Cryptomemes

2020 — 2023. Memes become tradable financial instruments and the line between joke and asset class disappears for two years. Dogecoin (launched 2013 as a joke by Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer) hits a market cap of $90 billion in May 2021. GameStop short-squeeze January 2021 is organised on r/wallstreetbets in the vernacular of memes: diamond hands, apes together strong, tendies, this is the way. The Wojak family explodes into a complete iconography of trader psychology: Doomer, Coomer, Yes Chad, NPC, Gigachad, Soyjak. Disaster Girl (Zoë Roth, 2005 photo) sells the original photograph as an NFT for $473,000 in April 2021. Side-Eyeing Chloe sells for $74,000. Bad Luck Brian sells for $36,000. Bored Ape Yacht Club turns the profile picture into property, identity, and speculation simultaneously. The phrase gm means good morning, hello, and I am long crypto, all at once. The crash arrives in 2022. NFT prices collapse 95%. The cultural project remains: a generation learned to think about images as assets, and that habit doesn't unlearn.

Part of The Meme Oracle

26 moments in this segment.

1. 2017 — Stonks. Date: 2017, peak 2020-2021 · Place: Special Meme Fresh Facebook group, then global · Figures: Anonymous German shitposter, originator · Meme Man, glossy 3D head template · Tags: Wojak Family, Finance Meme, Meme Man 01. Up And To The Right Stonks debuts in a June 2017 Facebook post on the German group Special Meme Fresh, an image of the round 3D Meme Man head in a suit, behind him an orange arrow climbing through a Bloomberg-style ticker. The misspelling is the whole joke. Stonks is what a man who has never read a 10-K thinks the word is. By 2020 it is the universal caption for any chart that goes up for any reason. By 2021 it is also the caption for charts that go down, ironically, which is when not stonks becomes its own template. 02. The Vocabulary Of The Bubble Stonks is the linguistic seed of every Era VII trader meme that follows. It teaches the internet that financial vocabulary, when slightly misspelled, becomes a tool for treating money as theater. Diamond hands, tendies, NgU, all of them inherit from the deliberately stupid k. When GameStop happens in January 2021 the Stonks man is already waiting. He is the patron saint of r/wallstreetbets before WSB knows it needs one. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Stonks' • Special Meme Fresh Facebook group, original post June 2017 • The Verge, 'How the Stonks meme explains 2020' (December 2020)
2. 2021 — Apes Together Strong. Date: January 2021 · Place: r/wallstreetbets · Twitter · Figures: Anonymous WSB posters · Planet of the Apes (1968), source · Keith Gill, exemplar holder · Tags: WSB, Coalition Glyph, Self-Identification 01. Retail Calls Itself Apes Apes together strong. The WSB rallying phrase that crystallizes during the GameStop squeeze, descended via /r/Superstonk from the 1968 Planet of the Apes line. The slogan is the engine of the squeeze: retail investors choosing to call themselves apes because the alternative was being called dumb money by people on television. The self-naming is the move. Ape reframes a financial position from idiot retail bagholder into tribal member with conviction. By February 2021 hedge-fund analysts on CNBC are using the term to refer to their counterparties without irony. 02. From Stock To Token The ape vocabulary jumps from GME to crypto within months. BAYC formalizes it in April 2021. By summer the word ape is both noun (retail trader) and verb (to ape in: to buy without research). It is the era's single most successful self-identification, because it lets the buyer agree with the critic and keep buying. Cope and cringe were never the right verdicts on the ape. The ape was a coalition, and like all coalitions it priced in being called stupid as a feature. Sources • r/wallstreetbets archives, January 2021 (reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets) • KnowYourMeme, 'Apes Together Strong' • Planet of the Apes (1968), screenplay by Michael Wilson and Rod Serling
3. 2021 — Diamond Hands. Date: January 2021 · Place: r/wallstreetbets, then crypto Twitter · Figures: Anonymous WSB posters · Keith Gill, exemplar · Tags: WSB, Glyph, Emoji Slang 01. Two Emoji As Identity Diamond hands is a posture, not a meme image. Two emoji, 💎🙌, and a vow to never sell no matter the drawdown. The opposite is paper hands, the trader who folds at the first 10% red candle. The terms exist before GameStop but they crystallize in the January 2021 squeeze, when holding through volatility becomes a public identity performance. Keith Gill posts a single image of a hand of diamond cards and 💎🙌 on Twitter at the peak. It is the most-liked finance tweet of the year. 02. Migration To Crypto By spring 2021 diamond hands has fully migrated to crypto Twitter. Every Dogecoin holder, every Shiba Inu bagholder, every BAYC floor watcher uses the same two emoji as a signal of conviction or, increasingly, as cope. The phrase outlives the bull market. In late 2022, after Luna and FTX, diamond hands reads as elegy. It is the most successful pure-emoji idiom of the era, financial language compressed to a glyph pair that any 14-year-old on Discord can deploy without translation. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Diamond Hands' • Keith Gill Twitter (@TheRoaringKitty), January 2021 posts • Bloomberg, 'How Diamond Hands Became Finance's Most Important Phrase' (February 2021)
