Crypto Meme Culture
Memes, Twitter, and a new vocabulary are all part of the crypto journey.
What is Meme Culture?
"I AM HODLING"
On December 18, 2013 a slightly inebriated man posted in a bitcointalk discussion forum. "I AM HODLING... WHY AM I HOLDING? I'LL TELL YOU WHY. It's because I'm a bad trader and I KNOW I'M A BAD TRADER." His semi-coherent, typo-filled rant about trading skills and his conviction to simply hold his bitcoin investment has become a cultural phenomenon. The post has inspired memes like the below and filled the Twitter-sphere and online discussions.
HODL is one example of a larger undercurrent of cryptocurrency culture. We're diving into the memes, the vocabulary, and the movements below.
Memes: Money printer go brrr
“We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines,” Richard Dawkins wrote in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins describes memes as cultural artifacts that communicate ideas quickly. Nowadays, the meme is associated with an image with black and white text.
Memes are a cultural phenomenon, the result of short attention spans, countless projects, and increasingly complex digital infrastructure. A meme, native to the internet, is shorthand for a complex idea — it serves to further narratives, poke fun, or blend work and life. Memes are real, and people exchanging memes don't care if you express yourself. Daniel Kuhn and Ben Powers at CoinDesk write: "The simplicity of communication is what gives memes their universality. Though it's what's being communicated that gives them potency."
In this way, memes are more than just silly pictures. They create community-driven excitement and spread information rapidly.
One example: after the Fed announced government stimulus in April 2020 in order to prop up the economy, a meme went viral with the phrase "money printer go brrr". It has been a common narrative in the nearly two years since the start of the pandemic, with websites like brrr.money created to memorialize the concept. Other common memes include Number Go Up and Laser Eyes, which has become a statement of a particular lifestyle and adopted by celebrities like Paris Hilton and Tom Brady.
In all, memes fly under the radar as a way to easily digest news. Like decentralized entities, they are peer-to-peer and organically spread around the world. Since neither memes nor Bitcoin fit into the legacy news or currency markets, memes have found a home in the cryptocurrency world.
Crypto-Twitter
Twitter is the place to be for interacting with the general crypto community.
On Twitter you will find news sources and influencers, some of whom have NFTs like Crypto Punks and Bored Apes as their pfps. If you have no clue what that sentence means, read on.
There are subsects of communities that form around certain coins or ideas like Bitcoin, Cardano, Solana, NFTs, Olympus, and many (read: thousands) more. While much of Crypto Twitter is tongue-in-cheek (there is a specific vocabulary discussed below) many of these people are extremely knowledgeable about the technical aspects of blockchain and the upcoming developments in the pipeline.
Crypto Twitter can be an overwhelming place, but can be used effectively to stay on top of key news and information. FirstWatch Crypto is active on Crypto Twitter and has a great list of people to follow below. We recommend starting small and following a few people that tweet about topics you like. As you begin to get used to this information diet, you will begin to expand the sphere of resources. If your Twitter is branded towards crypto or has tweeted a lot about crypto, many of these people will also follow you back.
Twitter is immensely popular because of one main theme: community. There is Fantasy Football Twitter, Politics Twitter, E-commcere Twitter, Cooking Twitter, and virtually anything else you can think of. Twitter is one of the main ways people can interact with like-minded people who share their passions and interests. In a post-pandemic world, people have adapted to connecting remotely much like the original creators of the internet envisioned. Twitter is one of the premier places to do that right now, and the best way to get informed about cryptocurrencies.
Twitter Handles to Follow
In no particular order...
News
@coindesk; @cointelegraph; @bitcoinmagazine; @bloombergcrypto; @BTCTN; @ChartsBtc; @CoinDeskMarkets; @BTC_Archive
Investors / Founders
@markyusko; @cburniske; @brian_armstrong; @novogratz; @aridavidpaul; @saylor
Influencers and Thought Leaders
@raoulgmi; @aantonop; @LynAldenContact; @apompliano; @twobitidiot; @TuurDemeester; @Breedlove22; @naval; @iamjosephyoung
Podcasters
Crypto Vocabulary
The crypto world can sometimes seem like a different language. Hop onto crypto Twitter and you'll see tweets that read: "wagmi." What does that mean? Here are some common terms:
HODL - Hold
FUD — Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt that is often associated with digital assets
Rekt — meaning "wrecked," or a loss of capital
When Lambo — a question investors ask, referring to when the coins will be worth enough to afford a Lamborghini, often times spelled "wen"
gm - Good Morning, for some reason it's always in small caps
fren / ser - Ways people on Crypto Twitter address each other
Alpha - Similar to the traditional investment world, when people drop "Alpha" they are imparting an investment idea to their followers.
wagmi - "We're all gonna make it"
ngmi - "Not gonna make it"
pfp - profile picture (often an NFT)
Some key stats:
75% of 13-36-year-olds (and 79% of 13-17-year-olds) share memes; 55% share them every week.
Some tokens are referred to as meme coins, some of which have exploded in value, that have a sector market cap of $65.75B.
According to CNBC, one-third of kids between 8 and 12 aspire to be either a vlogger or a YouTuber, closely influenced by meme culture.
On May 19th, the hashtag #bitcoin, was used on Twitter 363,000 times, the most to date.
Resources:
Investopedia's HODL definition.
The original Bitcoin Forum HODL post.
CoinDesk's article on How Memes Drive Narrative and Value.
35 Most Influential People on Crypto Twitter
11 Crypto Memes Explained.
Crypto slang as explained by CNBC.
➡️ About FirstWatch Crypto ⬅️
FirstWatch Crypto was started by Dan McGlinn (@DigitalDanMcG)and John "Blaize" Hrabrick (@blaizebitcoin) who have been investing in the space for a combined 8 years. FirstWatch Crypto is on a mission to simplify the crypto investment landscape.
WAGMI