Will Smith’s slap and the wildness of the coin meme

Watson went to bed as the 2022 Oscars took place, where Will Smith caused controversy for slapping Chris Rock. But two days later, the event interested him in another way: it spawned a meme coin, named Will Smith Inu.

The fact that this cryptocurrency was created after the actual slap is not surprising. By definition, a coin meme is a cryptocurrency associated with viral images, moments, and Internet jokes with short-term value, often tending to rise or fall rapidly. There are also some like Dogecoin and Shiba Inu that are long-lived, accepted for payment by Tesla or GameStop. Even so, most are seen as a risky investment without any clear purpose.

Early participants can still make a hefty profit. That’s why two days after the 94th Academy Awards, Ryan Watson bought a $5,000 worth of Will Smith Inu. The coin had a trading volume of up to three million USD but dropped to almost zero after just one week. The short-term price increase actually presents an opportunity for investors like Ryan Watson, who has already made $20,000 in cash.

“Fear of money doesn’t make money,” says Watson.

But at rest, thousands of people are facing the wild world of meme coins as they struggle to find a way to get their initial capital back.

Once considered a humorous version of cryptocurrency, the coin meme is now rife with scams. Nearly all analysts agree that participation is essentially a form of gambling. “It’s a zero-sum game. If someone is getting rich, a lot of other people are losing money,” said David Hsiao, CEO of crypto magazine. Block Journal, speak.

The coin meme began to appear in 2013, when the image of a Shiba Inu dog named Doge became famous. The Dogecoin digital currency was originally created with the aim of satirizing Bitcoin. But in 2021, as cryptocurrencies explode and move towards mainstream approval, the field begins to thrive. Experts say that during the quarantine period due to the epidemic, many people look to the digital currency investment channel. Reputable crypto projects are overvalued, difficult for beginners to access, so owning millions of meme coins for just a few hundred dollars is attractive. Besides, the number of buyers is large, so they can increase the price by 1,000, even 10,000 times, thereby creating an increasingly large wave of FOMO in the crypto community.

Billy Markus, the co-founder of Dogecoin, started expressing his distaste for the coin meme in February. In his Twitter post, he claimed that they were filled with spam ads, lies about the founder, words overpromising and also efforts to attract Elon Musk’s attention for promotion. “Current coin memes aren’t even memes. They were created by people trying to get rich from other people,” he said.

According to CoinMarketCapthe market is having more than 300 meme coins, of which 20% have a daily trading volume of over 100,000 USD by the end of 2021. As of April, their value fluctuates between 32 billion USD and trading volume daily translation about 2 billion USD.

However, according to Ethan McMahon, an economist at crypto research firm Chainalysis, many meme coin investors are not interested in the finances of any particular coin. Their goal is to find a new coin that is likely to be trending, buy in bulk, and sell as soon as the coin makes a profit or starts to decline in value.

“It’s like a musical chair game,” says Mac Mahon. “Everybody thinks they can get on a chair before it’s all over.”

For investors like Watson, risk is simply a prerequisite for access to a range of benefits: financial freedom, quick returns, and a break away from the traditional path of finding a career and rights force. “No matter how much time I spend at a job, I never get promoted. That’s why I’m doing things like this,” he said.

According to experts, with the right software, anyone can buy a meme coin for a few hundred dollars in minutes, easily creating an opportunity for scammers. The creator of the coin meme can control how much money is generated, often in huge numbers, like billions or trillions, to ensure the value of each coin is much less than per cent. For example, after the night of the Oscars, buyers can own Will Smith Inu for just $0.0000002176.

One of the more common scams is pull out the carpet (rug pull). This popular term from 2021 refers to the sudden abandonment of a project by a certain cryptocurrency development team and all the money obtained from the investor. Chainalysis says this scam cost investors a total of nearly $3 billion last year.

November 2021, meme coin based on the hit Netflix series Squid Game also increased in price for 11 consecutive days to $2,860. After that, the project developer suddenly disappeared with $ 3.3 million of investors’ money, causing the price of this coin to drop to 0. Statistics show that this cryptocurrency has sometimes increased in price by up to 23,000% but is now worthless.

Experts say that if you want to invest in venture capital, players should only spend 10-20% of the capital, the rest is for other more secure platforms. These coins can multiply 100 times in value overnight but can also go to zero at any time. The line between a potential project and a scam is sometimes only a “push beat” from the publisher.

“Depending on each person’s financial situation, but remember that meme coins are just like a lottery. That means when you buy, you must determine that you may lose your investment,” said Ms. Nhu Thao, administrator of the Tradecoin Underground forum, speak. “Also, some newcomers to the market often mistake the listing price of meme coins, which have a lot of zeros after the commas, so they think the price is very cheap and buy continuously without realizing they might be swinging to the top.” . Before investing, players need to consider the total supply of that token, market capitalization, trading volume… and then make an investment decision to avoid unnecessary risks.

Hoai Anh (according to Washington Post)