4. 2021 — GameStop Short Squeeze. Date: January 2021, peak 28 January · Place: r/wallstreetbets, Robinhood, NYSE · Figures: Keith Gill (DeepFuckingValue, Roaring Kitty) · Melvin Capital, Gabe Plotkin · Robinhood, Vlad Tenev · Tags: WSB, Short Squeeze, Memes As Capital 01. DFV's Position Keith Gill, posting on r/wallstreetbets as DeepFuckingValue and on YouTube as Roaring Kitty, has been long GameStop since 2019. By summer 2020 he is screenshotting his E*TRADE account on the subreddit, a position that grows from $53,000 of GME calls into something other people start to copy. By January 2021 Melvin Capital is short 140% of GameStop's float. WSB notices. The squeeze that follows is the first time a coordinated meme-economy crowd moves a stock against a hedge fund with enough force to threaten its existence. 02. $483 Then Robinhood Pulls The Buy Button GME prints $483 intraday on 28 January 2021. The same morning Robinhood and several other retail brokers restrict buying of GME, AMC, and a handful of meme tickers, citing clearinghouse collateral requirements. To WSB it looks like the casino unplugging the machine while the player is winning. Melvin Capital takes a $4.5B loss and shuts down by 2022. Keith Gill testifies before Congress on 18 February 2021 in his cat shirt. The phrase apes together strong moves from subreddit shitpost to congressional record. 03. The Vernacular Wins The squeeze does not, in the end, redistribute wealth from hedge funds to retail. Most apes who bought above $200 are still underwater. What it does redistribute is legitimacy. After GameStop, meme language is finance language. CNBC anchors say diamond hands on air without flinching. Era VII is the era when the joke and the trade are the same action. GameStop is the day this becomes undeniable. Sources • r/wallstreetbets, DeepFuckingValue position updates (2020-2021) • House Financial Services Committee, 'Game Stopped' hearing transcript (18 February 2021) • SEC Staff Report on Equity and Options Market Structure Conditions in Early 2021 (October 2021)
5. 2021 — Laser Eyes PFP Trend. Date: February-April 2021 · Place: Twitter, Bitcoin maximalist accounts · Figures: Michael Saylor, MicroStrategy CEO · El Salvador President Nayib Bukele · Anthony Pompliano · Tags: Bitcoin Maxi, Visual Conformity, PFP 01. Saylor To $100K In February 2021 the Bitcoin maximalist Twitter account adds red laser eyes to its profile picture as a pledge to keep promoting Bitcoin until it hits $100,000. Michael Saylor leads the charge, joined within weeks by Anthony Pompliano, Nayib Bukele, Tom Brady, and Logan Paul. The aesthetic is borrowed from Cyclops, Magneto, and shitposted anime edits. Applied to Saylor's corporate headshot it is the most aggressively unironic thing in finance Twitter that year. 02. The Pledge That Did Not Cash Bitcoin peaks at $69,000 in November 2021 and falls to $15,000 a year later. $100K does not arrive in the cycle. The laser eyes stay on most accounts well past the bear bottom, an ambient flex of conviction that survives the price action. BTC finally clears $100,000 in December 2024. Most of the original laser-eye accounts have quietly removed them by then. Saylor still has his. Sources • Michael Saylor (@saylor), Twitter, February 2021 • Decrypt, 'Why Are Crypto Twitter Profiles Sporting Laser Eyes?' (March 2021) • MicroStrategy 10-K filings (Bitcoin treasury position)
6. 2021 — Nyan Cat NFT. Date: 18 February 2021 · Place: Foundation, Ethereum mainnet · Figures: Chris Torres, creator · Foundation, marketplace · Anonymous winning bidder (oxmoonwhale) · Tags: Meme NFT, Foundation, 10th Anniversary 01. The First Meme To Mint Itself On 18 February 2021 Chris Torres mints a remastered one-of-one Nyan Cat on Foundation to mark the meme's tenth anniversary. The auction closes at 300 ETH, roughly $590,000, paid in Ether to a creator who had spent a decade watching his cat fly across other people's t-shirts without compensation. Torres frames the sale as recovery. The meme was made in 2011, escaped immediately, and only in 2021 do the rails exist to assign it a single canonical owner without removing it from the commons. 02. The Template Nyan Cat sets the meme-NFT template that every other 2011-era image will follow within months: a remastered file, signed by the original creator, sold on Foundation or SuperRare to an anonymous wallet, while the meme itself stays free everywhere else. Ownership and circulation are decoupled for the first time. By April, Disaster Girl, Bad Luck Brian, and Overly Attached Girlfriend are all at auction. The Nyan Cat sale is the proof of concept. Sources • Foundation auction page, Nyan Cat (foundation.app) • The Verge, 'Nyan Cat is being sold as a one-of-a-kind crypto NFT' (18 February 2021) • Chris Torres interview, NPR (March 2021)
