Uncovering and explaining how our digital world is changing — and changing us.
My first Covid-19 vaccine shot came with a dose of cryptocurrency advice. The guy administering my jab in the back room of a small clinic on Coney Island told me he was buying dogecoin, the canine-inspired meme coin whose price swings wildly in part because of Elon Musk’s tweets. He suggested I buy some, too.
We are in the age of investing by meme. Some people are tossing tons of money into a stock or a coin not because they believe there’s something significantly different about the underlying value of the asset but because it got popular on the internet, and they think it’s funny, cool, or just something to do. They buy into the hype generated on platforms like Reddit and TikTok and join in. Crypto is the epitome of all of this — as well as all the disarray and confusion that entails.