I'm Aisha Roscoe, and you're listening to The Sunday Story from Up First.

So there are some things in this world that I just have a hard time getting my head around.

And, you know, I've got to say one of them is cryptocurrency.

And the longer it's around, the weirder and more complicated it seems to get.

It's all a bit daunting to me, but for some of my colleagues,

explaining new trends in the economy is what they do. A few months ago, Planet Money host

Alexi Horowitz Ghazi came across a viral video that clarified something about the explosion of a

type of cryptocurrency called

meme coins. These are highly valuable and highly volatile tradable currencies that have propped up

on the internet over the past decade and anyone can make one. Here's Alexi talking about the video he saw and the story of one particular

meme coin. On the night of November 19th, 24, this baby-faced kid, looks around 13 years old,

used a new online platform to launch a brand new cryptocurrency into the world. We're not using his name because he did all

this anonymously. The cryptocurrency he created is what's known as a meme coin, which is a kind of

joke currency, something that doesn't hold any inherent value besides what other people on the

internet are willing to pay for it. The kid named his coin Gen Z Quant.

He spent a few hundred dollars to buy up about 5% of the total supply of his new coin.

And then he also started live streaming on the platform.

Somebody else recorded the live stream, which is why in the video you can hear the kid

and a couple other voices.

Are we bonded yet or what's good?

In the video, you can both see the kid's face and a chart showing the coin's price.

Within seconds, the list of people buying the coin starts to stream in, and the little green

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