BitMEX founder: Memes are part of the cornerstone of crypto culture

Author: Arthur Hayes

Translation: Block unicorn

We landed in Mandalay, left the airport, and began our journey in Myanmar. It was December 2012, and aside from a few wide-eyed tourists, the airport and the surrounding area felt empty—like a perfect Alfred Hitchcock movie scene.

After passing through immigration, we exited a shiny but deserted airport, jumped into a car from the 1980s, and drove along an empty highway. The taxi reminded me of my father's car, which my brother and I used to call the "goodbye" car (because it could break down at any moment). It was a certified basketball. We shared the four-lane highway with a guy driving an ox cart. Other than that, it was the middle of the workweek at noon, and there was not a soul in sight as we headed into the city.

I was with my good friend—my hedge fund brother friend who wanted to be a K-pop star/NBA player. The last time he drove to the hoop, he was in his SUV heading to the Staples Center. He decided to spend a two-week mandatory vacation with me, adventuring through Southeast Asia. In the first two weeks of December 2012, we hit Jakarta, Bali, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Myanmar (Mandalay, Inle Lake, Bagan, and Yangon), and completed a journey through Sri Lanka.

My son is very savvy with the internet and did a lot of research on how to travel in Myanmar. Ten years ago, many things we considered almost basic human rights were nonexistent. There was no mobile phone service, almost no internet connectivity, and no ATMs. They only accepted physical dollars, but you had to be careful—some serial numbers were not accepted. Crumpled or damaged bills were also not accepted—so we stuffed all our cash into books to keep the bills flat and crisp.

Once you overcome the issues of lacking modern connectivity and financial services, what remains is a country full of potential, beautiful temples, and hospitable people. We visited a new city every day to cover as much of the country as possible in our short time. We spent our last few days in the country's commercial capital, Yangon. This city, once known as Rangoon during the British colonial era, was one of their most prosperous colonies.

Myanmar is located between India, Thailand, and China, with a deep-water port leading to the Andaman Sea, holding significant geopolitical value. The country also boasts rich gems (like rubies and jade), natural resources (they have vast untapped reserves of natural gas and oil), and a large young population (ideal for making trinkets sold on Amazon for very low wages). However, for various reasons, these blessings have not been fully utilized, and the country has languished for decades.

Wherever you are, the cultural and linguistic artifacts of the ruling empire seep into your life. December in Yangon was no exception. One of the most surprising aspects was the number of Christmas decorations in Yangon and its surroundings. Myanmar is a predominantly Buddhist country with a significant Muslim minority. It is not a culture or nation built on Judeo-Christian values, nor is it integrated into the global economy to the extent that people consider secular consumer holidays like Christmas to be feasible.

Despite all these factors, I still heard all the classic Christmas tunes. I’ll Be Home for Christmas, Maria! I saw snowmen, jingle bells, and Santa hats in the tropical dust of the city. Many waitresses in bars wore drab red and white outfits to show their sense of belonging to this global year-end ritual.

The Judeo-Christian liberal democratic empire has overlooked Myanmar, yet its people have absorbed some of the most significant cultural aspects. Every society practices rituals and holds festive celebrations for the death of one year and the rebirth of another. The established population practices illustrate many things about who truly rules the habitat.

When a nation shares similar cultural values, they share assumptions, beliefs, and practices that do not require direct support. Winning people's hearts is more important than your ability to project kinetic energy. Occupying foreign territory without being defeated can lead to the conquerors adopting the culture of the victors, which can become quite an expensive folly.

Every organizational structure, whether a nation-state, religion, or network state, needs to acquire and retain users. The contagion mechanism of the sense of belonging is culture and language. If users share the same assumptions and beliefs with the culture they hope to absorb, it becomes much easier to retain them within your value system. Therefore, as we attempt to completely restructure the world using stateless currencies and decentralized public blockchain permissioned networks, the culture of these networks will be as important as the price of the coins and the quality of the technology.

