Benzinga - BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes suggests exercising caution before dismissing all meme coins as “stupid."
What Happened: During an interview with Real Vision CEO Raoul Pal on March 30, Hayes emphasized that meme coins contribute value to the crypto industry by generating attention and attracting new users and developers to blockchains.
"You can poo-poo these things as stupid and valueless, but if it brings attention and more engineers to the space, it's positive value for the chain itself. The chains that can support this culture are going to be the chains that have value," Hayes said.
Pal believes that meme coins will likely become more popular among younger crypto investors, tapping into the “gaming mentality” prevalent among Gen Z and millennials.
"This is essentially the same concept, just gamifying the use of money,” said Pal.
Meme coins are cryptocurrencies inspired by internet jokes or memes. They are known more for their fun and viral nature than for practical uses.
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Why It Matters: Both Pal and Hayes said that interest in memecoins will continue in the foreseeable future.
They also noted that the Solana-based memecoin dogwifhat (CRYPTO: WIF) is set to be featured on the Las Vegas Sphere in the coming months. The dog-themed memecoin recently surpassed the Ethereum layer-2 network Arbitrum (CRYPTO: ARB) in terms of total market capitalization. Currently, WIF boasts a market cap of $4.5 billion, while ARB stands at $4.4 billion.
This comes after a blog post dated March 29 where Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin expressed his general disinterest in memecoins. However, he urged crypto investors and memecoin developers to explore ways to make the tokens useful or charitable instead of simply condemning them or engaging in “virtue signaling” to those who trade them.
"I value people's desire to have fun, and I would rather the crypto space somehow swim with this current rather than against it," Buterin wrote.
Price Action: At the time of writing, top meme crypto Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE) was trading at $0.21, up 6.56% in the last 24 hours.
Photo by Kanchanara on Unsplash
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