Regardless of people’s private opinions of them, there is no denying that memes make millions — literally. Over recent years, the cultural pass-the-parcel phenomena that make people scratch their heads as much as smile (because, let’s be honest, memes evolve too quickly for most of us to keep up) have become tokenized into cryptocurrency. Ninety percent of these memecoins go absolutely nowhere, others get some hype and then fade to dust, and — occasionally — a glorious handful become unicorns worth billions like Dogecoin, Pepe, and Bonk.
However, much more recently, a new phenomenon has emerged that’s driven by controversial sites such as pump.fun, allowing almost instant deployment of new tokens with zero cost and similar accountability: the tokenization of events.
And many think it’s ruining crypto.
The Making of Insta-Memecoins
The tokenization of events is a sort of extension of memecoins. It dives into the deeper layers of meme mentality — a sort of meme-ception, if you will — using notable situations as the basis of the coin’s theme, leveraging the free surrounding hype to push price action and raise awareness. This means every viral moment, every cringe scandal, and every bizarre news story can become a tradable asset within minutes.
While this has led to insane profits for some, it’s also amplifying scams and worsening the reputation of crypto, which is already suffering under the weight of new and increasingly sophisticated scams (thanks a lot, AI). These coins aren’t really meant to last, and most are nothing but slimy cash grabs by unscrupulous developers. However, that memo doesn’t ever seem to reach all investors, leaving many holding the bag.
Social media sites like X and TruthSocial exacerbate this Insta-meme tokenization issue. Word (or a meme) now spreads like lightning. This is great if you want to sidestep mainstream media narratives and tap into info directly from the source, but this dynamic also means that when something happens, the event can be tokenized and promoted in real-time.
A Crypto Contagion
There are literally thousands of different events that have been tokenized. Portnoy’s Jailstool fiasco, Hawk Tuah’s rug pull, and Trump’s and Melania’s double coins come to mind. Most recently, examples include Argentinian President Javier Mile’s promoting $LIBRA and Near Protocol’s ex-business development manager, Andrew Krynin, accidentally showing nudes of his girlfriend while live streaming to the public. The result is almost always the same: a ton of scams and honeypots and one breakaway token that has immense (and short-lived) pump-and-dump success, making millions for those on the inside and leaving those late to the party clutching onto worthless bags.
Literally, any event, scandal, or issue you can think of is now being used as a way for people to make money. After all, why spend weeks meticulously building and bootstrapping a great meme-based project if you could just make one based on Trump and walk away with $200,000 five hours later?
Understandably, many feel tokenized events are mocking what crypto was meant to stand for: a means for financial freedom based around decentralized communities. You can’t build long-term wealth or community if tokens last less than 24 hours.
The larger problem is that crypto is very market-led, and until something comes along that shifts the landscape — such as pump.fun being banned in more countries than just the UK or solid legislation to regulate memecoins — tokenizing events for pump-and-schemes will continue uninterrupted.