7. 2021 — Beeple Everydays Sells For $69M. Date: 11 March 2021 · Place: Christie's online auction · Figures: Mike Winkelmann (Beeple), artist · Vignesh Sundaresan (Metakovan), buyer · Christie's, auction house · Tags: NFT, Christie's, Auction Record 01. Five Thousand Days In A Single JPG Mike Winkelmann, working as Beeple, has posted one digital image a day since 1 May 2007. On 11 March 2021 Christie's auctions a composite of all 5,000 as a single NFT. The hammer falls at $69,346,250, making Beeple the third most expensive living artist at auction, behind Hockney and Koons. The buyer is Vignesh Sundaresan, an India-born crypto investor who fronts the Metapurse NFT fund. He pays in Ether. Christie's settles the transaction in their first-ever crypto-denominated sale. 02. The Day NFTs Stop Being Niche Before 11 March 2021 NFTs are a Discord conversation. After 11 March 2021 they are a Wall Street Journal front-page conversation. The sale is the legitimization event that makes BAYC, CryptoPunks, and the Disaster Girl auction six weeks later possible. Critics point out that Metakovan also runs the B.20 token, partially backed by Beeple's work, and that the sale raises the floor on his other holdings. Beeple, asked about it, says he is going to keep posting one image a day. "I view this as the next chapter in art history. Now there is a way to collect digital art." — Mike Winkelmann (Beeple), post-sale press call, 11 March 2021 Sources • Christie's, 'Beeple: The First 5000 Days' lot page • The New York Times, 'JPG File Sells for $69 Million, at First Crypto Art Auction Held by a Major House' (11 March 2021) • Amy Castor, 'Metakovan, the mystery Beeple buyer' (amycastor.com, March 2021)
8. 2021 — Mavericks Accept Dogecoin. Date: 4 March 2021 · Place: Dallas Mavericks, BitPay integration · Figures: Mark Cuban, owner · BitPay, payment processor · Dogecoin community · Tags: Dogecoin, Mainstream Adoption, NBA 01. Tickets And Merch In Doge On 4 March 2021 Mark Cuban announces the Dallas Mavericks will accept Dogecoin for tickets and merchandise via BitPay. It is the largest US sports franchise to take the joke coin as legal tender. Within a week the Mavs are the third-largest Dogecoin merchant on earth. Cuban frames the decision as a customer-service play. Doge holders, he says, are passionate, polite, and the transaction fees are pennies. He does not mention that DOGE/USD doubles on the news. 02. The Coin Built On A Shiba Dogecoin started in 2013 as a Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer parody of Bitcoin maximalism, named after the Shiba Inu Doge meme of 2010. For seven years it traded as a tip jar coin worth fractions of a cent. In the first quarter of 2021 it goes from $0.005 to $0.05 then to $0.74 by May, briefly worth $90B in fully diluted market cap. Cuban's Mavericks decision is the first time a major American institution treats a 2013 internet joke as a payment rail. It is the template for every brand-adopts-meme-coin press release that follows. Sources • Mark Cuban, Twitter (@mcuban), 4 March 2021 • BitPay press release, Dallas Mavericks integration (March 2021) • ESPN, 'Mavericks become largest organization to accept Dogecoin' (March 2021)
9. 2021 — Bored Ape Yacht Club Launch. Date: 23 April 2021 · Place: Ethereum mainnet, contract 0xBC4CA0 · Figures: Yuga Labs founders: Wylie Aronow (Gordon Goner) · Greg Solano (Gargamel) · Kerem Atalay (Emperor Tomato Ketchup) · Zeshan Ali (Sass) · Tags: PFP, Yuga Labs, Identity NFT 01. 0.08 ETH And A Bathroom On 23 April 2021 the BAYC contract goes live. 10,000 procedurally generated apes, each with traits from 170 possible attributes, mintable at 0.08 ETH (about $190 at the time). The founders are four anonymous twenty-somethings posting under pseudonyms borrowed from cartoons. The collection sells out in twelve hours. The pitch is membership, not art. Each ape is a key to The Bathroom, a collaborative pixel canvas where holders draw together. Within six months it is also a key to ApeFest in New York, a $200M land sale (Otherside), and a Times Square billboard. 02. Identity As Property As Speculation By August 2021 the floor is 5 ETH. By April 2022 it is 153 ETH ($430,000). Jimmy Fallon shows his ape on The Tonight Show. Snoop Dogg, Stephen Curry, Justin Bieber, Madonna, Eminem all buy in. The ape PFP becomes the most concentrated signal of crypto-wealth identity since the laser-eye trend. BAYC is the moment the NFT discourse pivots from is this art to is this a country club. The answer turns out to be both. Yuga Labs raises at a $4B valuation in March 2022. 03. The Counter-Wave BAYC's success makes right-click save as a battle cry within weeks. Critics observe the apes can be jpeg-copied for free. Holders counter that the point is not the image but the cryptographic proof that you paid for it, an argument that resolves itself in 2022 when the floor collapses. Sources • Bored Ape Yacht Club smart contract, Etherscan (0xBC4CA0...d623) • The New Yorker, 'Why Bored Ape Avatars Are Taking Over Twitter' (July 2022) • Yuga Labs Series A announcement (Andreessen Horowitz, March 2022)
10. 2021 — Coinbase Direct Listing (COIN). Date: April 14, 2021 · Place: Nasdaq, ticker COIN, direct listing (no underwriter) · Figures: Brian Armstrong, CEO and co-founder · Fred Ehrsam, co-founder · Emilie Choi, COO · Tags: IPO, Legitimacy, Top Signal, Nasdaq 01. The Photo on the Floor Coinbase opens at $381 a share and closes at $328.28, valuing the company near $86 billion fully diluted. The reference price is $250. There is no traditional IPO roadshow because it is a direct listing, the same vehicle Spotify and Slack used. The COIN ticker is the first US exchange listing of a pureplay crypto exchange. Crypto Twitter treats the listing as a coronation. Bitcoin trades to an all-time high of $64,895 the same morning. Within 24 hours both BTC and COIN start a slide that does not bottom for 18 months. The April 14 candle becomes the canonical top signal screenshot, captioned 'they rang the bell at the top.' 02. Bell at the Top The meme outlives the rally. Every subsequent cycle gets a 'Coinbase Super Bowl ad,' 'Coinbase IPO,' or 'Larry David FTX ad' tagged onto the chart as the contrarian sell trigger. The pattern is so reliable that traders begin treating Coinbase marketing spend as a sentiment indicator. Armstrong's 'we are the boring crypto company' framing becomes, in retrospect, an early version of the legitimacy / debasement tension that defines the rest of the cycle. "They rang the bell at the top." — Crypto Twitter consensus, April 14 2021 Sources • Nasdaq, COIN listing reference price filing, April 13 2021 • Coinbase Form S-1, February 25 2021 • Erin Griffith and Nathaniel Popper, 'Coinbase Goes Public,' The New York Times, April 14 2021 • Matt Levine, 'Coinbase Got Its Listing,' Bloomberg Money Stuff, April 15 2021
