Coin World News Report:
Author: Ray Chan, CoinDesk; Translation: Tao Zhu
Laughing and making money with friends? What could be better than that?
Emojis are taking over finance. Behind the community forums, a large amount of humorous wealth has emerged in a matter of days, along with occasionally vulgar humor. Some significant and meaningful things are happening.
Emojis: More than just JPEGs
At first glance, memes are just photos and video clips that spread on the internet through text messages, social media timelines, and community forums. It is easy for people to overlook them and think that they may not be just a humorous reference. Memes convey subtle but powerful cultural significance in a digitally native way. A meme that is popular in a community or culture often represents the values of that group and its specific moment in time.
Blockchain technology provides the ability to monetize almost all digitally native things, so it is natural that cryptocurrencies have captured meme culture over the years. However, meme finance is not unique to cryptocurrencies. In traditional finance and Web3 finance, meme finance brings together powerful online communities. Now, although financial gamification is still in its early stages, it is revealing a new path forward.
In TradFi, a marginal Reddit community in 2021 became a pioneer in community-first, anti-establishment, and anti-rational finance. This finance has a deep and inseparable connection with gamification and humorous meme culture. The r/wallstreetbets community “persists” in traditional finance, plays games in the traditional stock market, and revels in their success through funny online posts.
In the world of cryptocurrencies, memecoins have always played an important role, attracting community-first finance that is usually spread through memes and market gamification.
After the early iterations of memecoins (such as DOGE), there are now use case-specific versions like NFT collections, and the next generation of low-cost blockchains (such as Solana) is accelerating this process.
This has sparked an ongoing debate:
Do memecoins need intrinsic value to succeed, or is the support and participation of the community enough?
When we talk about “value,” are we referring to a solid roadmap and utility, or is the real value in the vibrant community and the culture they create?
Perhaps the true value of memecoins lies in their ability to unite and attract people, rather than following traditional financial metrics.
Making money with friends is fun
In both traditional finance and crypto finance, everything that is happening indicates the emergence of a powerful force. After decades of obscure, confusing, and rule-based ivory tower financial services, people are moving in the opposite direction. They are discovering collective financial power and then applying this power to the market, closely related to technologies that connect people globally every day (such as Reddit) and democratized financial autonomy (cryptocurrencies). All of this is wrapped in humorous, meme-based communities and financial gamification, which ultimately is just fun. It is hard to imagine a world like this where community-driven, fun wealth creation can do anything other than grow.
We can view the memefication and gamification of finance as the result of technological fusion.
So far, the way we spend time online has been quite different. Social platforms, financial platforms, educational platforms, gaming platforms, etc. are all independent, isolated in their own digital islands.
In the past 20 years, some of these industries have merged. Gaming and social media have become inseparable, and platforms like Twitch specifically target their intersection. With the power of cryptocurrencies, we are also starting to see finance integrating with social media.
Undoubtedly, the Asia-Pacific region is far ahead of the West in this technological fusion. Platforms like WeChat seamlessly integrate commerce, social media, gaming, communication, etc. When all these technologies merge, what do formerly independent ecosystems have in common? Culture. How does culture spread on the internet? Memes. We may not know what the next product is that can meet everyone’s needs, but one thing is certain, everyone needs happiness, and that is memes.
Cryptocurrencies are changing the face of finance, but this is not happening in a technological vacuum. The deep economic gamification of memes and the core of blockchain systems have accelerated this process. The power of finance no longer lies in understanding esoteric financial principles. It no longer even lies in the relationships established by persistent financial companies. The power of finance lies in community, viral dissemination, and deep cultural synchronicity.
Welcome to the era of memes.
