12 new york | january 3–16, 2022
In 2021, we learned we could speculate on anything. Through NFTs,
investors traded on emoji, tweets, jpegs, and farts. And in the meme-
coin market, a lot of people made a lot of money on inside jokes. For
the uninitiated, a meme coin is a crypto asset based on a meme or
an internet joke. Unlike other cryptocurrencies, which try to serve a
real-world purpose, the point of most meme coins isn’t really to do
anything. Instead, they’re largely vehicles for speculation, their
value driven by hype. Meme coins generally begin at a price of a few
cents or less but can quickly soar to hysterical highs, making them
beloved by the Robinhood crowd. Here, a student turned crypto
trader in his mid-20s shares his frenzied journey through the meme
casino and what it was like to make his first million.i first bought bitcoin in 2019 in order to buy drugs. I put
in $500 and forgot about it, and when I checked at the end of
2020, I had $2,000. So I started putting my savings in little byA Trip to the
Meme-Coin Casino
“I think this is all stupid
and absurd. But I’m
not going to complain.”
intelligencer
Illustration by Simoul Alva