11. 2021 — Disaster Girl Sells for $473,000. Date: April 2021 · Place: Foundation NFT marketplace · the photo: Mebane, North Carolina, January 2005 · Figures: Zoe Roth, 21 (the girl in the photo, then 4 years old) · Dave Roth, her father, who took the photo · the unnamed buyer (3F Music, a Dubai studio) · Tags: NFT, Meme as Asset 01. The Photo Becomes A Meme Dave Roth, an amateur photographer in Mebane, North Carolina, takes his 4-year-old daughter Zoe to a controlled house fire across the street in January 2005. He gets her to turn around and look at the camera. The resulting photo (Zoe smirking slightly, with a burning house behind her) wins a Hooked on the Look photo contest in 2007 and gets used as a JPMorgan Chase ad. By 2008 it is everywhere on the web as Disaster Girl, captioned to make Zoe look responsible for the disaster behind her. Zoe spends her childhood as the most-shared little arsonist on the internet. She enrolls at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2018 and majors in peace and conflict studies. 02. The NFT Sale In April 2021, at the peak of the NFT bubble, Zoe (now 21) mints the original photo as a 1-of-1 NFT on the Foundation marketplace. It sells for 180 ETH, equivalent at the time to approximately $473,000. The buyer is a Dubai-based music studio (3F Music) that had been collecting iconic-meme NFTs (they also buy the Overly Attached Girlfriend NFT and the Nyan Cat NFT around the same time). Zoe retains the copyright. The sale is the formal moment when iconic memes become tradable financial assets. By the end of 2022, the NFT market for meme-image rights has collapsed. The Disaster Girl sale price is a high-water mark that no comparable transaction will reach again. The girl who appeared in a famous photograph as a 4-year-old paid for college with the moment she does not actually remember. Sources • Cady Lang interview with Zoe Roth, TIME (April 2021) • Foundation marketplace sale record, NFT #X (April 2021) • Wikipedia, Disaster Girl
12. 2021 — Matt Damon: Fortune Favors the Brave. Date: October 28, 2021 · Place: Crypto.com global TV spot, directed by Wally Pfister · Figures: Matt Damon, actor · Kris Marszalek, Crypto.com CEO · Wally Pfister, director (Christopher Nolan's longtime DP) · Tags: TV Ad, Top Signal, Cringe 01. History Is Filled With Almosts Crypto.com pays Matt Damon to walk through a museum of human courage. Wright brothers, Tenzing Norgay, astronauts. The voiceover lands on 'fortune favors the brave,' and the spot cuts to the Crypto.com logo. The ad runs through the World Series, NFL, and global theatrical pre-rolls. Bitcoin tops at $69,000 nine days later, on November 10 2021. The ad is immediately retconned as a top signal. Within months it is the canonical 'they put a movie star on it, we are done' reference. 02. Damon Apologizes, Sort Of Damon defends the ad in a January 2022 GQ interview, saying his fee went to Water.org. The defense becomes its own meme. Crypto.com pays $700 million to rename the Staples Center the Crypto.com Arena on November 17 2021. The Arena rename happens one week after the BTC top. The Damon spot, the Larry David spot, and the Coinbase QR ad become the three-ad bear-market omen. Crypto Twitter still tags every new celebrity endorsement with 'fortune favors the brave.' Sources • Crypto.com press release, October 28 2021 • Zach Baron, 'Matt Damon Gets Personal,' GQ, January 18 2022 • Variety, 'Crypto.com Inks 20-Year, $700 Million Naming-Rights Deal,' November 16 2021
13. 2021 — PleasrDAO Buys Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. Date: October 27, 2021 · Place: US Marshals private sale, transferred to PleasrDAO multisig · Figures: PleasrDAO collective · Wu-Tang Clan, recording artists · Martin Shkreli, prior owner (forfeited as part of fraud sentence) · Cilvaringz, producer · Tags: DAO, Wu-Tang, Forfeiture, Collectible 01. Government Sale to Internet Strangers PleasrDAO, a collective formed in early 2021 to collect culturally significant NFTs, buys Wu-Tang Clan's one-of-one album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin from the US Marshals Service for $4 million. The album had been forfeited by Martin Shkreli as part of his securities fraud sentence. PleasrDAO fractionalizes ownership via 88,888 $PLEASR tokens on Ethereum. The album itself stays a physical object, sealed, with a 88-year listening restriction baked into the original 2015 contract. The DAO holds the artifact; token holders hold the right to its eventual cultural release. 02. Replication of the Unreplicable The purchase is the high-water mark of the DAO-as-collector thesis. ConstitutionDAO follows three weeks later. PleasrDAO had already bought Edward Snowden's Stay Free NFT for 2,224 ETH in April 2021 and the original Doge image NFT for 1,696.9 ETH in June 2021. The Wu-Tang buy is the meme that proves the model. A leaderless internet group can outbid private collectors at a federal forfeiture auction for the most deliberately scarce album in music history. Sources • US Department of Justice press release, October 20 2021 • Jack Schickler, 'PleasrDAO Acquires Wu-Tang Album,' CoinDesk, October 27 2021 • Cyrus Farivar, 'PleasrDAO Buys Wu-Tang Album,' Forbes, October 27 2021
