What Were Meme Coins Selling? — A Reconfiguration of Belief | HashHub Research

*This article is reprinted with permission from HashHub Research on CoinPost. Author: Beranda Chilboy Date of writing: August 17, 2026

Series "Web3 You Can’t Ask Now" Episode 9

Table of Contents

1. The Day Dogs Became Money
2. 1. The Amount Moved by Jokes
3. 2. A Festival Without a Sacred Object
4. 3. What Was Being Bought Was an Incident
5. 4. The Festival of the Palm
6. 5. A Festival is a Festival Because It Ends
7. Conclusion ------ Only Jokes Were Honest
8. Appendix 1 ------ Whose Asset Was Boredom?
9. Appendix 2 ------ What Is the Market Hiding?
10. References
11. Data Sources

The Day Dogs Became Money {#sec-dog-money}

One Friday, dogs became money.

The first to notice was the bank. A notice appeared at the counter stating, "Identification is required for dog deposits," and by 10 AM, a consultation booth dedicated to buying and selling dogs was established.

News programs reported that dogs had risen by 12% compared to the previous day. The summoned experts stated that there was still room for dogs to rise further. Another expert suggested that the intrinsic value of dogs should be assessed calmly and went out to buy a dog.

Those who owned dogs claimed they had understood the value of dogs all along. Those who did not own dogs began searching for the next "dog" that would become money. Only one person expressed surprise that dogs had become money. That person was laughed at for not understanding the times.

Soon, frogs also became money. Dogs wearing hats, farts, and even the names of presidents became money.

What people questioned was not that these things had become money, but that no one knew what would become money next.

1. The Amount Moved by Jokes {#sec-joke}

What has been written so far is a fable. However, it is not an exaggeration. Reality is a bit worse.

Normally, this series would get stuck here. I would search for the unclear parts and write from there. However, this time, it did not get stuck.

It is not that it got stuck because it was unclear. It got stuck because it was too clear, and there were no clues. It was slippery. My fingers could not catch on anything.

A price tag was attached to a picture of a dog. A photo of a Shiba Inu with a slightly troubled expression. Created as a joke, bought as a joke, and yet, its market capitalization approached 10 trillion yen. The two who created it eventually distanced themselves from the industry. Still, the dog did not die.

The first dog ------ Dogecoin was born on Friday, December 6, 2013. The developers were two: Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer. They simply attached a popular meme image of a Shiba Inu and forked the source code of an existing cryptocurrency, changing a few parameters. According to Palmer, it was done in "a few hours." Both have repeatedly stated in later years that it was intended as a satire of the crypto industry's frenzy. A product created to mock finance was treated seriously as finance ------ that irony seemed unbearable for both. Palmer distanced himself from the industry early on and has since remained a critic of crypto. Markus did not build wealth with Dogecoin either and eventually left the project.

Still, the joke did not die. Rather, it grew fatter with each passing year. In 2021, every time Elon Musk mentioned Dogecoin on Twitter, the price moved by tens of percent. On the night Musk referred to himself as the "Dogefather" and hosted Saturday Night Live, the price fluctuated wildly during the live broadcast. The price of a financial product was determined by the timing of an individual’s statement ------ this scene was witnessed by investors around the world. The market capitalization once approached 10 trillion yen.

And now, jokes are being industrialized.

At the center is Solana ------ a chain born to accelerate decentralized networks, promoting cheaper transactions than Ethereum ------ and the issuance platform called Pump.fun. The mechanism used is bonding curves. The more buyers there are, the higher the price rises, and once a certain scale is reached, it is moved to a larger trading market. On Pump.fun, anyone can create tokens for free. Just enter a name, attach an image, and press a button. Just like that, from that moment, the token exists in the market, has a price, and is traded.

In the past, to create money, one had to be able to write code. One had to invent a consensus mechanism and nurture the myth that it would operate without breaking over time. Bitcoin and Ethereum were both launched that way. Pump.fun has completely eliminated that process. You don’t need to write code. No invention or myth is required. As long as you have a name and an image, anyone can issue money.

