As meme coins continue to win over the public’s hearts and wallets, analysts wrestle with their irreverent, often degenerate appeal.
Take $Luigi, a meme token inspired by Luigi Mangione, the lead suspect in the December 4 shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson. The coin soared to a $77 million market cap just two days after launching earlier this week, in what can only be read as a protest against Mangione’s arrest on 9 December.
Mangione has been cast as something of a hero for writing a manifesto against corporate greed and taking action in this ruthless hit-and-run shooting, which was recorded live and viewed by millions online.
In a depraved response, the Luigi coin was then launched by anonymous crypto traders, and immediately started trending on Raydium, the automated market maker built on Solana.
Hype-Coins Signal Public Sentiment
Meme coins often pop up in response to viral content, news or popular culture events, and their value can fluctuate wildly, reflecting public sentiment towards these topics.
While many are based on fairly innocuous memes, like dogs, cats and frogs, others are fueled by darker tropes, such as murder, suicide, cancer, or even swastikas.
The Luigi coin, for example, seems to draw its strength from the latent anger common people hold for corporate greed.
“As always, Solana meme coins are the best source of the news, as seen with the Luigi Mangione coin made minutes later,” said meme coin guru Burning Kitty on X.
The $Luigi meme coin continues to feed off the hype around the story, but like most news-based meme coins, it’s highly volatile and has dropped to $29 million at the time of writing.
Dark Energy Powers Meme Coins
Similarly, coins like Catslap engage the public’s secret desire to perhaps b*tchslap some powerful people, as featured in the $SLAP website.
These meme coins demonstrate that public anger can be funneled to send a token to the moon, but also, that acting on heated emotions may not be the best bet.
That’s because, the more charged the issue, the more volatile the value, as we have seen with $LUIGI falling as fast as it rose.
Meme tokens like $LUIGI lack the fundamental value and stability of traditional assets, making them highly volatile and risky investments, argues Alex Beene, Financial Literacy Instructor at University of Tennessee, in an interview with NewsWeek.
“Typically rises in the value of a meme coin pertaining to a viral story or…
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