#013 On MSCHF and Meme Coins
brand piggybacking, courting controversy and making you pay to get trolled
Meme coin – A meme coin is a cryptocurrency that originated from an internet meme or has some other humorous characteristic
MSCHF – MSCHF is an art and media company known for creating viral and controversial products and projects
As of June 2024, the top 5 meme coins have a combined market cap of over $50 billion.
To put that into perspective, the GDP of Jordan, a country with a population of 11.3 million is $48.65 billion (2022), that of Bolivia, a country with a population of 12.2 million is $44 billion (2022), and that of Bahrain, an oil rich nation with a population of 1.42 million is $44.3 billion (2022).
This means that over the course of their lifespan the 5 top contenders in joke-centric internet money have generated more economic value than the GDP of 97 out of 180 of the world's economies.
WTF.
In a similar vein of absurdity, 5 years ago MSCHF—a 10 (ish) member art collective operating out of Brooklyn, New York—sold their first product, a virus infected computer titled "The Persistence of Chaos", for $1.3 million on streaming platform Twitch.
Since this watershed moment, MSCHF have sold a microscopic Louis Vuitton handbag for $63,750, Birkenstocks made of sliced-up Hermes Birkins for $76,000 per pair, and 666 sets of AirMax sneakers each containing a drop of rapper Lil Nas X’s blood for $1,018 each.
WTF.
The next 3,000 words will unpack these archetypes of financial farce, looking into their history to examine why and how they work. It will argue that, even though one presents as a brand and the other a financial asset, the fundamental success of both meme coins and MSCHF stem from the same roots.
Are you sitting incredulously? Then I’ll begin.
A brief history of meme coins and MSCHF
To state the blatantly obvious, there would be no meme coins without memes.
Described by Know Your Meme founder Jamie Dubs as a ‘transmittable unit of culture,’ memes are analogous to genes: those that resonate live on, whilst those that lack cultural impact are quickly forgotten.
With this definition in mind, it should come as no surprise that the word ‘meme’ is credited to none other than evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.
In his book, The Selfish Gene, Dawkins claims that, ‘we need… a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation.’ So, pulling from the English ‘memory’, the French ‘même’ meaning ‘same’, and the Greek ‘mimoúmai’ meaning ‘to imitate’ he came up with the term ‘meme.’
But don’t let that fool you into thinking memes are a recent invention.
Many memeologists cite the Bible as the meme’s point of origin, framing the Old Testament as a network of cultural items conveyed with consistency across centuries. Indeed, if you compare two parables of temptation—the classic story of Adam and Eve, which is found in the creation myth of all Abrahamic religions, and the more contemporary Distracted Boyfriend meme, the most influential object naming meme of 2018 according to Slate—the similarities are evident.
The story of Adam and Eve has pervaded cultural consciousness for thousands of years as the archetypal parable of temptation. In the story, Eve, who is tempted by a serpent, eats the fruit from the forbidden tree resulting in her expulsion from the garden of Eden, and the wider fall of man.
As the explanation for original sin, the story of Adam and Eve serves as the bedrock of Christian doctrine. But in addition, the story also has a heavy presence in secular cultures across the realm of arts and literature. Look to Shakespeare or a Rolling Stones album and you’ll find the tale. It’s referenced with a breadth of seriousness in writing, from works of feminist theory to cosmo-esque pieces such as The Washington Post’s ‘10 Things Singles Can Learn From The Tale of Adam and Eve’ which sweeps years of heartbreak into informative morsels such as ‘heteronormative gender roles have been complicating expectations forever’ to help love-seekers better understand their plight through the parable’s lens.
A more modern take on temptation, the Distracted Boyfriend meme originated from a stock photo posted online in 2015 with the tags ‘Disloyal man with his girlfriend looking at another girl’ and remained underground until 2017 when it reemerged on Instagram with the caption ‘Tag That Friend Who Falls in Love Every Month.’
After receiving 28,500 likes in less than 30 days, Distracted Boyfriend blossomed. Today it can be seen across the internet, applied to all sorts of situations. It’s been recreated at Comicon, in The Museum of the Moving Image, and even in a campaign by a Hungarian family planning organization. Crucial, however, is that throughout its transformations the essence of Distracted Boyfriend, of ‘humorously depicting any situation where one thing is being prioritized (incorrectly) over another,’ remains intact.
A close look at Distracted Boyfriend and the story of Adam and Eve shows that while both have been open to a range of reinterpretations their core message remains unchanged. Reinterpretations do not dilute the potency of the original content, rather they drive more minds to the original, imbuing it with relevance and re-saturating it with meaning.
