2021 was a weird year. One of the emerging narratives that seemed to pop up were power to the people and David vs Goliath like events. All these events had something in common, they were meme driven narratives. Attention is the currency of the internet, and memes are one of the best way to gain attention.
Part 1 — GameStop
The GameStop saga was just the beginning. Redditors vs Hedge funds. A movement that was started by u/DeepFuckingValue posting monthly to daily updates. People joined in, followed by a lot of diamond hands, rocket emojis and apes together strong comments.
Robinhood steps in and restricts buying of GME and SEC investigations follow which can be summed up by the below chart.
Part 2 — Constitution Dao
In November, Sotheby’s decided to auction off one of the thirteen official copies of the US Constitution.
People started making jokes about banding together and buying the constitution. What started off as a meme, eventually turned into reality as ConstitutionDAO raised $47 million to make a bid.
Unfortunately, the winner ended up being billionaire Kenneth Griffin, who only bought it, well, because his son told him so.
Part 3 — Congress and Mongoose Coin
At the crypto hearing, representative Brad Sherman had this interesting thesis:
Again, the internet decided to meme it into reality and the coins he mentioned pumped.
Maybe Brad’s slowly coming around too.
If we’re keeping score, it looks like in 2021 the score was 2–1 to the little internet guys. Let’s hope 2022 gets weirder.