Iggy Azalea Profits From Crypto, As Her ‘Memecoin’ Makes $194 Million In One Week

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

The meme was designed to troll Buterin after his reprimand of her Solana-base “memecoin”, Mother Iggy ($MOTHER), which began trading last week. Celebrities should only launch cryptocurrencies to serve “some sort of public good,” instead of “financialization as the end product,” he wrote.

Memecoins are an ironic subculture in crypto. Anyone can start a motto in the name of anything. Merging 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 landscape,” Azalea said in an interview with Fortune. “That’s what drives virality, that drives my community, and that drives our market cap, and that’s what I’m here for. So respectfully, walk away.

“Cash flow rules, make my own rules”

Six years after rapping Words “Cash rules, make my own rules,” Azalea does, well, exactly 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 at CoinMarketCap starting June 7.

This highlights a broader trend of celebrities turning to memecoins to monetize and interact with their fans without an intermediary. Although some find this trend abhorrent, it appears to be both profitable and effective for some celebrities to get back into the spotlight.

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

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

But she has been observing crypto from the sidelines since 2020. Watching non-fungible tokens (NFT) and Web3 art projects came and went, she knew there was something for her in the industry – she just didn’t know what. Memecoins seemed to be a trend fueled by a language she speaks.

“I’m someone who has naturally had so many memes over the course of my career; things go viral on purpose or accidentally. I felt like it was a space I could really get involved in successfully,” she said.

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

Economic nihilism?

Omid Malekan, an assistant professor at Columbia Business School, told Fortune that he sees memecoins as “the ultimate proof” that blockchain technology is the financial infrastructure of 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, this is a corner of crypto that is often riddled with scams. Issuers can deposit large sums on themselves, promote the coin to drive the price skyrocketing, and then pull the rug out from under them.

“These celebrity-backed coins are scams and will go to zero pretty quickly. While everyone should be able to use any platform, these coins omit important information, are misleading and often violate securities laws,” Terrence Yang, chief executive of Swan, told Fortune.

But Azalea insists she’s not a carpet puller. She says she wants to find a long-term use for the piece and thinks the celebrity buzz offers the retail industry a way to engage with Solana. The two startups she co-founded – a contract-free phone data provider and a giveaway and crowdfunding site – will allow customers to pay with Mother Iggy coins. But his ultimate goal is to make Mother Iggy a stablecoin. “It would be like the Holy Grail,” she said.

But not every memecoin project has proven successful, suggesting that a large online following does not guarantee investors. Last week, Caitlyn Jenner ($JENNER) also hit out at Solana. It has, however, been cast in Azalea’s shadow, reaching a market cap of less than $10 million, growing just 7% over the past week.

In the realm of critical memecoin theory, Azalea offers two pillars of success. The first is the willingness to engage with the crypto community where it is located. In his case, this involved creating a Telegram channel a few days after the negotiation. The second is the playfulness – cut to Azalea’s provocative memes – and exploitation of crypto’s trolling culture.

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

Another obstacle celebrities may face is regulations. Malekan argues that unlike Bitcoin or Ether, memecoins should be treated legally as a game of chance, “otherwise it will be very easy for celebrities to abuse their own namecoin and treat it as a money grab.” money,” he adds. He wants issuers to be transparent about the amount they have retained and the high risk of volatility.

But ultimately he sees the growth of memecoins, actions memesand gambling as an indicator of economic nihilism: “People feel like they have to take risks with their money to get ahead. »

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