In the end, money is worth whatever you believe it is. That’s been the case since the Bretton Woods system was abandoned in 1971, thus turning the U.S. dollar and others into “fiat” currencies; it’s even truer when it comes to cryptocurrency, specifically those “meme coins” that go up and down in value based on their viral popularity.
Two meme coins in particular have caught fire: TREMP and BODEN. The former is based on the “Doland Tremp” meme, which invokes former President Donald Trump, and the latter is based on the “Jeo Boden” meme for incumbent president Joe Biden.
Given the natural bias of the crypto market towards Republicans, you’d think the TREMP coin would be out-performing BODEN since their recent launch on the Raydium decentralized exchange (DEX), which lives on the Solana blockchain. But the truth may surprise you, once we dig deep and peel back the layers.
What Are Memes?
To better understand the nature of meme coins, you need to know about memes themselves. They’re everywhere these days, of course, but the concept of a “meme” as a viral phenomenon dates back to Richard Dawkins’s 1976 book The Selfish Gene, where he talked about something he would later call “Universal Darwinism.”
Memetics as a study would pick up in the 1990s, thanks to the work of Dawkins, Susan Blackmore, Daniel Dennett and Douglas Rushkoff among others. The general concept is this: Ideas are like viruses, burrowing their way into our national conversation under the guise of something benign, then mutating and spreading their real message through “cultural transmission.”
Then the internet came along. Now you can copy anything a zillion times and spread it across the globe within seconds – including silly pictures of dogs, like the Shiba Inu named Kabosu who became famous in 2013 through the “Doge” meme.
That December, the first “meme coin” was launched: Dogecoin, created by Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer as a rib on the speculative nature of cryptocurrencies. Backed by absolutely nothing, Dogecoin’s value shot up from almost zero to 57 cents in May 2021, and has once again risen from about eight cents in early February to 20 cents at press time.
What Is TREMP?
TREMP is one of the latest wave of “political finance” (PolitiFi, or PoliFi) meme coins, based on the Dolan meme that traces back to 2010; this meme was taken from a Finnish MS Paint webcomic series by the artist Sakolut featuring a poorly drawn version of Donald Duck.
The Doland Tremp meme led to the minting of TREMP on February 27-28 by a woman from the United Kingdom who works in tech marketing and goes by the initial B. She claims to be a Trump supporter and says she has stepped aside from her job to focus squarely on TREMP.
At press time, TREMP is priced at 85.95 cents, down from its peak of 97.93 cents on March 28. This is a highly volatile coin, as you might expect, but it now has a market cap of $86.42 million, with just over $11 million being traded over the past 24 hours.
mek solami gret agen pic.twitter.com/PbWWZfHFE4
— doland tremp (@dolandtremp_sol) April 6, 2024
What Is BODEN?
If you think that’s impressive, check this out: BODEN hit the market on March 9 and has grown by leaps and bounds, reaching a high of $1.0394 on Monday before settling to 86.63 cents at press time, with a market cap of $595.53 million.
We’re still looking into who exactly created the BODEN token, but word has it this coin is going viral because people in China are talking about it through the WeChat social media app. Having said that, BODEN and TREMP are based on similar PolitiFi memes from the “Spoderman Politicians” set, which includes Berik Obema and Elizabeth Whoren – but it’s the Boden-Tremp battle that everyone’s focused on right now.
Should I Buy TREMP or BODEN?
Maybe? Speculating in cryptocurrency is already fraught with peril as it is; meme coins are especially volatile, so if you’re going to invest, common sense would have you devote just a small fraction of your portfolio towards these tokens.
Newer investors in the crypto space are generally advised to stick with Bitcoin, or even Bitcoin ETFs, which give you a taste of the crypto experience without having to download a digital wallet or sign up for an account at a crypto exchange. But if you want to express your political self by buying some doggie coins, the world is your oyster. It’s only money, after all.
