IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/wpaper/hal-04360574.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

What is a meme coin? Dogecoin to the moon!

Author

Listed:
  • Adrian Stencel

    (UJ - Uniwersytet JagielloĊ„ski w Krakowie = Jagiellonian University)

Abstract

The rise of cryptocurrencies has shaped the current economic landscape, while also raising many conceptual issues. The present paper will aim at an approach to one problem that has not been studied to date. One widely known fact about cryptocurrencies is the existence of meme coins, such as Dogecoin (DOGE) or Shiba Inu (SHIB), which are very popular as assets for retail investors; accordingly, their dynamics have been studied to some extent by economists. However, to date no one has attempted to focus on a basic conceptual question upon which, to a certain degree, all of these studies depend: what is a meme coin? The present paper addresses this question. Through the analysis of paradigmatic examples, I argue that meme coins should be defined as a cryptocurrency characterised by three properties: i) community before utility, ii) inverse crowdfunding, and iii) zeronomics. I then argue that these properties are not present in every meme coin; moreover, they may appear as well to some extent in cryptocurrencies not labelled as meme coins. Therefore, I argue that we should rely on two concepts, that of the meme coin and that of meme coinness, with the latter representing the extent to which a given cryptocurrency resembles a paradigmatic meme coin. The paper concludes with an outline of potential debates in which the concept of the meme coin could be implemented.

Suggested Citation

  • Adrian Stencel, 2023. "What is a meme coin? Dogecoin to the moon!," Working Papers hal-04360574, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-04360574
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04360574
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal.science/hal-04360574/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-04360574. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.