In a way, this is also a revolution. The most efficient implementation of the idea that "anyone can create money." The cutting-edge cleverness of just putting a price tag on a picture of a dog is present here.

This factory has begun to spread beyond Solana. In July 2026, the first market attention was drawn to a meme coin themed around cats, launched by Robinhood Chain, which started with tokenized stocks. The first to run through the new road laid for finance was also an animal.

It is not just the creators who have changed. The subjects have changed as well.

Having a face on money used to be something special. At least in many countries, including Japan and the United States, the figures depicted on banknotes are those recognized by the country as "great contributors." Politicians, thinkers, and literary figures. The mere act of having one’s face on money was an honor, and relatives took pride in it, while citizens learned the faces of their national heroes through banknotes. The decision of who to feature was a limited seat held by the state.

Meme coins have opened that seat. It does not have to be famous. It can be a civilian. It does not even have to be a person. It can be a god, a mere dog, or a frog, and still become money. Moreover, in Japan, there is a saying of eight million gods. Gods reside in mountains, tools, and beasts. If gods can reside in anything, it may not be surprising if prices can reside in anything as well.

On busy days, more than 20,000 tokens are issued in a single day. Most of them become worthless within a few hours to a few days. The ratio of tokens that "graduate" to larger exchanges ------ reaching a certain market capitalization ------ does not even reach 1-2%. More than 98% of jokes are dead from the moment they are thrown in. Still, issuance does not stop.

On January 17, 2025 ------ also a Friday ------ a TRUMP coin named after Donald Trump was launched on Solana. It was three days before the presidential inauguration. Within 24 hours of issuance, the future total valuation including all amounts to be issued (FDV) reached 27 billion dollars ------ about 4 trillion yen ------ marking the birth of one of the largest meme coins in history. The price was maintained until the inauguration, but it took less than a few weeks to lose most of its value afterward. A financial product named after the next president was born with the excitement of the inauguration and disappeared with that excitement. The content was, from the beginning, the incident itself.

The Japanese-speaking world is not unaffected by this frenzy. In Discord and paid communities, initial information is bought and sold, and Japanese passwords are exchanged on late-night timelines. YouTubers and influencers distribute "alpha information" ------ opportunities for early entry ------ and participants flock to the same token. Charts jump in minutes and collapse in minutes. The profits made there and the losses incurred are reinvested into the next meme within the same day. Capital circulates at the same speed as forgetfulness.

The boundary between fraud and festival cannot be simply drawn. Issuers selling off tokens they held in large quantities the moment the price rises ------ an act called "rug pull" ------ occurs routinely. However, many meme coins do not even have a white paper. There are no explicit promises. Even if the issuer sells off, it does not mean they have "broken a promise." They made no promises. Participants were not just deceived. They know somewhere that the festival has just ended. The boundary between fraud and merely ended festival cannot be drawn solely by whether a promise was broken. From the beginning, there were no explicit promises. The difficulty in drawing a line is embedded in the design of this product.

This can be dismissed with the single word "fraud." In fact, there are countless frauds mixed in. However, that alone does not suffice. Many of the bearers have a certain understanding of what they are buying. They entered knowing it was a festival that would end. Without an explicit promise, it becomes ambiguous what can be called betrayal.

In the last part of the previous episode on trustlessness, I wrote about seeing products that sold without any promises. What followed trustlessness was Promiseless products that require no promises.

Those who do not believe, knowing that they do not genuinely trust each other, still buy. Meme coins are financial products that expose this structure so blatantly.

What this article questions is not whether this is right or wrong, but what was being bought. There were price tags. Money moved. Therefore, something must have been sold. Yet, there is nothing on the shelves.

Before proceeding with that question, I must confess something. This morning, after waking up and before getting out of bed, I picked up my smartphone. With my thumb, I pulled down the screen. The news updated. The market conditions updated. Nothing had happened. The world remained as it was yesterday. Nothing new had turned into money. And I felt a bit disappointed.

