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How Memes and Gamification Are Changing Finance as We Know It
Making money with your friends while laughing at an inside joke? What’s better than that?
Memes are taking over finance. And behind the community forums, the comical volumes of wealth that emerge in a matter of days, and the sometimes crude humor, something great and significant is happening.
On the surface, memes are just photos and video clips that circulate on the internet in the form of text messages, social media feeds, and community forums. It’s easy to overlook them and underestimate the fact that they can convey more than just a humorous reference. Memes convey subtle but powerful cultural meaning in a digitally native way. A meme that’s popular with a community or culture often means something about that group and its values at a specific moment in time.
Blockchain technology has made it possible to financialize almost everything digital. So it’s only natural that crypto has taken over meme culture over the years. However, meme-ified finance isn’t unique to crypto. In traditional and Web3 finance, meme-ified finance has brought together powerful online constituencies. And today, financial gamification, while still in its infancy, is revealing a new path.
In TradFi, a fringe The Reddit Community in 2021 has become a forerunner of the kind of community-based, anti-institutional, anti-sense finance that is deeply and inextricably tied to the intersection of gamification and humorous meme culture. The r/wallstreetbets community has “glued” itself to traditional finance, playing with the traditional stock market and reveling in its success with witty online posts.
In the cryptocurrency space, memecoins have always played a major role, attracting the kind of community-driven finance that typically propagates through the power of memes and the gamification of the marketplace. Early iterations of memecoins like DOGE were followed by use-case specific versions like NFT collectibles, and are now being accelerated by low-cost next-generation blockchains like Solana.
This raises an ongoing debate: Do memecoins need intrinsic value to succeed, or is the enthusiastic support and participation of their communities enough? When we say “value,” are we referring to a solid track record and utility, or does the real value lie in the vibrant communities and culture they create? Perhaps the true value of memecoins lies in their ability to unite and engage people rather than conforming to traditional financial metrics.
Everything that is happening – in both traditional finance and crypto – is a testament to a new evolution and power. After decades of obscure, obscure, strict, ivory tower-like financial services, people are moving in the opposite direction. The discovery of collective financial power and its application to markets goes hand in hand with technologies that connect people on a daily basis, on a global scale (e.g. Reddit) and that democratize financial autonomy (cryptocurrencies). All of this is wrapped in humorous meme-based communities and financial gamification that, at the end of the day, is just plain fun. It seems hard to imagine a world in which such entertaining, community-fueled wealth creation does nothing but grow.
We can think of the memification and gamification of finance as the result of technologies integrating into each other. Until now, the different ways we’ve spent our time online have been quite distinct. Social platforms, financial platforms, educational platforms, gaming platforms, etc. have all been separated from each other, siloed into their own digital silos.
Over the past 20 years, some of these sectors have already integrated with each other. Gaming and social media are already inextricably linked, with platforms like Twitch specifically targeting the intersection of the two. Under the power of crypto, we’re starting to see finance integrate with social media as well.
There is no doubt that Asia Pacific is way ahead of the West in terms of technology mix. Platforms like WeChat seamlessly combine commerce, social media, gaming, communication, and more. When all these technologies combine with each other, what do once separate ecosystems have in common? Culture. And how does culture spread online? Memes. We may not know what the next product will be that will meet everyone’s needs, but one thing is for sure: everyone needs happiness, and it’s memes.
Cryptocurrencies are changing the face of finance, but it’s not happening in a technological vacuum. It’s being accelerated by memes and the deep economic gamification at the heart of blockchain systems. The power of finance no longer lies in knowledge of esoteric financial principles. It no longer lies in the kind of relationships built in stoic financial societies. The power lies in community, in virality, and in deep cultural synchronicity.
Note: The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CoinDesk, Inc. or its owners and affiliates.