14. 2021 — ConstitutionDAO. Date: 11-18 November 2021 · Place: Sotheby's New York · Juicebox protocol · Figures: Graham Novak, organizer · Austin Cain, organizer · Sotheby's, auction house · Ken Griffin (Citadel), winning bidder · Tags: DAO, Memetic Capital, Sotheby's 01. $47M To Buy A Constitution A group of friends decide on 11 November 2021 to try to buy one of thirteen surviving original printings of the US Constitution at a Sotheby's auction one week later. They set up a DAO on the Juicebox protocol. Contributions are 1 ETH minimum, with PEOPLE tokens returned to contributors. Within six days they raise $47M in ETH from 17,437 contributors, the largest crowdfunding sprint in internet history. The average contribution is roughly $217. The pitch is a meme: the people will buy the people's document. 02. Citadel Wins On 18 November 2021 Sotheby's hammers the lot at $43.2M. ConstitutionDAO loses. The winning bidder is Ken Griffin of Citadel, the same Citadel that routed Robinhood's order flow during the GameStop squeeze ten months earlier. The cosmic irony of the bracket is not lost on anyone. Refunds begin immediately. Gas fees mean many small contributors end up underwater on the refund. PEOPLE token, which was supposed to be defunct, instead trades up 1000% in the weeks after the loss as a memorial coin. The DAO loses the auction and accidentally ships a working memecoin. Sources • Sotheby's, Fine Books and Manuscripts auction lot (18 November 2021) • ConstitutionDAO closing statement (Mirror.xyz, November 2021) • The Verge, 'How ConstitutionDAO raised $47M to buy the Constitution' (November 2021)
15. 2022 — Twitter Hexagon NFT Profile Pictures. Date: January 20, 2022 · Place: Twitter iOS, Twitter Blue subscribers, OpenSea verification · Figures: Esther Crawford, Twitter PM · Parag Agrawal, then-CEO · Jack Dorsey, prior CEO (bitcoin maxi, hexagon skeptic) · Tags: Platform, Hexagon, Identity, Status 01. The Shape That Splits The Timeline Twitter ships NFT profile pictures for Twitter Blue iOS subscribers. A user connects an Ethereum wallet, picks an owned NFT, and the avatar renders as a hexagon instead of a circle. Verification is on-chain ownership at the moment the avatar is set. The hexagon is immediately the most contested shape on the platform. Within 24 hours non-NFT-holders are setting hexagon-cropped avatars manually to mock the feature. Right-click-save-as discourse re-ignites at scale. 02. Status Object, Native to the Feed For BAYC, CryptoPunks, Doodles, and Azuki holders the hexagon converts a JPEG into a feed-native status object. Floor prices for blue-chip collections jump in the week following launch. Mfers and Goblintown holders adopt the hexagon as inverted-status badge. Jack Dorsey, who had stepped down as CEO seven weeks earlier, calls the feature 'a distraction' on his (still-circular) Twitter profile. The hexagon stays through the FTX collapse and the Musk acquisition before fading in 2023. Sources • Esther Crawford, launch thread, Twitter, January 20 2022 • Mitchell Clark, 'Twitter Launches NFT Profile Pictures,' The Verge, January 20 2022 • Twitter Engineering, 'NFT Profile Pictures on Twitter,' January 20 2022
16. 2022 — Coinbase Super Bowl QR Code Ad. Date: February 13, 2022 · Place: Super Bowl LVI, NBC broadcast, 60 seconds · Figures: Kate Rouch, Coinbase CMO · Accenture Song / Kargo Creative · DVD-screensaver bouncing logo as inspiration · Tags: Super Bowl, QR Code, Server Crash, Direct Response 01. Bouncing QR Code for 60 Seconds Coinbase pays $14 million for a 60-second Super Bowl slot and runs no audio, no actors, no copy. The spot is a single bouncing QR code on a colored background, in homage to the DVD-screensaver corner-hit. Scanning the code routes new users to a $15 BTC sign-up bonus. The Coinbase app crashes for roughly one hour. Twenty million people hit the landing page in 60 seconds. The campaign wins Cannes Lions Grand Prix later that year. 02. The Boring Crypto Company Wins the Night The QR ad is widely judged the most effective Super Bowl spot of the night. Coinbase converts. The site goes down. The contrast with the Larry David FTX spot ten minutes earlier is permanent: FTX bought celebrity, Coinbase bought direct response. The crypto market is still near $1.9 trillion in total cap on Super Bowl Sunday. By November 2022 it is below $800 billion. The QR ad nonetheless does not become a top-signal meme the way Larry David's spot does, because the campaign actually worked. Sources • Kate Rouch, Coinbase blog, 'Behind the QR Code,' February 14 2022 • Tim Nudd, 'Coinbase's QR Code Ad Wins the Super Bowl,' Muse by Clio, February 14 2022 • Cannes Lions, Direct Lions Grand Prix winner, 2022
