As meme coins continue to win over the public’s hearts and wallets, analysts wrestle with their irreverent, often degenerate appeal.
Take $Luigi, a meme token inspired by Luigi Mangione, the lead suspect in the December 4 shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson. The coin soared to a $77 million market cap just two days after launching earlier this week, in what can only be read as a protest against Mangione’s arrest on 9 December.
Mangione has been cast as something of a hero for writing a manifesto against corporate greed and taking action in this ruthless hit-and-run shooting, which was recorded live and viewed by millions online.
In a depraved response, the Luigi coin was then launched by anonymous crypto traders, and immediately started trending on Raydium, the automated market maker built on Solana.
Hype-Coins Signal Public Sentiment
Meme coins often pop up in response to viral content, news or popular culture events, and their value can fluctuate wildly, reflecting public sentiment towards these topics.
While many are based on fairly innocuous memes, like dogs, cats and frogs, others are fueled by darker tropes, such as murder, suicide, cancer, or even swastikas.
The Luigi coin, for example, seems to draw its strength from the latent anger common people hold for corporate greed.
“As always, Solana meme coins are the best source of the news, as seen with the Luigi Mangione coin made minutes later,” said meme coin guru Burning Kitty on X.
The $Luigi meme coin continues to feed off the hype around the story, but like most news-based meme coins, it’s highly volatile and has dropped to $29 million at the time of writing.
Dark Energy Powers Meme Coins
Similarly, coins like Catslap engage the public’s secret desire to perhaps b*tchslap some powerful people, as featured in the $SLAP website.
These meme coins demonstrate that public anger can be funneled to send a token to the moon, but also, that acting on heated emotions may not be the best bet.
That’s because, the more charged the issue, the more volatile the value, as we have seen with $LUIGI falling as fast as it rose.
Meme tokens like $LUIGI lack the fundamental value and stability of traditional assets, making them highly volatile and risky investments, argues Alex Beene, Financial Literacy Instructor at University of Tennessee, in an interview with NewsWeek.
“Typically rises in the value of a meme coin pertaining to a viral story or trend aren’t this gruesome, not to mention centering on criminal activity. Even if the flurry of buying activity is being done more out of novelty for the moment than as a sign of support, it definitely doesn’t speak highly to some in the crypto community” Beene adds.
Analysts believe a wiser move, if you’re into irreverent meme coins, may be to look at something like Catslap ($SLAP). The token has seen a price surge of some 220% since listing on MEXC on December 6. This, following a 7,500% price gain since its launch on decentralized exchanges just two weeks ago.
Catslap is audited by SolidProof, has a 99% project reliability score on DEXtools, and 53% of its $6.8 million liquidity is locked on-chain for one month. So rug pulls are unlikely.
The token is also now one of the top swaps on crypto’s most-popular Ethereum wallet, Metamask. Liquidity looks deep at $6.5 million, and it’s locked for an extra six months to signal the team’s commitment to the project’s longevity.
You can buy $SLAP on MEXC, Best Wallet, directly via the exchange widget on the Catslap website and on Uniswap DEX. $SLAP is gunning for a $100 million market capitalization, so act fast if you want to slap with the top cats.
Read here for some of the other best meme coins to be looking at right now.
Disclaimer: As always, this is not financial advice, and it’s best to always DYOR (do you own research) before buying crypto.