Which brings us onto meme coins
If memes are scripture, meme coins are disciples—courting crowds of Jehovah's witnesses vying for your involvement to save their souls.
Crypto investment firm 1Kx defines meme coins as ‘cryptocurrencies that originated from an internet meme or have some other humorous characteristic’, and traces their origins back to the first cryptocurrency cycle of 2009 – 2013.
Launched on December 8th 2013 by programmers Jason Palmer and Billy Markus, the first notable meme coin was Dogecoin—a cryptocurrency marked by a golden medallion embellished with a grinning Shiba Inu, currently trading at a market cap of $19.56 billion.
Dogecoin was based on the original Doge meme (much wow!) which gained popularity earlier in 2013 on forums like 4Chan and Reddit. Yet as internet IP alone, the only financial value that could be reaped from the meme was by sellers peddling an endless supply of Doge merch. That is until two nerds decided to try capitalizing on culture and created Dogecoin.
Today there are over 1,300 meme coins. Like Bitcoin and Ethereum they’re built on the blockchain. But, unlike their more reputable crypto counterparts, they do not come with idealistic teams or well-written whitepapers.
Rather than positing a future for finance, meme coins, as described by 1Kx, are ‘irreverent, humorous, ironic, use celebrities (Kanye West, Max Keiser), animals (Pandacoin), or try to capture a specific community.’ And, as Wired reporter Joe Khalili puts it, they ‘serve no purpose and promise no innovation.’
Whilst to the majority of the population this lack of grounding and endless volatility make meme coins investments not to be touched with a bargepole, to their traders—a group affectionately known as “degens”—herein lies all the fun.
Now for MSCHF
MSCHF was founded in 2016 by Gabriel Whaley, an ex Buzzfeed employee who seeded the project by charging $1 for bad advice on Twitter.
As previously mentioned, MSCHF does not consider itself a company but rather a collective that sees its success stem from the diversity of its members, as well as its understanding of how to garner attention online.
Key to MSCHF’s secret sauce is that it is purpose driven and product agnostic. Whilst each of its 103 drops differ entirely in form and function, what stays consistent is a focus on the mechanics of scale and the formulas behind virality.
From selling luxury shopping bags with no product, to giving anyone the opportunity to ‘eat like an influencer’, to date MSCHF’s drops have spanned:
Art – in 2020 they released ‘Severed Spots’ #20 a project selling a sliced up Damien Hirst Spot Painting for $480 per spot (edition of 88) – Finance – their drop Pyramid Chat’ #93 saw a site where visitors paid $8 to join, but then made $5 for every person they got to sign up – Law – MSCHF X Famous Mouse’ #53 allowed consumers to buy a part of the rights to a ‘famous mouse’ (hint: rhymes with Hickey) with the pitch that in 2024 the IP trademark around said mouse would expire (allowing all holders to own part of the mouse!) – Fashion – last month the group released Global Supply Chain Telephone #97 where luxury “it bags” from Dior, Balenciaga, Celine and Hermes were merged to create a $675 luxury it-bag Frankenstein - Politics – ‘Guns To Swords’ #54 invited gun owners to send in their gun to be melted down and transformed into a sword in a novel interpretation on the gun buyback program – Toys – Dead Startup Toys’ #50 saw a collection of miniature "toy" versions of 5 failed products like the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) rugged laptop, the Theranos miniLab, Jibo the social robot, and the Coolest Cooler which could be bought for $40 each – Cosmetics – Ketchup or makeup #83 was a set of 6 packets which contained either ketchup or lipgloss with the buyer subject to the luck of the draw – Food and beverage – Big Fruit Loop #87 offered a single large fruit loop (the size of a cereal box) to breakfast eaters – Film and television – The Office Slack #21 saw every episode of The Office recreated in Slack and available to view for free – And just plain absurdity – Eat the Rich Popsicles #81 let consumers munch on the heads of Jeff Besos, Jack Ma, Elon Musk, or Mark Zuckerberg.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Whilst some might think MSCHF’s repertoire reflects the basic-bitch-multi-hyphenates which characterize our 21st century culture (all my model/DJ/ actor friends, this one’s for you!), the collective actually operates under a set of rules that bind it to consistency:
Rule one is that a new drop comes out every 2 weeks. This is to assure that nothing is sacred and keeps drops in an MVP form.
Rule two is that all these drops must be planned in advance. On a recent Business of HYPE podcast, MSCHF members Lukas Bentel and Kevin Weisner alluded to the fact that MSCHF is currently operating with a 1 year backlog. Thus, whilst each drop seems like a timely response to the cultural climate, they are in fact ideas that have stayed resonant and exciting to the team in a way that is (somewhat) durable.