17. 2022 — Larry David FTX Super Bowl Ad. Date: February 13, 2022 · Place: Super Bowl LVI, NBC, SoFi Stadium broadcast · Figures: Larry David, actor and writer · Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX CEO · Wieden+Kennedy, agency · Tags: Super Bowl, TV Ad, Top Signal, FTX 01. Don't Miss Out on the Next Big Thing FTX pays roughly $30 million for a 60-second Super Bowl slot. Larry David plays a contrarian who rejects the wheel, the fork, the toilet, the lightbulb, the Declaration of Independence, the Walkman, and finally FTX. The tagline lands as 'don't be like Larry.' The spot is one of seven crypto ads in Super Bowl LVI, alongside Crypto.com, eToro, and Coinbase. The broadcast is later called the Crypto Bowl. 02. Nine Months to Bankruptcy FTX files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on November 11 2022, 271 days after the ad airs. The spot is replayed continuously through the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried. Larry David is named in a class-action suit alongside Tom Brady, Gisele Bündchen, Stephen Curry, and Shaquille O'Neal for promoting unregistered securities. The ad is now a permanent index entry for the celebrity-endorsement top of every market. Every crypto Super Bowl ad since 2023 is held against the Larry David precedent. Sources • FTX / Wieden+Kennedy, 'Don't Miss Out,' Super Bowl LVI spot, February 13 2022 • Tiffany Hsu, 'Crypto Goes Big at the Super Bowl,' The New York Times, February 14 2022 • Garrison v. Bankman-Fried, class-action complaint, Southern District of Florida, November 15 2022
18. 2022 — Larva Labs Sells CryptoPunks IP to Yuga Labs. Date: March 11, 2022 · Place: Yuga Labs acquisition, IP transfer for Punks and Meebits · Figures: Matt Hall and John Watkinson, Larva Labs founders · Yuga Labs / Greg Solano (Gargamel) and Wylie Aronow (Gordon Goner) · 423 Punks and 1,711 Meebits transferred · Tags: Acquisition, IP, Power Shift, CryptoPunks 01. Punks Change Hands Yuga Labs, the studio behind Bored Ape Yacht Club, acquires the brand, copyright, and IP for CryptoPunks and Meebits from Larva Labs. The deal includes 423 Punks and 1,711 Meebits held in Larva treasury. Financial terms are not disclosed. Yuga grants commercial rights to all 10,000 CryptoPunks holders, ending a two-year feud over whether Larva Labs' restrictive licensing was holding the project back. The decision aligns Punks with BAYC's permissive CC0-adjacent terms. 02. Founder Era Closes Hall and Watkinson exit. CryptoPunks, the 2017 collection that proved the entire ERC-721 thesis, is now owned by the company that came four years later. The transfer is the cleanest possible 'old guard sells to new guard' moment in NFT history. Two months later Yuga launches the Otherside metaverse mint, generating $561 million in primary sales and roughly $180 million in Ethereum gas fees in a single night. Yuga is the dominant NFT studio for the remainder of the cycle. Sources • Yuga Labs blog, 'Yuga Labs Acquires CryptoPunks and Meebits,' March 11 2022 • Andrew Hayward, 'Yuga Labs Buys CryptoPunks,' Decrypt, March 11 2022 • Matt Hall, statement on Larva Labs Twitter, March 11 2022
19. 2022 — Pudgy Penguins Community Rescue. Date: April 2, 2022 · Place: Pudgy Penguins DAO, founder ouster vote, Luca Netz acquisition · Figures: Luca Netz, incoming CEO (acquires for 750 ETH, roughly $2.5M) · ColeThereum, original founder (ousted in community vote) · 8888 Penguin holders · Tags: Rescue, DAO, Turnaround, PFP 01. Founders Voted Out On January 6 2022 the Pudgy Penguins community votes to remove the original four founders, accusing them of mismanaging treasury and roadmap. The collection's floor price had crashed from 2.6 ETH to 0.4 ETH inside two months. The ouster is the first high-profile community-led founder removal in NFT history. Luca Netz, a 23-year-old e-commerce operator with no prior NFT credentials, acquires the project from the founders for 750 ETH (roughly $2.5 million) on April 2 2022. Crypto Twitter calls the deal 'the worst purchase ever' and 'buying the falling knife.' 02. Penguin Plushies at Walmart Netz pivots the project away from web3-native roadmaps toward physical IP. Pudgy Penguins plush toys ship to 2,000 Walmart stores in May 2023 with embedded QR codes that route to web3 onboarding. The plushies sell roughly 1 million units in the first 12 months. Floor price recovers to 17 ETH by December 2023. The rescue becomes the meme that proves NFT projects can survive founder failure and reach mainstream retail. It is the cleanest counter-narrative to 'NFTs are dead' in the post-FTX bear market. Sources • Luca Netz, acquisition announcement, Twitter, April 2 2022 • Andrew Thurman, 'Pudgy Penguins Founders Ousted,' CoinDesk, January 7 2022 • Olga Kharif, 'Pudgy Penguins Plushies Hit Walmart,' Bloomberg, May 30 2023
20. 2022 — Seth Green's Stolen Ape. Date: 8 May 2022 · Place: Twitter · OpenSea · GBE Productions · Figures: Seth Green, actor · Bored Ape #8398 · DarkWing84, the phishing attacker · The buyer who acquired it secondhand · Tags: BAYC, Phishing, IP Showbiz 01. Phished On Mother's Day On 8 May 2022 Seth Green clicks a phishing link and loses Bored Ape #8398, two Mutant Apes, and a Doodle. The stolen ape, nicknamed Fred Simian, was the lead character of White Horse Tavern, an animated comedy Green had been developing on the premise that BAYC commercial rights pass with token ownership. The ape resurfaces hours later sold via OpenSea to a buyer (cchan / DarkWing84) who paid 106 ETH (~$200,000) in good faith. Green has no legal recourse against the secondhand buyer. The show cannot air because Fred Simian no longer belongs to its production company. 02. The Unenforceable License The episode crystallizes the legal incoherence at the center of BAYC's commercial-rights promise. If the token is stolen, the rights move. There is no escrow, no Hollywood-grade chain of title, no way to keep the show in production without the original NFT. Green negotiates a buyback for 165 ETH ($297,000) in June 2022. The ape returns. The show is announced and quietly never airs. The whole episode becomes the punchline that finally closes the door on celebrity NFT premieres. Sources • Etherscan, Bored Ape #8398 transaction history • Reuters, 'Seth Green Buys Back Stolen Bored Ape' (10 June 2022) • The Hollywood Reporter, 'Seth Green's NFT Show in Limbo' (May 2022)
