Iggy Azalea is cashing in on crypto as her ‘memecoin’ makes $194 million in a week

Iggy Azalea knows the power of a meme. On Wednesday afternoon, the Grammy-nominated rapper shared a photoshopped image of herself breastfeeding Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum. The caption: “He was hungry.”

The meme was designed to troll Buterin by following his rebuke her Solana-based “memecoin,” Mother Iggy ($MOTHER), which began trading last week. Celebrities should only launch cryptocurrencies to serve “some kind of public good,” rather than “financialization as an end product,” he wrote.

Memecoins are an ironic subculture of cryptography. Anyone can flip a coin in the name of anything. Combining finance, internet trends and gambling, investors flock to highly speculative assets during viral moments.

“I don’t think peace is very profitable when it comes to the memecoin scene,” Azalea said in an interview with Fortune. “It’s what drives virality, it drives my community, and it drives our market value, and that’s what I’m here for. Then respectfully move out of the way.”

‘Money Rules, Make My Own Rules’

Six years after rapping on lyrics “Box rules, make my own rules,” Azalea is doing, well, just that. After its first week of trading, Mother Iggy’s price soared 1,200% to around $0.20, reaching a market capitalization of over $190 million, according to to CoinMarketCap from June 7th.

This highlights a broader trend of celebrities turning to memecoins to monetize and interact with their fan base without intermediaries. Although some find the trend distasteful, it appears to be profitable and an effective way for some celebrities to find their way back into the spotlight.

“I’ve listened to more Iggy Azalea in the last few days than at any time in the last decade — there may be a lesson in that,” Teddy Fusaro, president of Bitwise Asset Management, told Fortune.

The story continues

The release of Mother Iggy was accidental and considered. After spotting a scammer on Telegram posing as Azalea to launch a memecoin, she was forced to take action. “If this guy says he’s going to flip my coin in 24 hours, I’m going to flip mine in 23 hours,” she said.

But she has been watching crypto from the sidelines since 2020. Looking at non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and Web3 art projects come and go, she knew there was something for her in the industry – she just wasn’t sure what. Memecoins seemed like a trend fueled by a language it speaks.

“I’m someone who has naturally had so many memes throughout my career; things go viral on purpose or accidentally. I felt like it was a space that I could really engage with successfully,” she said.

Considered the currency of microtrends, memecoins themselves have become the force behind crypto’s most recent renaissance, likely usurping the role that NFTs played during the previous bull market. The value of the popular Pepe ($PEPE) and Shiba Inu ($SHIB) have soared 363% and 201%, respectively, in the past year, according to data from CoinGecko. Some of this year’s craziest hits? Jeo Boden, Doland Tremp, MAGA Hat, Elawn Moosk, and even Good Gensler, going after SEC Chairman Gary Gensler.

Economic nihilism?

Omid Malekan, an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, told Fortune that he sees memecoins as “definitive proof” that blockchain technology is the financial infrastructure for the digital age. “Where else could celebrities issue a fan asset without having to go through a gatekeeper and reach so many people?” he says.

However, like all forms of democratization, it is a corner of cryptography that is often rife with fraud. Issuers can deposit large amounts for themselves, promote the coin to make the price soar, and then pull the rug out from under it.

“These celebrity-backed coins are scams and will go to zero very quickly. While anyone should be able to use any platform, these coins omit material information, are misleading and often violate securities laws,” Terrence Yang, managing director at Swan, told Fortune.

But Azalea insists she’s not a rug puller. She says she wants to find long-term use for the coin and thinks the celebrity buzz offers a way for the retail sector to engage with Solana. The two startups she co-founded – a no-contract phone data provider and a gifting and crowdfunding site – will allow customers to pay with Mother Iggy coins. But her ultimate goal is to transition Mother Iggy to a stable currency. “That would be like the Holy Grail,” she says.

But not every memecoin project has proven to be a success, suggesting that a large online following does not guarantee investors. Last week, Caitlyn Jenner ($JENNER) also hit Solana. However, it was cast in Azalea’s shadow, reaching a market cap of less than $10 million with just 7% growth last week.

In the realm of critical memecoin theory, Azalea offers two pillars of success. One of them is the willingness to engage with the crypto community where they are. In her case, this involved creating a Telegram channel a few days after the negotiation. The second is fun – cutting out the provocative Azalea memes – and taking advantage of crypto’s trolling culture.

So rather than memecoins becoming a common tool in a celebrity’s arsenal, Azalea predicts there will only be a handful that will be able to strike the right note and monetize.

Another obstacle celebrities can face is regulation. Malekan argues that unlike Bitcoin or Ether, memecoins must be legally treated as gambling, “otherwise it will be very easy for celebrities to abuse having their own namecoin and treat it as a way to make money.” , he adds. He wants issuers to be transparent about how much they withheld and the high chance of volatility.

But ultimately, he sees the growth of memecoins, meme stocksand gambling as indicators of economic nihilism: “People feel they need to do risky things with their money to get ahead.”

This story was originally featured in Fortune.com

Fuente