The self-positioned wind of memes has blown into every corner of the cryptocurrency world

Author: jk, Odaily Planet Daily

On the morning of November 14, Beijing time, Litecoin, which had faded from the market's view for a long time, suddenly posted this on its official Twitter:

Source: X

"Given the current market environment, I now identify as a Meme coin."

As soon as the tweet was released, it immediately sparked a frenzy in the crypto market. The recent performance of Meme coins has been explosive, with a solid narrative of "resisting VC and exchange collusion projects" (aka formerly business-supported projects), and this playful tweet from the long-established PoW Litecoin further ignited market sentiment. Litecoin surged by 10% in a short time, rising from around $72 to $82. As Meme coins like Pnut, Pepe, and Bome began to rally alongside Bitcoin, the market's FOMO sentiment towards Meme coins continued to accumulate, and Litecoin's explosion undoubtedly proved this point.

Litecoin performance, source: Coingecko

Projects following the trend, source: X

In addition to Litecoin, all the projects shown in the image above claim to have become Memecoins; the screenshots barely cover the wave of this trend on the X platform, including well-known projects like Manta Network, AVA Foundation, Aleph Zero, and even Gate Exchange have all joined this craze, filling the feeds on the X platform yesterday like a popular video on Douyin (or a trending TikTok challenge).

So how are these "newly minted Meme coins" performing?

Overall, the coins that are merely riding the wave of hype have not shown significant increases—IoTeX has not seen a noticeable rise, with a 24-hour decline of 7.5%; Manta has a 24-hour decline of 11.9%. This part of the decline is largely unrelated to the tweets and mainly comes from the pullback led by Bitcoin.

At the same time, established Meme coins in the market have shown a trend of increase + pullback due to this Meme craze: PEPE and WIF both started to surge at some point yesterday, although there was a pullback within 24 hours, the 7-day increase still remains around 90% and 50%. As for PNUT, which is leading this wave, the price has reached $1.6 by the time of writing.

Meme performance, source: Coingecko

Even more absurdly, this trend has clearly begun to break out of the crypto circle: this morning, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, with its 2.2 million followers, also posted an identical tweet on its official Twitter:

Source: X

It’s worth noting that KLM Royal Dutch Airlines (once) was a legitimate account with no ties to the crypto market, and it was naturally suspected of being hacked. Litecoin replied below, "Looks a bit bumpy, but ok!" Someone commented below, "Is the intern managing the Twitter account for Litecoin also working two jobs?"

Of course, KLM's stock price showed no change, and even saw a slight drop. It seems that marketing in the crypto circle is just shouting slogans, and no one is really buying (though buying isn't about the stock market).

Even more, a token Meme coin has already been launched on Pump.fun regarding this event: INIAAM (I now identify as a memecoin), and by the time of writing, its market cap has reached approximately 32K.

INIAAM, source: Pump.fun

Returning to the original context, everyone is, of course, playing with the meme: "I now identify as xx" is originally used in English contexts related to gender, where someone may now identify as another gender, and in the tug-of-war between supporters and opponents, it has been grafted onto other meanings multiple times, such as the famous phrase "I now identify my gender as a Walmart shopping bag," etc. This part corresponds perfectly to the core of Meme culture, which is to deconstruct an existing system, whether it be gender or once-serious classical crypto projects, and then completely trample the original meaning underfoot, allowing this contrast to bring more traffic to the project.

This is a market strategy and the core essence of Meme. Of course, we cannot overlook the most important catalyst: crypto investors may have long suffered from "high FDV and low circulation" tokens, unwilling to be the bag holders for VCs and project parties anymore; Meme coins are at least a fairer market—after all, it’s all about being quick and attentive.