I was disappointed that nothing had happened.

There was one person who laughed at the idea that a dog had become money. I cannot become that person.

2. The Festival Without a Deity

Festivals have a nominal purpose. Prayers for a good harvest, dispelling plagues, the descent of gods. Inside the portable shrine, the deity is enshrined, and the festival is supposed to be held for that deity.

I wrote "supposed to be." I recall the day I actually went to a festival. No one was talking about what was inside the portable shrine. Few participants knew what was enshrined within. The bearers shouted in unison, spectators were drawn by the sounds, and stalls lined the streets. The essence of the festival is not the deity. It is the crowd itself. A mass of people, raising the same heat at the same place and time. That is almost everything about the festival.

However, the deity was still needed. Without a nominal purpose, people have no excuse to gather. To raise the heat, there must be a formal target for that heat. It can be empty. But there must be a vessel.

Meme coins are a festival that has removed the effort to hide the emptiness of its contents from this vessel.

The portable shrine is being carried. The shouts are in unison. However, all bearers know that it is empty inside and do not hide that knowledge. They can throw away that portable shrine at any time. The person who bought the dog picture is the loudest to say that it has no meaning.

How strange this is. There are countless markets where speculation drives up prices, whether it be antiques or contemporary art. However, there, buyers never let go of the pretense that "it has value." Even if they secretly doubt it is junk, they do not voice it. Both sellers and buyers maintain the pretense, keeping the market alive. The moment that pretense collapses, the value collapses as well.

Meme coins have said they do not need that pretense. The buyers themselves acknowledge, laughing, that what they bought is junk. Still, the festival is established. Rather, because there is no need to investigate the contents, the portable shrine is as light as a feather. The festival has become fast, cheap, and frequent.

The correspondence is established. The portable shrine is the token. The shouts are the catchphrases "For sale!" and "Buy!" that line the timeline. The stalls are the exchanges. The festival schedule is the ups and downs of the charts. And the absence of the deity is the absence of the white paper.

However, there is a column that should be added to this correspondence table. Festivals always have stalls, organizers, and announcers. The meme coin festival also has people fulfilling the same roles.

Major exchanges claim to be neutral marketplaces. They advertise that they have undergone listing reviews and are progressing with regulatory compliance in each jurisdiction. They say they are not holding a festival. However, once they announce a new listing, the price fluctuates several times within minutes, and that volatility directly translates into transaction fees. They are not holding a festival. They simply issue an invoice for fees every time someone else holds a festival.

The announcers also do not think they are announcing. YouTubers, influencers, paid communities. Their banner is "education." Market perspectives, risk management. At the bottom of the screen, it scrolls "This is not investment advice." Next to that, viewers receive specific stocks and specific timings and act accordingly. The announcers say they are not announcing, and the viewers say they are not being instructed. No one says, "I hosted the festival," yet the festival is held regularly.

René Girard wrote that human desire is not one’s own. People do not desire the object itself. They desire what others desire. Desire draws a triangle that passes through others rather than a straight line connecting the object and oneself. By this logic, the object of desire can be anything extreme. As long as others desire it, it can be a pebble, a dog picture, or anything that becomes the target of desire.

This triangle is not limited to financial markets. Clothing is not chosen solely for the performance of the fabric. Academic credentials are not desired only for the content that can be learned there. New gadgets and bond drop seals become desirable through the gaze of others who want them. Desire does not arise from within the object. It is transferred from the people around.

Existing products and systems set up a signboard of reasons to buy before this triangle. For clothing, it is functionality and design; for academic credentials, it is proof of ability; for gadgets, it is performance. For financial products, stocks have performance, bonds have interest rates, and real estate has land. Because there is a signboard, even if one desires something because others desire it, one can believe that their desire is their own.

Meme coins do not set up that signboard. The reason to buy is that others are buying. That alone is presented boldly as the sole reason. Girard’s triangle is displayed on the screen in the form of a chart, stripped of all decoration.