21. 2022 — Terra Luna Collapse. Date: 9-13 May 2022 · Place: Terra blockchain · Anchor Protocol · global exchanges · Figures: Do Kwon, Terraform Labs founder · Anchor Protocol depositors · UST holders · Tags: Algorithmic Stablecoin, Black Swan, Do Kwon 01. $60B Erased In Four Days Between 9 and 13 May 2022 the Terra ecosystem collapses. UST, the algorithmic stablecoin, breaks its dollar peg on 9 May. The recursive mint-and-burn mechanism that backs UST with LUNA triggers hyperinflation in LUNA. LUNA goes from $80 to $0.0001 in 72 hours. Roughly $60B in market value is erased. Anchor Protocol had been advertising a 19.5% yield on UST deposits. South Korean retail, in particular, is wiped out. The TerraLabs founder Do Kwon, who in March 2022 had named his daughter Luna, watches in real time from Singapore. 02. The First Domino Luna takes Three Arrows Capital with it by June, Celsius and Voyager by July, FTX by November. The reflexivity that the bull market called genius is, in reverse, a chain liquidation. Lunatics, the holder nickname, becomes a slur within a week. Do Kwon is arrested in Montenegro in March 2023 carrying forged documents. The single phrase do kwon takes on operatic meme weight for 18 months: failed messiah, anchor bagholder, dad to a child whose name is now a tombstone. "By my invention, I shall remove the soul of money." — Do Kwon, Twitter, March 2022 (deleted) Sources • Terra Research Forum, post-mortem (May 2022) • Bloomberg, 'Anatomy of a Stablecoin Collapse' (May 2022) • US District Court, SDNY, SEC v. Terraform Labs and Do Kwon (filed February 2023)
22. 2022 — The Ethereum Merge. Date: September 15, 2022 · Place: Ethereum mainnet, block 15,537,394, transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake · Figures: Vitalik Buterin, co-founder · Tim Beiko, EF coordinator · Justin Drake, EF researcher · Danny Ryan, EF researcher · Ethermine, the largest miner to lose its business overnight · Tags: Protocol, Proof-of-Stake, Watch Party, Energy 01. 99.95% Energy Drop, Live At 06:42:42 UTC on September 15 2022, Ethereum's mainnet executes the Paris hard fork at terminal total difficulty 58,750,000,000,000,000,000,000. The chain transitions from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake in a single block, ending mining as Ethereum's consensus mechanism after seven years. Network energy consumption drops an estimated 99.95% overnight, from roughly 78 TWh per year (comparable to Chile) to under 0.01 TWh. The change is the largest single-event sustainability shift in the history of computing infrastructure. 02. The Watch Party as Format The Ethereum Foundation hosts a live YouTube stream attended by 41,000 simultaneous viewers, with researchers narrating blocks in real time. The format is unprecedented: a financial network upgrade as livestreamed sporting event. Vitalik tweets 'happy merge all' at 06:42 UTC. Crypto Twitter coalesces around the panda emoji as Merge mascot. Memes refer to the Merge as 'the most ambitious crossover event in software history.' Despite years of bear-market price action, the Merge ships on schedule and without a critical bug. Engineering confidence in Ethereum stays high through the rest of the cycle. "Happy merge all." — Vitalik Buterin, Twitter, September 15 2022, 06:42 UTC Sources • Ethereum Foundation, 'The Merge,' ethereum.org, September 15 2022 • Tim Beiko, 'Mainnet Merge Announcement,' Ethereum Foundation blog, August 24 2022 • Crypto Carbon Ratings Institute, 'Ethereum Energy Consumption Post-Merge,' September 2022 • Etherscan, block 15,537,394
23. 2022 — FTX Collapse. Date: 2-11 November 2022 · Place: FTX, Bahamas · Alameda Research · Crypto Twitter · Figures: Sam Bankman-Fried, founder · Caroline Ellison, Alameda CEO · CZ (Changpeng Zhao), Binance · Tags: Black Swan, SBF, Centralization 01. The CoinDesk Leak To Chapter 11 In Eight Days On 2 November 2022 CoinDesk publishes a leaked Alameda balance sheet showing its assets are mostly FTT, the exchange token of its sister company FTX. On 6 November CZ tweets Binance will liquidate its FTT bag. Bank run hits FTX within hours. By 8 November withdrawals freeze. By 11 November FTX files Chapter 11. Sam Bankman-Fried, valued personally at $26B a year earlier, is wiped out in a week. He spends the next month giving press interviews from his Bahamas penthouse, an unprompted apology tour that hands the prosecution most of its evidence. 02. The Memes That Survive Him Sam coins, the tokens FTX and Alameda inflated, become a slur for any centralized-exchange listing. SBF's hair becomes its own meme genre, the unbrushed mop framed against Vogue photoshoots from June 2022. It was a bad month, his catch-all summary, becomes a CT punchline for any disaster. Caroline Ellison's Tumblr surfaces. The polycule rumors run for weeks. FTX is the first crypto collapse where the personal lives of the founders are as much of the story as the balance sheet. 03. The Era Closes FTX is the official close of Era VII. After 11 November 2022 nobody on CT can argue the bull market is sleeping. SBF is convicted on seven counts on 2 November 2023, exactly a year after the CoinDesk leak, and sentenced to 25 years. The memes outlive him. The era's vocabulary, born on /biz/ and WSB, persists into 2024 AI Twitter and 2025 prediction markets. Every meme economy after this one is, in some way, a child of cryptomemes. Sources • CoinDesk, 'Divisions in Sam Bankman-Fried's Crypto Empire Blur' (2 November 2022) • US v. Samuel Bankman-Fried, SDNY, indictment and conviction (December 2022 / November 2023) • Michael Lewis, 'Going Infinite' (W.W. Norton, 2023)
