During the first quarter of 2021, the total spending on NFTs was more than $2 billion. While the number may still look small when compared to the size of the overall crypto market, it represents a surge of around 2,100% from the numbers it registered in Q4 2020. As seasoned investor Fred Wilson says, “I’ve decided that I am going to stop ignoring and dismissing meme investing and start trying to understand it better.”
Surging Interest in NFTs and Meme Coins
While meme coins are growing in terms of hard numbers, they’re also becoming mainstream. Christie’s, founded in the UK in 1766, is one of the oldest and one of the world’s leading art businesses that has got into NFT artworks. Everyday: The First 5,000 Days, a purely digital artwork by Beeple, also known as Mike Winkelmann, went for auction from the Christie’s and fetched more than $69 million. According to Noah Davis, a specialist in post-war and contemporary art, “Christie’s had never offered a new media artwork of this scale and importance before”. The auction initiated a new chapter in the world of tokenized digital or internet artworks.
In February, the stock price of Gamestop surged from $4 to $220. A Reddit group, by the name of WallStreetBets, pushed people into buying GameStop shares to combat the hedge funds who were shorting or betting against the Gamestop stock. Following that spirit, another group named SatoshiStreetBets decided to pump up the price of some cryptocurrencies. DogeCoin, named after the Shiba Inu “Doge” meme, got the benefits of these concerted efforts. One poster claimed Doge to be the Crypto GME. Doge added more than 7 billion in market capitalization in a single day. Inspired by the spirit of the crypto market that took Gamestop as an example to follow, Gamestop is about to release an NFT platform of its own.
Some of the biggest players in the crypto world are also keen to leverage the growth in NFTs/ meme stocks. Binance, widely popular as the largest crypto exchange globally, recently launched its NFT marketplace. It commenced its operation with the auctions for Andy Warhol’s Three Self Portraits and a digitized NFT of Dali’s “Divine Comedy: rebeget.” It redesigned Dali’s artwork by including the Bitcoin symbol, Binance CEO’s signature, and the Binance logo. You could only see these inclusions by zooming in.
While the crypto world is going gung-ho about NFTs and meme coins/stocks, the excitement is also spreading out in areas that have a history of resisting crypto or at least doubting it. It is the government sector.
During the Donald Trump presidency, the United States Space Force (USSF) came into being as a branch of the armed forces. During the middle of June, the USSF decided to release a series of NFTs or non-fungible tokens. It partnered with the community-oriented NFT platform Ethernity chain to conduct the program. The release saw digital versions of patches and coins entering the marketplace, designed for the launch of its fifth vehicle in the GPS block III.
Investment Pouring into Memes/NFTs
Growth and expansion into new territories eventually lead to investment inflow. For instance, Meme.com – often termed the CoinMarketCap for Memetic Coins – has raised $5 million. Meme.com positions itself as the explorers of fine memes and trends. It helps users measure the value of memes – an idea that has caught the imagination of its users.
But, how does this unique concept work? To leverage what meme.com has to offer, all you need to do is search for memes on the internet that you think is remarkable. Next, you submit your findings to the meme council and wait for approval. You can earn rewards for contributing with the best findings each month. Overall, it aims to build a sustainable crypto-economy for memes, where both creators and collectors would be rewarded.
You can support your favorite memes by sponsoring them with the meme coin. Memecoin is also the official token for Marble Cards. You can use Memecoin to create an NFT featuring a center image from URL links across the internet.
With a burgeoning market around, this uniqueness of meme.com’s innovation was enough to attract a group of blockchain-focused venture capital funds and angel investors for funding of $5 million.
Many reputed investment firms – especially those working with interesting and high-growth crypto projects – have come forward to back meme.com. Some of these firms include Outlier Ventures, Digital Finance Group (DFG), Morningstar, Blockhype, and Spark Digital Capital. Even the CEO of mobile developer Altitude Games Gabby Dizon, and Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal have invested in the platform. The interest of such an experienced crypto community proves that meme stocks and NFTs are here for the long run.
Joanna Liang, head of investment at DFG, confirmed the growth speculations when she said that her firm believed in the potential of “meme markets, such as Meme.com.” They are a “promising and innovative way to empower users who find or create trends.,” Joanna added.
While elaborating its mission Mattias Tyrberg or Meme.com said that the platform believes that “humor and memes have the power to connect people and create unique shared experiences, united by a common culture.” Meme.com will also host other meme coins like DOGE and SHIB.
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