Figure 1. The Triangle of Desire - A Market with a Signboard and a Market without One. Created by the author.

In the second installment of the series, I wrote that Ethereum is a temple without priests. It was a story about how, although I was supposed to remove the priests from the temple, the priests without names were still there. The meme coin festival goes in the opposite direction. No one has disappeared. The crowd has remained a crowd from the beginning, with no priests to hide and no doctrines to protect. In terms of the genealogy of temples, this is not corruption. It is the result of being too honest.

However, even the festival that has become too honest retains some dishonest aspects. I wrote that all bearers know "it is empty inside," but this is not entirely accurate. For the festival to continue expanding, there must be participants who do not know and come in later. Those who come in later enter with a vague belief that "this might be something real." Their funds benefit the bearers who are already inside. The festival operates in a two-layer structure of honest bearers and latecomers who have not yet realized. This transparent "honesty" only exists within the inner layer. For the outer layer, that "honesty" is not disclosed. Here, it has the same structure as existing financial markets.

Belief has not disappeared. Instead of believing in the value of the dog, people believed that the next buyer would appear. The place of faith has merely shifted from the deity to the next crowd.

3. What Was Being Bought Was an Event

Faith in the next buyer is directed towards the future. So, while paying money for an empty portable shrine and waiting for that future, what did people gain?

It is not just the possibility of price increases. From the moment money is paid, the time during which something is happening begins.

What the festival sells is not the deity. It is the extraordinary. Today becomes a day different from yesterday. A distinguishable day stands on the calendar.

Boredom is the absence of events. It is the inability to distinguish between yesterday and today. People are not seeking fun in boredom. They are seeking events. Something that separates today from yesterday. And to be an event, the content can be anything extreme. It does not even need to be good news. Just like how I felt disappointed in a world where nothing had happened this morning.

Roger Caillois divided human play into four types: competition, chance, simulation, and vertigo. In vertigo play, the pleasure comes not from winning or losing or role imitation, but from temporarily breaking the sense of balance itself. For example, roller coasters. Spinning games. They have no destination, and only the intoxication that can be felt by children exists. Just in that moment when the stability of perception is broken, all pleasure exists. By breaking the linear sense of time in daily life, it resets. The enthusiasm brought by the festival is also on this continuum. Dancing, drums, alcohol, crowds. Everything is a device for vertigo.

The chart of meme coins stands at the end of this genealogy. As I watch the fluctuating numbers, my sense of time breaks down. An hour feels long, a night feels short, and a week disappears. While glued to the market, the calendar of the day loses its meaning. From the outside, events seem to separate today from yesterday. However, for those inside, clocks and days melt away. The chart supplies the old functions of a festival with higher precision, at a lower cost, 24 hours a day.

All financial charts are machines for producing events. They distinguish between yesterday and today multiple times a day. If it goes up, it's an event; if it goes down, it's an event. Among them, the chart of meme coins is the most high-output device, providing events with a density that cannot be experienced with ordinary financial products, with fluctuations of dozens of times in an hour and becoming worthless overnight. There have not been many things in history that are so cheap and so easy as this dizzying amusement.

In the previous session, I posited that humans cannot endure making decisions continuously. In the last session on trustlessness, I wrote another assumption: humans cannot endure verifying continuously. This time, I present a third assumption.

Humans cannot endure a today that is the same as yesterday.

They cannot endure making decisions or verifying. They cannot endure sameness. When lined up and observed, they are strange creatures. However, few would dispute any of these items. They want to escape labor but also want to avoid boredom. Meme coins stand at the intersection of these two desires. There are no documents to read or theses to consider. There is no need to determine the basis of value or to verify it. Yet, events are supplied at the highest density. However, the eyes remain bound to the chart. To buy or sell, now or later— the cognitive load of considering meaning is minimal, while the power to distract attention is the maximum product. They want to escape from thinking about meaning but cannot detach from events. I know of no other product designed so precisely for this human contradiction.