The first thing any colonizer does is destroy the oppressed people's connection to their heritage. They strip away traditional clothing, change names, and eradicate their language. Then they ensure that the populace grows up wearing "appropriate" clothing, using "correct" speech, and believing in the "true" God.

Everything stems from something, and cryptocurrency is a response to the fiat currency-driven, debt-based financial system and the centralized, top-down exclusive nation-state. It does not come out of the box with its own language and culture, but it has begun to develop its own version, starkly different from what it claims to oppose.

Many people around the world celebrate secular holidays symbolized by a jolly old fat man riding down from the North Pole in a magical sleigh to leave gifts for deserving children. Let’s think about how crypto culture has evolved and how the realm we inhabit needs new thinking to clearly break free from what we wish to defeat.

Crypto Meme

To avoid any doubt about the power of memes, take a look at Elon Musk. Tesla as a company should be a huge zero, but Elon is one of the best meme artists the world has ever seen. Someone told me that his team only makes wet memes. Elon is worth hundreds of billions because his memes are incredibly important.

Like a virus, memes infect the host's mind through narratives that are easy to intuitively understand and pass on to the next victim. The dissemination mechanism of social media allows memes to quickly infect many hosts.

We forget how powerful images are, but remember how all major world religions began. At a time when books were expensive and most people were illiterate, the world's major religions gained users. Clergy built structures with images—equivalent to today's memes—to convey the tenets of faith to the laity.

Let’s take a look at some memes that form the cornerstone of our current crypto culture. I will link to longer explanatory articles whenever possible and then provide some context on why specific memes are important.

HODL

Shut the fuck up! That was an exciting episode; it’s a shame last season was so tough. (HODL)

Here’s a link to the article explaining the origin of HODL: https://www.citadel21.com/bitcointalk-chronicles-the-origin-of-hodl

Many people own Bitcoin at ridiculously low prices, only to sell it when its value skyrockets. However, the significance of 2013, 2017, and 2021 is worlds apart; buying Bitcoin for a few dollars and still holding it when it rises 60,000 times requires immense faith—that is the essence of HODL.

On paper, you will see the value of cryptocurrencies drop by 90% or more, thus increasing confidence in HODL. The battle cry of HODL aims to give cryptocurrency holders the confidence to stick it out and weather the volatility.

Any new technology will experience unstable results, and if the ecosystem is to grow, speculators and developers need to HODL. The whirlpool of technological advancement will shake everyone except the most extremely loyal. The HODLing culture is crucial to ensuring that a large following sticks with the movement and continues to participate when things get tough.

Cryptocurrency has never been for the faint of heart, especially if you frequently check the prices of coins in your portfolio. Engaging in this activity without properly believing in HODL culture is a recipe for bipolar disorder.

Money Printer Go Brrr ….

This is the original version of the classic meme, which has since spawned many different iterations.

Especially this variation blew my mind—I love the internet. Undeniably, the global financial crisis of 2008 and the "bailouts" by central banks created fertile ground for the birth of Bitcoin. Central banks—and the governments that empower them—responded to the Great Recession and every subsequent crisis by printing money. The printed currency benefits selected associated companies and holders of financial assets, while those whose income is primarily from wages are squeezed.

That is the essence of this meme. It is a rallying cry for everyone outraged by the hypocrisy of governments that support market-based economic policies while making citizens pay for the financial institutions' poor business decisions through inflation. Privatized gains and socialized losses—I’m not sure what economic "ism" that is, but if it were a religion, it would certainly be prominent.

I have discussed certain aspects of central bank-supported monetary inflation in almost every article I’ve written. This is because the primary driver behind the pathological gains experienced by the crypto market since the COVID crash in March 2020 has been the massive money printing created by global central banks.

The desire to create a system built on a trustless, sound monetary foundation is a major motivation for many believers, and this meme encapsulates that sentiment.

