Iggy Azalea knows the power of a meme. On Wednesday afternoon, the Grammy-nominated rapper shared a photoshopped photo of herself breastfeeding Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum. Caption: “He was just hungry.”
The meme was designed to troll Buterin after he rebuked her Solana-based “memecoin,” Mother Iggy ($MOTHER), which began trading last week. He wrote that celebrities should only launch cryptocurrencies to serve “some kind of public good,” rather than “financialization as an end product.”
He was just hungry pic.twitter.com/AlTwEtfIKd
— Iggy Azalea (@IGGYAZALEA) June 5, 2024
Memecoins are a subculture of cryptocurrencies. Anyone can launch a coin in the name of anything. Combining finance, internet trends and gambling, investors flock to highly speculative assets during viral moments.
“I don’t think peace is very profitable when it comes to the meme scene,” Azalea said in an interview with Fortune magazine. “This is what drives virality, drives my community, drives our market value, and that’s what I’m here to do. So, respectfully, get out of the way.”
I’m completely dissatisfied with the “celebrity experience in this cycle” so far.
“Financialization is a means to an end,” I can respect whether the end is worthy (healthcare, open source software, art, etc.). Financing *as the final product*,
Ashton and Mila…
— Vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) June 5, 2024
“Rules of criticism, I make my own rules”
Six years after singing the lyrics to “Criticism Rules, I Make My Own Rules,” Azalea is, well, doing it. After the first week of trading, Egy’s price rose 1,200% to around $0.20, bringing its market cap to more than $190 million, according to CoinMarketCap as of June 7.
This underscores the broader trend of celebrities turning to meme currencies to generate income and engage with their fan base without an intermediary. While some find this trend distasteful, it appears to be a profitable and effective way for some celebrities to find their way back into the spotlight.
“I’ve listened to more Iggy Azalea over the past few days than at any time in the last decade — there may be a lesson in that,” Teddy Fusaro, president of Bitwise Asset Management, told Fortune.
Mother Iggy’s firing was accidental and deliberate. After spotting a scammer on Telegram posing as Azalea to launch a memecoin, she was forced to take action. “If this guy says he’s going to release my coin in 24 hours, then I’m going to release my coin in 23 hours,” she said.
But she’s been watching cryptocurrencies from the sidelines since 2020. As she watched non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and Web3 art projects come and go, she knew there was something for her in the industry — and she wasn’t sure what it was. Memecoins felt like a trend fueled by a language they could speak.
“I’m someone who’s naturally had a lot of memes over the course of my career; things get spread intentionally or accidentally. I felt like it was a space I could engage with in a way that really worked,” she said.
Being a micro-trend coin, memecoins themselves have become the driving force behind the recent crypto renaissance, arguably usurping the role NFTs played during the previous bull market. The value of the popular Pepe ($PEPE) and Shiba Inu ($SHIB) has risen 363% and 201%, respectively, in the past year so far, according to CoinGecko data. Some of the most amazing successes this year? Geo Budden, Doland Trimpe, MAGA Hat, Elon Musk, and even Judd Gensler are trolling SEC Chairman Gary Gensler.
Economic nihilism?
Omid Malkan, an assistant professor at Columbia Business School, told Fortune that he considers memes “definitive proof” that blockchain technology is the financial infrastructure of the digital age. “Where else can celebrities release fan assets without having to go through a gatekeeper and reach so many people?” He says.
However, like all forms of democracy, this is a corner of cryptocurrency that is often rife with scams. Exporters can deposit large sums for themselves, promote the currency to raise prices, and then pull the rug out.
“These celebrity-backed coins are scams and will go to zero very quickly. While anyone should be able to use any platform, these coins delete information,” Terrence Yang, managing director at Swan, told Fortune. is material, is misleading, and often violates securities laws.”
But Azalea insists she’s not the one pulling the rug. She says she wants to find a long-term benefit for the coin and believes the celebrity buzz provides a way for the retail industry to engage with Solana. The two startups she co-founded — a no-contract phone data provider and a giveaway and crowdfunding site — will allow customers to pay with Mother Iggy Coins. But its ultimate goal is to turn Mother Iggy into a stablecoin. “That would be the Holy Grail,” she says.
But not every memecoin project has proven successful, suggesting that having a large online following does not guarantee investors. Last week, Caitlyn Jenner also hit out at Solana. However, it has been cast in Azalea’s shadow, with a market capitalization of less than $10 million, with growth of just 7% in the past week.
In the world of memecoin monetary theory, Azalea offers two pillars of success. The first is the desire to engage with the cryptocurrency community where they are located. In her case, this involved setting up a Telegram channel within days of trading. The second is to have fun — which is limited to Azalea’s provocative memes — and capitalize on crypto trolling culture.
So, instead of memes becoming a common tool in a celebrity’s arsenal, Azalea predicts that there will only be a few people who will be able to strike the right tone and generate income.
Another hurdle celebrities may face is regulation. Malkan argues that unlike Bitcoin or Ether, meme currencies should be treated legally like gambling, “otherwise it would be very easy for celebrities to misuse their own currencies and treat it like a cash theft,” he adds. He wants to see issuers be transparent about how much they have held and the high potential for volatility.
But ultimately he sees the growth of meme currencies, meme stocks, and gambling as indicators of economic nihilism: “People feel like they need to do risky things with their money to get ahead.”