Cryptocurrency creators are looking for viral moments to make a quick buck.
Crypto investors try to profit from Queen Elizabeth’s death
In the days following the Queen’s passing, more than 40 types of meme coins were minted, industry data and media reports show. These virtual forms of currency are often created by anonymous people with access to coin-creating websites – and an idea for a clever name. And they are notorious for wild swings in value.
That includes the Queen Elizabeth Inu coin, which largely honors her death and is built and available on various cryptocurrency platforms. The coin is currently priced around $0.000003, after a rise of almost 30,000 percent from where it started. There is also the Long Live the Queen, a coin that lost steam within hours of minting.
Experts said most of these coins are usually a joke or a scam rather than legitimate forms of payment – or even akin to gambling in the new decentralized world of the internet, known as web3.
“It’s no different from people selling T-shirts outside Buckingham Palace,” said David Hsiao, CEO of crypto magazine Block Journal. “This is the web3 version only.”
By most accounts, meme coinage originated around 2013, when a photo of a talking Shiba Inu puppy named Doge gained viral fame. A pair of software engineers released a themed digital currency called dogecoin, intending to satirize the cryptocurrency market.
But in 2021, as crypto gained mainstream acceptance, the sector began to flourish. Notable personalities, such as Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, coined meme currencies, such as dogecoin, online.
Some currencies, such as dogecoin and Shiba Inu, have endured and are accepted by Tesla and GameStop as payment. Most, like Space Kim – a token satirical of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un – are jokes and a risky investment with no tangible purpose.
Even bitcoin, a cryptocurrency that has been around for over a decade and is considered more mainstream, is subject to large fluctuations in value. And the sector is largely unregulated, leaving it open to fraud.
Meme currencies are often limited in value, with many going for less than a fraction of a penny. Their value has limited financial backing and is often based on the belief that “other people will buy it from you for more than you paid for it,” said crypto critic and web3 blogger Molly White.
“If it goes viral, that’s the best-case scenario because … people see it going up in price, and so they want to buy it,” she said. “It makes sense that people are basically just waiting for a topic that they think has some chance of going viral so they can capitalize on it.”
For coins like Queen Elizabeth Inu, the price swings can be sharp and fast. The coin began trading a few hours before her death was announced, when Buckingham Palace announced that she was ill. Shortly after her passing, the value of one coin was approximately $. 000185, according to crypto data site Dexscreener. As of Friday afternoon, the coin had fallen even closer to zero value.
But on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, where investors talk about the coin’s performance, some remain positive. “$50k is EASY with this coin! I think when the funeral comes, this coin will fetch $500,000, one person said. Another person was more direct: “The day of the funeral is coming. FILL THESE BAGS,” they said.
In recent days, the tone of the channel, which has close to 900 members, has changed.
“The queen and this symbol are dead,” one user wrote. “Let them rest in peace.” Others urge patience as the coin’s price falls in value: “Guys! Trust the process!”
Moderators for the Telegram channel did not return a request for comment.
“People who hold these tokens try to get other people to hold these tokens [and] think the symbol will go up for some reason,” White said. “It’s in [their] best intentions.”
Crypto entrepreneurs have also created a number of Queen-themed non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, including God Save the Queen, a commemorative token that features colorful cartoon drawings of the monarch holding a bitcoin-logo wand. NFTs are digital tokens that essentially act as internet land deeds that allow owners to claim digital art, music and photographs, and have similarly experienced wild swings in value.
Ethan McMahon, an economist for crypto research firm Chainalysis, said interest in web3 products linked to the Queen has received less interest than he expected. For example, NFT called RIP The Queen, which came out shortly after her death, had 1,817 people buy it on the first day, Chainalysis data showed. On Thursday morning it fell to one. This comes as transactions on leading NFT marketplaces hit historic lows.
Coins and NFTs related to the Queen don’t seem to have a specific purpose to them, beyond novelty, McMahon said. More importantly, there is less confidence in the broader cryptocurrency market than a year ago, when coin prices were soaring and the extra income from pandemic stimulus funds gave people more disposable income to spend on similar investments.
“People probably don’t have the highest conviction in crypto right now, and maybe don’t have the most expendable dollars or capital,” he said. “So things like this aren’t going to get the same amount of continued hype that they might have had about a year ago.”
Despite that, crypto critics, analysts and experts agree that the government needs to step in and regulate, especially given the recent scams. In November, the creators of the Squid Game memecoin let it rise in value over 11 days to $2,860 and then abandoned the project, driving the price down to near zero and walking away with $3.3 million in investors’ funds.
White, who writes the blog Web3 Is Going Just Great, said viral cryptocurrencies have significant consumer protection flaws.
“With these meme tokens and things like that, there’s no level of transparency or openness about who’s behind it, what their goals are, or who they even are,” she said. “If [creators] were to abscond with a token, there is no way to find out who they were, or track them down and pursue legal action.”
Hsiao, of Block Journal, agreed, but noted that the money that actors in bad faith swindle people from is often not enough to attract the attention of government regulators.
“It’s definitely a sweet spot for money grabbers,” he said.