Stupid Wage

Mainstream financial media loves to write a rags-to-riches story that goes like this:

1. An ordinary person earning average or median income in a specific country discovers cryptocurrency.

2. The individual starts day trading.

3. They catch some shitcoin that skyrockets 1,000 times in a few weeks.

4. Suddenly, they are worth millions of dollars.

5. Now they can quit their boring job and join the ranks of the newly rich.

The follow-up story often published during bear markets goes like this:

1. Once upon a time, there was someone who became a crypto millionaire.

2. Then the market crashed by 90%, and they lost everything.

3. They had to go back to work for that guy. (sad face)

There’s also another popular recurring story about people who, due to their HODLing, turned cryptocurrencies worth thousands of dollars into millions or billions over the years due to price appreciation. Similarly, these stories suggest that these individuals are now living a completely different life, detached from the daily grind of salaried or hourly work.

Perform well in school (meaning get good grades; actual knowledge accumulation is not the goal), get into college (hoping the massive debt taken on by oneself or one’s family is worth it), and then hope to land a paid job that over time makes the costs incurred by you or your supporting family fade into oblivion. This is the life our modern global society promotes.

If the world’s money printers were not running, that would be a great strategy. Central banks are determined to produce inflation that exceeds the wage growth of ordinary workers. Since Nixon removed the global reserve currency from the gold standard in 1971, securing a fixed salary has been a fool's bet, and the only way to stay ahead is to speculate in financial asset markets.

This meme that belittles fast-food workers Wojak summarizes this message, where Wojak was once a crypto millionaire but then became jaded and had to start flipping burgers again.

There’s nothing wrong with flipping burgers or any other job that pays minimum wage. The dignity of that work is only stripped away when your government undermines your labor value by actively printing money to fill the gaps in the balance sheets of profligate companies that should be going bankrupt instead of being bailed out.

That is the message of this meme, which mocks the orthodox notions surrounding the dignity of work. It also reflects the aspirations of many involved in the cryptocurrency market—to transcend the daily life that is continuously devalued by time.

Bored Ape

" Ape " is about imitation, oh oh oh, how spicy. Any successful fictional idea that creates a form of organization (like a nation, religion, or currency) requires apes, as we pay attention to and follow others.

The spirit of imitative trading expresses a sometimes careless attitude toward asset allocation within the crypto ecosystem. When you enter a project, the amount of research or critical thinking is minimal. You quickly ape into the herd and hope to exit before the crowd’s taste shifts. That is the essence of aping. If you spend too much time doing actual research, you’ll miss several X pumps.

Those who successfully imitate the crowd or predict where the crowd's attention will shift can reap massive rewards. It’s no wonder the Bored Ape Yacht Club is one of the most successful and traded NFT projects. It is an intuitive representation of the spirit of many traders within the ecosystem.

Dog Money

Shiba Inu is so cute it hurts, and clearly, they are not the most obedient dogs, but they are DILIGAF (Latin for "love").

Jackson Palmer decided to see what happens when you combine worthless technology with a cute dog picture, and Woof Woof… Dogecoin was born.

It’s fitting that the cryptocurrency Elon Musk talks about the most is Dogecoin. The combination of worthless technology and a shady meme created billions of dollars in value for a car company and a cryptocurrency, that’s how simple it is.

Many of the highest-valued coins deliberately ignore technology, as if the founders of these projects are thinking, "How can I make technology and still get people to buy the coins?" Buyers of these "meme" coins are more than willing to dig a hole underground and burn energy (read: money) uselessly.

They do not value the fiat currency they earn because their government is inflating the quantity every second of every day. So why should they pay fees to some fund manager just because they studied CAPM and other theories of no practical value at the "right" university? Just buy objectively worthless cryptocurrencies, pump their prices to incredible heights, and then laugh as the global elite waver at how foolish they are for buying dog coins.

While meme coins' technology does not further the cause of decentralization or sound like a stateless reason, it embodies the spirit of crypto, because it expresses dissatisfaction with the TradFi fiat system.

Feel Good Man

No article about crypto memes and culture would be complete without a discussion of Pepe the Frog.

For whatever reason, crypto has chosen a cute frog and turned it into a mascot. Pepe and the memes using his image demonstrate how a community can change the conversation around a symbol if they collectively decide it means something to them.