I wrote that it was designed, but that is not accurate. No one designed it. Countless jokes were thrown in, and only those that fit this form survived. The market carved out the shape of humanity.

4. The Festival in the Palm of Your Hand

I wrote in the previous chapter that the chart is a machine for producing events. There are countless devices outside of finance that serve the same function. Rather, we have unwittingly placed ourselves in a state where we cannot spend a day without them.

In B.F. Skinner's behavioral experiments, when the number of times an animal must press a lever to receive food was made irregular, the pressing behavior became stronger and lasted longer. It might come out on the first press. It might not come out no matter how many times it is pressed. Because the reward cannot be predicted, one cannot leave. This is a type of intermittent reinforcement called a "variable ratio schedule." Slot machines mechanized this principle. They mostly miss. Occasionally, without warning, they hit. This keeps humans in front of machines to the point of losing their sense of time.

The same design is now lined up in the palm of our hands. Timelines, notifications, videos, market conditions. None of them reveal what will come next, and with a flick of a finger, one can jump to the next. Humans have contained Skinner's box in their palms and now pay their communication fees monthly. The true nature of what is lined up in their palms is placed in the appendix at the end.

The chart of meme coins is the most high-output device at the forefront of this array. It is not a special deviation. It is the pinnacle of a broad landscape of event economics. And its foothills extend to the daily lives of people who have never bought a picture of a dog.

The humans who created these things do not do so out of malice. In many cases, that is true. As a result of optimizing for "enhanced experiences," they happen to fit perfectly with the vulnerabilities of the human brain. Optimization is much more terrifying than malice. Malice has limits. Optimization has no limits.

5. The Festival Exists Because It Ends

Most meme coins will die.

This is not a defect. It is a specification. Events become mundane the moment they continue. A festival can remain a festival because it ends. If yesterday's meme does not die today, it cannot become an event. This market is a continuous series of festivals that omit memorials, where being forgotten fuels the next frenzy. No one remembers yesterday's dog's name. No one blames anyone for not remembering. Forgetting is even a virtue.

Mikhail Bakhtin analyzed the carnivals of medieval Europe and wrote this: The carnival is a time-space where the order of everyday life is temporarily overturned. Kings become beggars, the sacred becomes the profane, seriousness becomes laughter, hierarchies become horizontal; everything is turned upside down. However, the carnival must end. It must end. The temporary overturning is permitted on the premise that it will end. A permanent overturning is no longer a carnival; it is a revolution. The carnival is established only in conjunction with a return to the everyday.

What meme coins have updated is the speed of this back-and-forth. The back-and-forth between the everyday and the extraordinary, which once took the units of days and seasons, has been shortened to the unit of hours by the chart. Forgetting the previous festival becomes the entrance to the next festival.

Here, I will place a line I wrote in the third installment of this series as it is.

The product that did not sell salvation was the best-selling.

This was a line from when I wrote about the shadow of the dollar in the stablecoin installment. Stablecoins did not sell salvation— the narrative that enriches holders— but sold functionality. That is why they sold. Meme coins are beyond that. They do not sell salvation, nor do they sell functionality. What they sell is events. And events, by their very nature of disappearing, create demand for the next event. In this cycle, products continue to supply like a perpetual motion machine.

Returning to my story.

In the first chapter, I wrote about being disappointed in the morning when nothing happened. That disappointed self is a potential customer of this festival. Not buying meme coins is not due to ideology. It is merely because I happen to source "events" from other places— news, market conditions, work notifications. It is just a different source; the desired thing is the same. A today that is different from yesterday. If that can be obtained, the contents of the vessel honestly do not matter.

Yesterday, I consciously counted the number of times I opened my smartphone. The number of times with clear purposes— to check work emails, to confirm maps, to translate— could be counted on one hand. When including the other times— the moments I looked at the lock screen, and then checked the news, the timeline, the market conditions, and emails— it exceeded 100 times. In an average of 16 hours of being awake, my finger was directed at the screen about six times an hour. When asked what I was checking, I could not answer. I could only say I was checking to see if something was happening. The devices I wrote about in the previous chapter accurately supplied fragments of the next event each time.