SO WHAT(TF)?
Whilst MSCHF has been hailed as enigmatic, on closer inspection, the collective has a lot in common with a UK-based software engineer who goes by the name of Lydia Lane.
Fed up with extensive “rugging” (crypto slang for having your money stolen), in 2021 Lydia decided to create her own coin. Tastefully titled “CumRocket”, the coin skyrocketed to a market cap of $240 million in 2023 with a little help from Elon.
Speaking to Wired, Lydia attributed her success to leveraging storytelling and controversy to inspire collective action. These attributes can be seen across all successful meme coins today. And, glancing back to MSCHF, I’d go as far as to argue the same factors are at play.
MSCHF’s drops rely on mass online participation (through sharing, purchasing or playing), generated through excessive storytelling (with a per-drop manifesto alongside their own magazine) and by courting controversy. In the case of both meme coins and MSCHF, if leveraged successfully, these factors result in a large group of people paying to get trolled.
To further explore:
Value derived from collective action – MSCHF’s creative director, Kevin Wiesner, defines MSCHF as a mediated performance art practice.
Rather than creating products, according to Wiesner, the collective creates ‘scenarios for the world which then get played out by large groups of people’.
Take Key4All #84 as an example. For the drop, the collective sold 5,000 keys all of which opened a single car parked somewhere in the US. If you purchased a key, for a mere $19, you could unlock and drive the car. But so could any one of the other 4,999 keyholders. Tips as to the car’s whereabouts were provided by a MSCHF managed 24-hour hotline, meaning that whoever had the car in their possession ran the risk of losing it. As the drop’s tagline claimed: ‘IF YOU FIND IT, YOU CAN DRIVE IT! BUT SO CAN ANYONE ELSE WITH A KEY’.
According to Kevin, MSCHF was fully aware of the risk that Key4All could totally flop. The car could have been stripped for parts by the initial keyholder before the other 4,999 even had a shot. But, instead what ensued was a gripping journey, driven (literally) by the crowd. Where the car was taken from New York to California, touring around the Southwest and Vegas until, after 9 months, the engine finally burnt out.
In the case of Key4All, rather than selling a finished product, MSCHF provided the tools for a social experiment, where the success or failure of the piece was determined entirely by collective engagement.
This same dynamic applies to meme coins.
Much like stocks and shares, the success of a meme coin hinges on collective action spurred by resonance. When people buy a coin, it’s because they 1) appreciate the meme attached to the asset or 2) believe others will, leading its price to go up.
Unlike their publicly traded counterparts, meme coins are entirely delinked from reputable companies. They have no earnings calls, no quarterly reports, just considerations of whether people find dogwifhat funny, as well as the fervent hope that the meme (or its coin) will be blessed with a celebrity tweet.Success through storytelling – The MSCHF gang are phenomenal storytellers. Just read any one of their eloquent manifestos. Those who act as the meme lords’ sovereign wealth funds are forced to imbue the same flourish into their work. With one important caveat. Rather than inventing stories of their own, meme lords piggyback off the success of existing lore—be it that of a meme, brand or celebrity—and carry over their clout.
Take Apu Coin as an example. The financialised tribute to Apu Apustaja—a variation of Pepe the Frog which was hailed as the #1 meme across the internet in 2015.
Currently trading with a market cap of $250 million, Apu Coin’s founders began the coin around the tenets of the frog meme (a newcomer in the dog-heavy world of coin protagonists), and gathered a community with the help of Discord, Reddit and 4Chan. Soon after its inception the community embarked on a mission of deep and sustained world building around the coin, digging into Apu’s Lore to bring the coin value in novel ways.
Today, Apu Coin boasts an Apu game as well as a Book of Lore with over 30 chapters to enrich the Apu Apustaja experience. Each variation of Apu’s narrative deepens the community's connection to Apu and the stickiness of his existence which in turn leads the value of Apu Coin to rise.
Crucial to note here is that unlike CumRocket, where Lane created lore from nothing, it's been shown that building coins around existing memes (incl. brands or celebrity figures) which are already lore-loaded is a far quicker way to reach the top.
Of the current leading meme coins, 4 out of 5 are interpretations of the leading Doge meme and the other is an interpretation of the original Pepe, one of the most famous memes in existence.
Whilst some MSCHF drops hold originality of concept, many use this same strategy of piggybacking to accelerate success. Take the Big Red Boots as an example. Hitting the scene in February 2023, the foam filled clompers, became an instant hit with celebrities like Ciara and Lil Wayne. They sold out at a price of $350 despite being ni-unwalkable.