Using Pepe as an example, what other symbols can we adopt to create our own? This symbol only has value because we collectively decide it does. Like most ideas and myths, when the number of believers dwindles, they lose their value. As long as we act collectively, we have the right to legitimize anything.

That’s enough about Pepe.

How to Communicate

The small portion of important cultural crypto memes above tells the world who we are, what we believe in, and what we disdain. But this does not help us communicate with those who have not yet heard the joke. The language of cryptocurrency needs to adapt to the higher goals we aspire to.

If tasked with creating a sacred text for the crypto religion, what would it consist of? How do we create a small yet impactful collection of memes, phrases, and stories so that anyone can pick it up and talk like they’ve been a member of the tribe for years within a few hours?

Jargon-heavy language only creates another privilege club for those who "get it." It is not inclusive and does not help recruit new members. What we do not need is a language that takes years to master.

Working on a trading floor, the most valuable thing you learn is how to communicate. It speeds up trading within the group and establishes a separation between professionals and the unwashed masses. However, learning this language is reserved for the thousands of "fortunate" professionals working in the market. This is not the secret to a successful global movement.

Unfortunately, you do not need to own cryptocurrency to live a fulfilling life. In contrast, learn your spoken and written language. To integrate into society, you must be able to communicate.

If everyone around you speaks a certain language, you must take the time to learn it. The most important part of early childhood education is learning the language of the society you are in. Language is, to some extent, non-intuitive. We sit in classrooms learning meaningless rules whose sole purpose is to communicate ideas with others who speak the same language.

My Mandarin has not progressed to a certain level because, as an adult, I have more discretion in how to spend my time, and rote memorization is not my favorite activity. This is not a slight against language. Those who learn English later in life must deal with a whole set of irregular grammar rules and verb conjugations that make zero logical sense. I am fortunate that I learned the lingua franca of the empire in my childhood rather than in adulthood.

Let’s not assume that people must learn our crypto language to fully participate in the culture. We must approach this from the perspective of an emerging religion that hopes to challenge the dominant paradigms of society. Others have done this before, and success comes from creating simple yet viral memes that, on one hand, attack the flaws of the dominant belief system while, on the other hand, showcase a bright and fulfilling future that is easily attainable if you believe.

The COVID pandemic was largely self-inflicted. However, various lockdowns and money printing activities in almost every country have caused people to spend more time online and feel frustrated with the rampant inflation caused by central bankers. This is the foundation for the crypto revolution to change more hearts.

When paired with an indifferent majority, a minority can be very powerful. Nassim Taleb details this—how the preferences of a minority can influence the policies of the majority, even if they occupy a tiny percentage of the sample. As a minority voice, we, the followers of Lord Satoshi, can punch above our weight.

But we must create a language that is radically different from the previous one, and it must also be easy to learn. I am not a linguist, but if we can self-reflect on how we describe the ecosystem and attempt to simplify and create more digestible terms, the path to larger groups will become easier.

The biggest challenge will be to reduce our use of words and phrases that have specific meanings in the old system but loosely describe specific crypto concepts. One example is the jargon " blue chip," which implies high-quality, high-value financial assets like stonks or art.

When the TradFi system formed in the early 20th century, it underwent specific evolutions. We need a term equivalent to cryptocurrency that signifies high value, which also has an organic backstory unique to our culture. We must challenge our influencers to adapt their language to our specific crypto culture so that we can retain the power to define who we are and the stories of our beliefs.

Success is within reach when those without cryptocurrency still embrace this culture, spread memes, and speak this language. When the baby boomer generation starts talking about how they got theirs because their Procter & Gamble stock was secured and some accounting statements were restated, we will know that the vicious crypto culture is at the appropriate level.

We can all invest in spreading our excellent culture by thoughtfully considering the way and content of our communication. As many of you readers gather around a non-native conifer and thank each other by giving gifts, take this as a reminder of the powerful force of culture and commit to adding value systems to the crypto expressions of its beliefs.