The Memecoin Casino
Planet Money
NPR
4.6 • 29.8K Ratings
🗓️ 28 February 2025
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The humble memecoin began as a sort of satirical send up of speculation in the crypto world. But it was a joke that soon became very real. In the decade since the launch of Dogecoin in 2013, a series of cultural shifts and technological leaps enabled an explosion in the number of new memecoins. And this memecoin explosion has not only minted millionaires but also led to hordes of unlucky investors and untold scams.
On today's show, what's in a memecoin? How they went from a one-off joke to a speculative frenzy worth tens of billions of dollars? And who are the winners and losers in this brazen new market? wow such tease many listens
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | There's been a lot of attention on loneliness lately. |
| 0:03.9 | 16% of Americans report feeling lonely all or most of the time. |
| 0:08.3 | The former Surgeon General even declared a loneliness epidemic. |
| 0:12.3 | On It's Been a Minute, we're launching a new series called All the Lonely People, diving deep into how loneliness shows up in our lives and how our culture shapes it. |
| 0:21.4 | That's on the It's Been a Minute podcast on NPR. |
| 0:24.5 | Just a quick warning, this episode includes a kid cursing. |
| 0:28.7 | This is Planet Money from NPR. |
| 0:33.9 | A few months ago, I came across this live stream video clip that had started going viral online, |
| 0:39.1 | that I think captures something essential about the absurdity of the current financial moment we're living through. |
| 0:45.1 | Here's the backstory. On the night of November 19th, 2024, this baby-faced kid, looks around 13 years old, |
| 0:52.2 | used a new online platform to launch a brand new cryptocurrency into the world. |
| 0:57.9 | We're not using his name because he did all this anonymously. |
| 1:00.9 | The cryptocurrency he created is what's known as a meme coin, which is a kind of joke currency, |
| 1:06.5 | something that doesn't hold any inherent value besides what other people on the internet are willing |
| 1:11.0 | to pay for it. The kid named his coin Gen Z Quant. He spent a few hundred dollars to buy |
| 1:16.7 | up about 5% of the total supply of his new coin. And then he also started live streaming on |
| 1:22.7 | the platform. Somebody else recorded the live stream, which is why in the video you can hear |
| 1:26.4 | the kid and a couple other voices. |
| 1:28.0 | Are we bonded yet or what's good? |
| 1:30.0 | In the video, you can both see the kid's face and a chart showing the coin's price. |
| 1:34.9 | Within seconds, the list of people buying the coin starts to stream in, and the little green price line on the chart starts shooting upward. |
| 1:42.3 | Like a rocket ship trying to reach escape velocity |
... |
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