Pop star Chiara MSCHF’s Big Red Boots
In the case of the boots, whilst virality stemmed from their unadulterated ridiculousness, the design was inspired by popular comic book characters such as Astro Boy and The Smurphs. These references rooted the clownish shoes in childhood memories and immediately deepened the boots’ appeal past the bounds of silliness and into a nostalgic narrative with a far deeper resonance.Controversy as commercial – To date, MSCHF has been sued by some of the world’s largest corporations, with Nike (settled) and Vans (ongoing) being two of the most notable. However, instead of avoiding such controversy, the collective actively courts it, most notably through their drop Cease & Desist Grand Prix’ #68. For the drop the collective encouraged consumers to buy a shirt illegally displaying the logo of 8 major companies – Subway, Coca Cola, Microsoft, Tesla, Walmart, Amazon, Starbucks and Disney – and waited to see who sued first (in this case Subway won).
This same tactic can be seen in the meme coin sphere, where the controversy surrounding a coin can be seen as a thing to be hankered after (as long as the regulatory clamp remains loose enough to facilitate trading).
Returning to the CumRocket tale. Alongside choosing an inciting name, the founder recounts in that same Wired article how she posted a video of herself pitching the new token to online image board/ notorious cesspit 4Chan, in order to ‘anger the incels’ and generate hype at the coin’s time of launch.
The well known trope, ‘all publicity is good publicity’ resounds in both these cases, as each lawsuit/ comment thread bolsters awareness around the product. As well as attracting those ‘cool hunting’ anarchists seeking to invest in their capitalist-anti-capitalist bad boy personas.Making you pay to get trolled – dogwifhat is currently the 4th most popular meme coin trading according to Coinmarketcap. Head over to its website and you find the text:
‘WIF ISN'T LITERALLY JUST A DOG WIF A HAT; IT'S A SYMBOL OF PROGRESS, FOR FUTURISTIC TRANSACTIONS, A BEACON FOR THOSE WHO THINK AHEAD. IT'S CLEAR THAT THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO EMBRACE INNOVATIONS LIKE WIF, TRANSCENDING BOUNDARIES & PAVING A NEW ERA IN FINANCE AND TECHNOLOGY.’
Navigate the page for 23 seconds and each word in that sentence is slowly crossed out until only the text:‘LITERALLY JUST A DOG WIF A HAT’remains. At time of writing dogwifhat coin has a market cap of $3 billion.
Crucial to meme coin culture is the concept of being a “degen” (individual who makes high risk purchases) and “aping in” (rapidly investing in a new or trending cryptocurrency without conducting in-depth research or due diligence). The culture is bonded by the tenets of financial frivolity, and making stupid decisions in order to see if your “bags” (investments) will go “to the moon” (soar in value).
So too with MSCHF, where releases courting financial farce are too numerous to count.
Their Miami Art Basel installation, ATM Leaderboard (2022) took the form of a cash machine which displayed a user’s account balance on a public leaderboard for anyone to see. Similarly, their AC1 sneakers take the form of hospital boots, with ‘help I broke my foot’ as the on-box tagline. They sold out at $450 per ridiculous boot (full disclosure, I personally own a pair).
In both these cases the flex is, in part, the acknowledgment of spending money unwisely. In participating in something that you know makes you look like an idiot you become part of a community of “cool fools.”, wantonly waggling your middle fingers at the concept of ‘quiet luxury’ and ‘retirement funds’ in unison.
Sell out and be stupid (digital fashion tips & tricks)
Both MSCHF and meme coins are symptomatic of the current state of culture. Both are markers of our fomo-fueled, fast fashion-filled, obsession with attention. An age marked by see-now-act-now products and a craving for virality at any cost.
As another internet inspired medium, digital fashion can learn alot from what makes MSCHF and meme coins tick. As the fastest means of fashion production it holds a unique ability to respond to trends, and can be immediately improved in response to (social media driven) insights.
Equally, in not abiding by the laws of materiality, digital fashion can create clothes that scroll-stop with their absurdity. However, integral to keep in mind, is that without a story underlying it, digital fashion won’t stick. Only by taking a leaf out of MSCHF/meme coins’ book and ensuring each piece possesses narrative longevity will digital clothes stand the test of time. Otherwise, like the majority of memes themselves, they’ll shrink into obsolescence before you can refresh your browser.
This Outfit Does Not Exist is a bi-monthly newsletter on the future of imaginary clothing. Love it? hate it? don’t understand it?