24. 2023 — USDC Depeg During SVB Collapse. Date: March 10-13, 2023 · Place: Silicon Valley Bank failure, Circle treasury exposure, weekend trading · Figures: Jeremy Allaire, Circle CEO · Silicon Valley Bank, holder of $3.3B of Circle reserves · Caroline Ellison, Genesis, and the prior FTX context · the FDIC, weekend backstop · Tags: Depeg, Stablecoin, Weekend Risk, Bank Run 01. $3.3B Stuck in a Failed Bank Silicon Valley Bank is closed by California regulators on Friday March 10 2023. Circle, issuer of USDC, discloses Saturday morning that $3.3 billion of its $40 billion reserves (roughly 8.25%) is held at SVB and inaccessible. USDC depegs from $1.00 to a low of $0.87 on Coinbase by Saturday evening. DAI, the largest decentralized stablecoin, depegs in sympathy because more than half of its collateral is USDC. The MakerDAO emergency executive vote begins Saturday afternoon. Curve 3pool sees billion-dollar swaps from USDC to USDT within hours. 02. Sunday Night Federal Backstop On Sunday March 12 2023 the Federal Reserve, Treasury, and FDIC jointly announce that all SVB depositors will be made whole, including uninsured balances. USDC repegs to $1.00 within 12 hours of the announcement. The repeg is functionally a public-private bailout. The depeg becomes the canonical 'centralized stablecoins inherit traditional banking weekend risk' case study. Tether, ironically the more opaque issuer, trades at $1.005 throughout the weekend because none of its reserves are at US regional banks. The episode is the cleanest demonstration that crypto and TradFi credit risk are now the same surface. Sources • Circle, 'An Update on USDC and Silicon Valley Bank,' March 11 2023 • Joint statement by Treasury, Federal Reserve, and FDIC, March 12 2023 • Krisztian Sandor and Sam Reynolds, 'USDC Depegs as Circle Reveals SVB Exposure,' CoinDesk, March 11 2023 • Matt Levine, 'Bank Run for the Stablecoin,' Bloomberg Money Stuff, March 13 2023
25. 2023 — Pepe Coin Launch. Date: 14 April 2023 · Place: Ethereum mainnet · Uniswap · contract 0x6982508 · Figures: Anonymous Pepe Coin developers · Matt Furie, original Pepe creator (uninvolved) · Tags: Memecoin, Frog Iconography, Bear Bottom Rally 01. Anonymous Mint, Zero Utility On 14 April 2023, five months into post-FTX winter, an anonymous team launches PEPE on Ethereum as a pure memecoin. No utility, no roadmap, no tax. Liquidity is locked. The contract is renounced. The pitch is the frog and nothing else. PEPE goes from launch to a $1.6B market cap in three weeks. The 1,000-times-back stories start trending. Bitcoin is still at $28,000 and most of CT is unemployed, but PEPE rips through May 2023 as the first major bear-bottom memecoin rally. 02. Matt Furie Does Not Get Paid Matt Furie, who created Pepe in 2005 and spent 2016-2020 fighting the alt-right co-option of his frog, is not consulted, not paid, and not pleased. He has no recourse. The Pepe image is, by 2023, in the wild beyond any copyright frame that could enforce against an anonymous Ethereum contract. PEPE is the proof-of-concept for memecoin season. Within a year SHIB, FLOKI, BONK, WIF, and a thousand others are running the same playbook: free mint, frog or dog mascot, no utility, ride attention to liquidity. Sources • Pepe Coin smart contract, Etherscan (0x6982508...) • Decrypt, 'Pepe Coin Hits $1.6B Market Cap' (May 2023) • Matt Furie statement on PEPE coin, via Boys' Club (April 2023)
26. 2023 — Dogwifhat. Date: 20 November 2023 · Place: Solana mainnet · Raydium · contract EKpQGSJtjMFqKZ9KQan · Figures: Anonymous WIF deployer · The dog in the pink knit hat · Tags: Memecoin, Solana, Single Image 01. A Shiba Inu In A Pink Hat On 20 November 2023 a token named dogwifhat, ticker WIF, is deployed on Solana with the image of a Shiba Inu wearing a knit pink beanie. The dog photo dates to 2018, originally posted to Tumblr. The entire pitch is the picture. WIF goes from launch to a $4B market cap by March 2024. A community-funded Las Vegas Sphere ad is briefly attempted. The price action validates the thesis that, in 2023-24, an image with no roadmap can outrun every venture-backed L2 launch. 02. Solana's Memecoin Era Begins WIF is the proof Solana needs after FTX killed its association with SBF. Cheap fees, fast confirmation, and a population of degens who survived the bear become a memecoin substrate that Ethereum cannot match on cost. By 2024 BONK, WIF, POPCAT, and POPCAT-derivatives anchor the Solana cultural identity. The era VII closing note is appropriate. Cryptomemes started in 2020 with Dogecoin, peaked in 2021 with BAYC, collapsed in 2022 with FTX, and persisted in 2023 as a dog in a hat with a four-billion-dollar valuation. Sources • WIF smart contract, Solscan (EKpQGSJtjMFqKZ9KQan...) • CoinGecko, WIF/USD price chart (November 2023 - March 2024) • Decrypt, 'Dogwifhat Hits $4B Market Cap' (March 2024)