What’s the Meta?

Iqram Magdon-Ismail, co-founder of Venmo, is working on a new app called JellyJelly, a video chatting platform for podcasters. Ahead of the app's official release, he launched a meme coin for the project which soared to a $250 million market cap. But, he didn’t have a plan for how the app would use the token so it’s since fallen to just $5.5 million. In this episode, we speak to CEO of Jelly Jelly, Iqram Magdon-Ismail, and investor Sam Lessin about why they decided to launch the token, how they can separate the product from crypto degeneracy, and if they have a plan for the token yet.

This Rat Will Be Smarter Than You One DayA research lab gained popularity in the crypto sphere after its experiment on a rat called Pythia went viral, with a meme coin community rallying behind it. Pythia has a chip that is hardwired to his brain which is connected to an AI model that translates human languages into brain impulses. As a result, Pythia can answer questions that require yes or no answers.With the rat gaining popularity online, crypto degens created a Solana meme coin and Neiry Lab embraced it. PYTHIA reached an all-time high market cap of $50 million just 17 days after launch; it has since corrected to $14.5 million in the month following.In this episode of ‘What’s the Meta?’ we speak to two people from Neiry Lab about how the rat’s AI brain works, why this is going to change the course of human history, and how we can have conversations with cows. Stick around until the end as Neiry has a special announcement about a way to make money by selling your brainwave data.

Supa Hot Fire became one of the biggest memes in 2011. Now over a decade later, he has created a meme coin. This comes as part of a trend of old school internet icons launching meme coins, but why is this all happening?

Bonk: The Meme Coin that Saved Solana After Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX collapsed in 2022, the future of Solana looked bleak. But from the fraud-fuelled ashes came a meme coin that saved the network. Bonk was created and airdropped to a ton of Solana developers as a way to bring back fun vibes to the network. In many ways, it worked. Bonk reached a peak market cap of $4 billion in November 2024, two years after its launch. Along this journey Solana has changed a huge amount, establishing itself as one of the biggest blockchains in the world. Now, Solana is a crypto cultural hotspot and the go-to place for rising meme coins—especially with the creation of Pump.fun In this episode, we’re joined by Nom, a core contributor for Bonk, to discuss how the FTX collapse felt, why Bonk launching was so important, and how Solana has changed over the years.

Ron made a YouTube video in an attempt to prove that cryptocurrency is worthless, after seeing Fartcoin shoot over a $1 billion market cap. Once the video was published, crypto degens caught wind of the story and sent Unicorn Fart Dust (UFD) to over $260 million—now $300 million. Ron joins us to tell his side of the story, how his opinion has changed on crypto, and why meme coins are important. Before this Ron was a gold and silver YouTube content creator, posting daily videos analysing the market. Because of this, the crypto community has branded him as a “boomer” despite Ron rejecting this tag—he’s technically a few years out. While UFD hasn’t changed his mind on silver and gold, it has made him think more positively about crypto. Why? Put simply, the power of community.

Floki is one of the biggest meme coins in the world but it hasn’t been smooth sailing from the start. After dealing with an early rug pull attempt, the token has since grown to become a well-respected brand within the crypto community. Floki is known for its approach to utility, a controversial ethos for a meme coin to adopt. In the 15th episode of ‘What’s the Meta?’ we speak to Pedro Vidal, community relations officer at Floki, about the origins of the meme coin, why it believes in its utility-first approach, and revisit some marketing dramas of the past.

There are two Pepe meme coins but which one is the real one? Ryan S. Gladwin spoke with the Community Lead of Ethereum’s Pepecoin, known as Fanzo, to answer why there are two meme coins.  Fanzo says that his token is the real one because it was first but the other one (PEPE) is at a mindblowing $9.2 billion market cap. By comparison, Pepecoin (PEPECOIN) is at just $465 million. So what makes something the *real* meme coin? Is it market capitalization, innovation, community, or something else?  Chapters: 00:00 Intro w/ @iSocialFanz 02:05 Why are there two Pepe meme coins? 09:40 Is there still beef? 11:20 What makes a ‘real’ meme coin? 14:15 How can @pepecoins win? 16:48 Why does a meme coin need AI? 20:07 Cult community

Creators of artificial intelligence agents Truth Terminal, Fi (also known as AI with daddy issues), and MycelialOracle (aka S.A.N.) chat to Decrypt about getting wrapped up in the world of meme coins. Plus, the trio have an exciting announcement. All three projects accidentally ended up having an army of meme coin traders following their AI experiments. With this tons of crazy moments have occurred from degens wanting to close the gender pay gap to nearly inciting a riot. Andy Ayrey, the creator of Truth Terminal which conceived of the Goatseus Maximus (GOAT) meme coin, joins Ooli, the human assistant to Fi who endorse the Shegen meme coin, and Ryan Ferris, the creator of the eco-friendly MycelialOracle (S.A.N.) that has endorsed the FOREST meme coin.

Ponke is a meme coin of a degenerate monkey who gambles and trades every day. The project’s social media presence is a key differentiating factor, especially its approach to TikTok and Instagram—sites ignored by most tokens. The Solana meme coin has over 220,000 followers on TikTok, 426,000 followers on Instagram, and 133,000 on Twitter. This is thanks to the team’s approach at making original, memeable content. In fact this following is much larger than the amount of holders Ponke has, suggesting that some watch their social media content simply because it's funny.

Why a NFT Bull Run is Coming: DeGod President Explains Sunny, the President of the popular NFT collection DeGods, explains why he believes a NFT bull run is on the way. While many believe that NFTs (also known as non-fungible tokens) are no longer attractive investments, Sunny believes the biggest projects have quietly become cultural brands with the ability to move mountains. In this episode of ‘What’s the Meta?’ we discuss the broader NFT market trends, how projects like Pudgy Penguins, Doodles and Milady are growing into brands, as well as how Sunny got involved with DeGods in the first place.

