The world is no stranger to the eccentricities of billionaires.
A lot of them follow a set pattern: buying off islands, going on space trips, keeping exotic pets, and finding other novel ways to spend their fortune ostentatiously. But what happens when you have the most famous tech mogul on this planet get obsessed over internet meme culture?
Welcome to the world of Elon Musk, the maverick CEO of Tesla Motors, SpaceX and X, who has convinced U.S. President Donald Trump to name an entire government department after DOGE, a meme featuring a Shiba Inu’ breed dog.
Doge meme is not a new concept, nor is it something that Elon invented. It has been in existence ever since the emergence of internet meme culture in the 2010s and shot into prominence after two software engineers created a cryptocurrency, Dogecoin, as a “joke” payment system.
Today, Dogecoin cryptocurrency alone has a market cap of $27.15 billion and $1.5 billion in daily trading volume, traveling far and wide from its conception as a “joke” currency.
Also Read: Dogecoin price makes a comeback with 41% surge in transaction volume
Similarly, today Elon’s Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E) or DOGE has earned the reputation of being a no-nonsense austerity measure that has resulted in mass layoffs and reductions in government spending.
The meme, the joke, has now traversed from internet forums to the mainstream, often imitating life and serving the true purpose of “memes”.
In this article, we will talk about memes, their emergence as an internet cultural sensation, the entry of Elon Musk into memes, and how memecoins have carved out a multi-billion-dollar space in the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
What are memes, and do they imitate life?
To understand a meme in simple language, it is a pictorial representation that is reproduced with variations, often texts, to produce a humorous effect. The phenomenon largely gained global fame on the internet near 2010 in the wake of the Korean music video “Gangnam Style” going viral online.
But the term ‘meme’ was coined by biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book ‘The Selfish Gene’.
As per the famous book ‘Memes in Digital Culture’ by Limor Shifman, Dawkins explained that memes are “small cultural units of transmission, analogous to genes, that spread from person to person by copying or imitation.”
The word ‘meme itself comes from the Greek word ‘mimesis’ which translates as ‘imitation. But to say memes are mere imitations of a still artwork would be an incomplete definition.
Felipe Daniel Montero in his essay “The Question Concerning Memes” explains the concept of memes imitating life.
“A meme is alive (memes can die, they can fall into oblivion) as long as the meme is copied. However, the mere repetition of a meme ad nauseum only hastens its end. In order for a meme to live, new variations of the schema are necessary,” argues Montero.
True to the argument of Montero, Elon Musk, in a recent interview with TV host Rob Schmitt, referred to himself as “becoming a meme”.
“I am become meme. Yeah. Pretty much. I’m just- I’m living the meme. I’m just like, living the dream. And there’s living the meme, and it’s pretty much what’s happening. I mean, doge started out as a meme. Think about it. And now, it’s real. Isn’t that crazy? But it’s cool,” said Musk.
Meme imitates life, and life ends up imitating meme-—it is this cycle of meme culture that Felipe Daniel Montero stressed upon in his essay and now is being lived by Musk.
Rise of memes in crypto industry: An anti-thesis to everything “serious”
When the crypto industry’s first memecoin ever, Dogecoin, was created back in 2013, it was not even referred to as a “memecoin.” Its creators, Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, both software engineers, termed it a “joke payment system”.
The creation of Dogecoin was considered to be the antithesis of traditional finance and concepts of economics. It was the idea that just like a government is free to publish fiat currency as much as it wants, without any backing or reserve, similarly, the internet (people’s voice) can churn up a digital currency that is next to a joke.
However, in just seven years of its inception, Dogecoin reached a peak market capitalization of a whopping $85 billion in 2021. Its major impetus on social media had come from Musk himself in 2020, who would tweet about DOGE every now and then.
A year later, Musk’s venture SpaceX announced a “rideshare mission to Moon” completely funded by Dogecoin.
After Dogecoin blew up, the crypto world was littered with thousands and thousands of memecoins that kept popping up every other minute on different blockchains.
Not every memecoin shared the same golden fate of Dogecoin, but a few did emerge to be successful, including BONK, SHIB, FARTCOIN and PEPE.
Also Read: Will Memecoins Return with a Bang; Market Cap Crosses $50B?
Today, the combined valuation of memecoins in the crypto industry would easily run into several billion dollars.
What are Harry Bolz and Kekius Maximus, Musk’s latest obsession post-Doge?
Even before he acquired Twitter and christened it as ‘X’, Musk has had a different style to interact with his followers-often using “internet’s dark humor” or borderline offensive terminologies.
In February this year, Musk renamed himself as “Harry Bolz” on X (formerly Twitter)- a cheeky innuendo on the phrase “hairy balls”. The reason behind the name change to Harry Bolz still remains unclear, except that he does what he does online.
However, Musk’s name changes often have a chain reaction. It seems that Musk has re-adopted the persona amid controversy surrounding Edward Coristine, widely known as “Big Balls.”
Ripple Effect of Harry Bolz on Crypto
What followed suit in the crypto industry was utter frenzy as over 200 meme coins were launched on Pump.Fun platform of Solana blockchain under the same name “Harry Bolz”, in less than six hours of the news break. A few of these tokens even surged astronomically within hours but as is the case with meme coins, the frenzy was short lived.
One of the coins jumped substantially by 500% in just two minutes of its launch and skyrocketed 17,000% in value within 30 minutes, hitting a market capitalization of $3.68 million. The price then dropped by 85% from its peak.
Kekius Maximus
Later, in December 2024, he changed it to Kekius Maximus. “Kek,” a term from online gaming and meme culture and “Maximus” reminding Roman authority. And also replaced his profile picture with the popular “Pepe the Frog” meme.
These stunts have frequently sparked intrigue among his followers and the cryptocurrency community and even financial market shifts.
Soon after he updated his profile picture, a memecoin named Kekius Maximus was created and it soared over 500% in no time.
Conclusion: Memes, Coins and Elon are here to stay
The phenomenon of Elon Musk hyping up memes that turn into memecoins in the crypto industry is a fascinating account of how the internet as a platform amalgamates three different entities: a tech billionaire, memes, and cryptocurrencies.
As long as the internet remains accessible and humor refuses to die down among people, the memes will remain alive and thriving. Whether memecoins would survive in the volatile world of crypto, with or without the push by Elon Musk, is a thing to watch out for.