Still, I worked. I conversed. I ate. I slept. Life continued uninterrupted within the event economy. When asked if humans who received "events" are happy, I cannot answer. I only know that my body knows it cannot endure without events. Dopamine this, reward circuit that... I think such explanations are accurate. However, even with an accurate explanation, my hand does not stop reaching for the smartphone first thing in the morning. I have never experienced the moment when an explanation stops my actions.

Humans are not strong enough to live without excitement. At least, I am not strong enough.

Having acknowledged that, I finally got stuck. I understand now why I did not get stuck at the beginning of writing. It was not because the subject was simple. It was because I am a customer. The structure of the store is best known by the customer. I just did not want to write what I know.

Conclusion—Only Jokes Were Honest

One can laugh at those who buy meme coins. They pay money for pictures of dogs and forget them the next day. It seems foolish.

People have deceived. Issuers sold out, and announcers insisted they did not announce. Only those who entered later believed this might be something real.

The one that did not deceive was the picture of the dog. It was not written that it had value. It was not written that it was a revolution or a future. Sold as a joke with a joke's face. The products seen in this series have, to some extent, displayed signs. Decentralized. Trustless. The revolution of ownership. Measuring the distance between the sign and the reality was the task of this series. Only meme coins have no distance to measure. The sign itself has been wearing a joke's face from the beginning.

What was believed was not value. It was only that someone would buy it at a higher price. Humans lie, and the dog did not lie.

The lightest product, being the ninth, was the most honest. This series will pause for a moment in front of this fact.

In the next installment, this series will conclude. I will rearrange the nine stories and go to verify what I have been writing.

Tomorrow morning, before I wake up and sit up, my finger will again reach for the screen. I will update the news. I will check the market conditions. I will be disappointed to find nothing happening. I will not buy the picture of the dog. I will not buy it, but I will accurately source events from other places. Just a different source, and the bottom of time will leak away the same.

Stuck, I will move forward.

Series "Web3: What You Can't Ask Now" Episode 9 / Planned for 10 episodes

Appendix 1 - Whose Asset Has Boredom Become? {#sec-appendix1}

In this article, I wrote about devices lined up in the palm of our hands. The term "attention economy" only partially explains what these devices do.

Scrolling down the SNS timeline, there are days filled with interesting posts and days with nothing at all. The red notification badge could indicate an important message or just an advertisement. Until you open it, you can't know. Because it's irregular, your fingers keep reaching for the screen.

The same goes for videos. YouTube prepares the next recommendation, and TikTok loads the next one before the previous one ends. Each episode on Netflix ends at a point where you can't help but continue watching. The uncertainty of what comes next combined with the ability to move on with a single finger action melts the contours of time.

The attention economy is described as an industry that gathers human attention and sells it to advertisers. This is correct. However, that alone leaves the question of why people voluntarily open these devices. People are not just being distracted. They are offering their attention to escape from moments of nothingness.

In the seconds spent waiting in line, the ten seconds waiting for the elevator, the few seconds of interrupted conversation, fingers reach for the screen during times when nothing would have happened before. What these devices fill is the void. What arrives instead are posts, notifications, news, price movements—fragments of events.

The learning mechanisms demonstrated by Skinner in the mid-20th century have been repeatedly implemented in devices designed to maximize dwell time, replay counts, and open rates. It wasn't just one malicious designer. The optimization aimed at improving numbers continued to choose forms that are addictive.

Humans opened these devices because they cannot tolerate boredom. The devices have reshaped humans into bodies that can no longer endure boredom. Demand calls forth products, and products deepen demand.

Boredom did not disappear. It became connected to the market. The void of time became advertising inventory. The devices did not eliminate boredom. They created humans who cannot tolerate boredom and sold those humans the next event.

Appendix 2 - What Does the Market Hide? {#sec-appendix2}

In this article, I only touched on the contours and passed by. Here, I will not pass by.