How The Lead Organizer of Jan 6. Became Meme Coin KINGPIN Dustin Stockton is known as the “Godfather of Political Finance” but he wasn’t always known this way. He was originally heavily involved in campaigning for Donald Trump and was the lead organizer of January 6. As the protest came closer, he realized things would go south and backed out. From home, he watched Trump supporters raid the capitol building. He knew his life was never going to be the same. A month prior, he was no longer allowed to access his bank account in a process called debanking. This was the result of a fundraising campaign which led to Stockton building a wall on the Mexican border. But, according to the feds, the organization had misappropriated funds. With no bank account, he dived head first into crypto and worked his way to becoming the “godfather of political finance.” From being an advisor to Donald Tremp to an early investor in Joe Boden, he’s invested on every side of the political spectrum.

Crypto Researcher Explains The Year of the Meme Coin! Head of Research at CoinMarketCap, Alice Liu, breaks down the highs and lows of meme coin mania in 2024. We’ve seen meme coins like Dogwifhat (WIF) soar to huge market caps and we’ve seen political meme coins crash as the candidate drops out (BODEN). Liu explains the data behind all of this. A quarter of all traffic to CoinMarketcap was directed towards meme coins at one point. With this, the researcher at CoinMarketCap believes that 2024 was the year of the meme coin.

Kabosu, the dog many know as Doge and the mascot of Dogecoin, sadly passed away earlier this year. Its owner later adopted another Shiba Inu called Neiro which caused a long blockchain civil war with multiple tokens battling it out for liquidity. Now a month later SlumDOGE, the man who became a millionaire off Dogecoin (but never sold), explains why Neiro is a moment for the dog coin community to unite. SlumDOGE also known as Pro The Doge invested in Dogecoin early on and saw his investment fly to the multi millions. Unfortunately, he never sold as he felt he was going to let people down. He says huge lessons were learned that have informed him going forward. 

Pastor Kelby created a meme coin on Pumpdotfun which has since registered a church and developed its own religious theories and philosophies. Twice a day Kelby heads a sermon on Twitter where he spreads lessons from books that have personally helped him achieve happiness. We spoke with Pastor Kelby to find out what those teachings are, how the church was set up, and talk about future plans to build a real, physical church.

Crypto hedge fund Stratos bought Dogwifhat (WIF) when it was just 1 cent and has since continued investing in meme coins. We spoke with Rennick Palley, founder of Stratos, to hear the firm’s perspective on investing in these tokens. Stratos has invested in Pepe, Costco Hot Dog, and many more with this the hedge fund has outperformed the market. As a result, Palley believes it is inevitable that more hedge funds will start to invest in meme coins. After that, the next natural step… a meme coin exchange traded fund (ETF).

Gigachad is a meme coin centered around a meme that originates from 2017 after a photographer posted a bodybuilder with an unrealistically insane body. He was later named ‘Gigachad’ by 4Chan users. Now, it has celebrities like Mike ‘Titan’ O’Hearn and Paulo Costa pushing the project forward by promoting its sports fitness brand that’s tagged to it. In turn, it peaked at a market cap of $176,000. We spoke to two community members Hop and Phantom about how the project came to be.

Mogging started on 4Chan back in 2016 as a slang term to dominate another person. But now, eight years later, mog has redefined itself through an Ethereum meme coin. Crypto traders Aug and Slumpt often joked that they’d launch a cryptocurrency around the mogging meme but never really pulled through. That was until Aug decided to press the button. On the first day, the community collaborated to evolve the meme creating the Joycat character that has become synonymous with the mog meme. Pit vipers were soon adopted and the project is still seeking a collaboration with the company. Now, the crypto token is worth $800 million. The meme has come a long way since the early days of 4Chan. In many ways, the current iteration has mogged the 4Chan version. No longer do moggers just mog another person's height or hair, now it’s elevated to effortless cosmic domination. 

Dev Dumped. Now He’s Worth $200M: The Story of Billy. Billy is the largest Solana meme coin on Pumpdotfun, peaking at a market cap of over $200 million. But it wasn’t always smooth sailing. Minutes after launching Billy’s dev abandoned him and sold the majority of their tokens. At the time, the tokens were worth $1,116 but at today’s value they’d be worth more than $8.65 million. Fortunately for the dog, the community took over and gave the meme a new life. In what is called a community takeover (CTO) a group of 100 people dedicated their lives to saving and promoting the crypto coin. And it worked. We’re joined by Minh Dynasty who was part of the community takeover from the earliest moments. He recounts the journey and why Billy means so much to him.

With the rise of Pumpdotfun and rug pulls becoming a daily occurrence, why do crypto degens keep investing? Do these investors enjoy being scammed? It appears that people very often invest in meme coins that are very obviously going to rug pull. Once it happens, they just laugh it off on Twitter, is being scammed fun?! Ryan and Reza attempt to answer why crypto degens invest in such risky assets, if we should feel sorry for rug pulled degens, and explore the concept of financial nihilism.

Meet Mikol: the Dare dev that doused himself in isopropyl alcohol and had fireworks shot at him. He instantly went up in flames and was rushed to hospital, where it became apparent he suffered third degree burns. In this episode, Mikol reflects on the biggest night of his life, details his injuries, and the gruelling recovery process he’s still in. Despite the traumatic incident, Mikol isn’t done with the project. Instead, he’s planning to build a decentralized app (dapp) where community members can take on dares in exchange for DARE tokens.