot in one single year. Many have disputed the ecological damage of crypto. Still, the reality is that most of us look into the future, and this mode of currency is the most feasible moving forward.
When it comes to the possible expansion of the planet, cryptocurrency will exist on Mars or other habitable planets. This will be our path moving forward. The ecological threat of the simplification of blockchain technology is a general IT expert problem that can be solved in a decade or two.