Figure 2. What the market hides. Created by the author.

First, the naked form of the existing market. Stocks have dividends and claims, and bonds have principal and interest payments. They are not the same as meme coins. However, when it comes to the point of what price they are bought at, the existing market is not immune to the desires of the crowd. Even if fundamentals exist, mimetic desires do not disappear from price formation. Meme coins have shown the naked form of price formation while keeping the signboard off.

Next, the non-hosting hosts. Exchanges say they are not holding festivals, announcers say they are not announcing, and viewers say they are not being directed. Yet mobilization occurs, prices move, and only fees arise. Everyone wears an innocent face, and everyone plays their role. Responsibility lands nowhere. It is designed not to land.

And then, Jean Baudrillard. What he saw in consumer society was that people do not buy only the use value of things. Clothes cover the body but also indicate who one is. Cars do not just provide mobility but also signify status. Products have symbolic value that shows differences from others, in addition to function and exchange value.

Meme coins also have pictures of dogs. Owning one does not mean owning a dog. It signifies being part of the crowd, being on the side that notices quickly, and being able to share jokes. What is being bought is not the image but the position assigned through that image. Up to this point, it can be discussed as symbolic consumption.

However, what Baudrillard later called simulation is even worse. Symbols do not represent reality; rather, symbols and models first determine human behavior, and as a result, reality begins to be created. In meme coins, the rising price becomes the reason to buy, and that buying further raises the price. Charts are not mirrors reflecting the market. They become scripts that attract the crowd.

The dog picture has references. Dogs, jokes, and internet culture. TRUMP coins also refer to people and political events. What lacks a reference is not the picture but the price. The prototype of the value that the price should refer to is nowhere to be found. What the price points to is only the next price.

Still, that price moves real money, generates news, and gathers crowds. Numbers that did not reflect reality create reality. Prices are not the result of value; they become the cause of appearing to have value. Symbols work more realistically than reality. This is the state Baudrillard called hyperreality.

In the end, the price becomes more real than the dog picture. The simulacrum is completed not when the fake looks real. It is completed when the very question of whether something is real or fake is overtaken by the movement of price. The dog did not lie. The price does not lie either. To lie, a reality to compare against is needed. The price has never had that from the beginning.

References {#sec-refs}

• René Girard, "The Phenomenology of Desire: The Falsehood of Romanticism and the Truth of the Romanesque" (1961)
• Jean Baudrillard, "The Myth and Structure of the Consumer Society" (1970)
• Jean Baudrillard, "Simulacra and Simulation" (1981)
• Roger Caillois, "Play and Man" (1958)
• Mikhail Bakhtin, "Francois Rabelais and the Popular Culture of the Middle Ages and Renaissance" (1965)
• B. F. Skinner, "Science and Human Behavior" (1953)

Data Sources {#sec-sources}

The facts dealt with in this article are based on the following. The numbers fluctuate, so they are all as of the time of viewing.

• Birth of Dogecoin (December 6, 2013, Billy Markus & Jackson Palmer): History of Dogecoin --- Dogecoin
• Peak market capitalization of Dogecoin (May 8, 2021, approximately $88.8 billion): Dogecoin's Market Capitalization History --- GlobalData
• Number of issues on Pump.fun (over 20,000 on busy days) and graduation rate (about 1-2%): Pump.fun --- Dune Analytics, Pump.fun Percent Graduated Tokens (Daily) --- The Block
• Fees for Pump.fun (token creation is free, 0.015 SOL when transitioning to PumpSwap): Pump.fun fees --- Pump.fun
• TRUMP coin (launched January 17, 2025, approximately $27 billion FDV in 24 hours, about 75% drop from peak in a few weeks): Official Trump --- CoinMarketCap, Trump's tariff threat sends crypto prices falling --- AP
• Launch of Robinhood Chain and the meme coin CASHCAT that gained attention early on: Did Robinhood Chain succeed? --- HashHub Research
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