From Trump tokens to LIBRA lows: Meme coin circus rolls on, bolstered by recent SEC ruling In 2024, meme coins became one of the most traded and discussed aspects of the cryptocurrency sector. Critics argue they give the industry a bad image. Others enjoy the gambling thrills and, at times, mind-boggling returns. If and when the U.S. government steps in to regulate this controversial industry, what will the outcome look like? When the crypto sector earned the moniker “Wild West,” meme coins were to blame. Thousands of new tokens are created daily via platforms like Pump.Fun. Investors — a mix of retail traders, crypto insiders, influencers, and sometimes institutional players — all hope to get an unlikely jackpot.
Meme coin opponents also blame the space for being a distraction from the higher-quality projects across the crypto sector. For example, the pre-inauguration launch of the Official Trump Official Trump
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Official Trump token exemplifies this trend.
“The crypto sector put someone in power whose first act is to emphasize and take advantage of the opportunity for grift within crypto,” Angela Walch, a crypto researcher, told Time. “And that’s just embarrassing.”
The meshing of meme coins and politics isn’t exclusive to the U.S. In Argentina, President Javier Milei promoted the Libra token, which rose to $4.50 before plummeting in value.
As Lyn Alden, the founder of Lyn Alden Investment Strategy, put it in January: “The same bearish [traditional finance] accounts that dismissed bitcoin due to mostly unrelated ICOs, DeFi, and NFTs, will now dismiss it due to meme coins.”
Having watched this space since 2017, I see a lot of the same patterns.
The same bearish tradfi accounts that dismissed bitcoin due to mostly unrelated ICOs, DeFi, and NFTs, will now dismiss it due to meme coins.
When they could just buy it and beat their own portfolios. #qasimmughal
