6 OG memes. 1 brand new NFT. We’re seeing the rise of the meme economy on Foundation. @solidbadluck@idascreatures@steveibsen@realgrumpycat@keyboardcatreal@twerkypepe@blakeboston617
There will also be an auction of a new meme: a crossover between Twerky Pepe (a popular NFT creator) and the classic Nyan Cat. (Have you ever wanted to see thicc Nyan Cat? Now you can.)
The event is already under way, and so far the first meme, Bad Luck Brain, sold for just over $37,000. Coughing Cat is currently up for auction.
What’s an NFT?
NFTs allow you to buy and sell ownership of unique digital items and keep track of who owns them using the blockchain. NFT stands for “non-fungible token,” and it can technically contain anything digital, including drawings, animated GIFs, songs, or items in video games. An NFT can either be one-of-a-kind, like a real-life painting, or one copy of many, like trading cards, but the blockchain keeps track of who has ownership of the file.
Memes for sale
The creator of the Nyan Cat, Chris Torres, has organized an informal collection of meme originators the creators or original popularizers of meme images into a two-week-long auction of their works. Under the hashtag #memeconomy the creators of memes like Bad Luck Brian, Coughing Cat, Kitty Cat Dance, Scumbag Steve, Twerky Pepe and some others are finally finding a way to monetize the creation of genuine cultural phenomena that have been used freely for decades.
They’re mostly being hosted on booming new crypto art and collectibles platform Foundation, which launched in February and has already hosted $6 million in sales of over 1,000 NFTs. I have a lot to say about NFTs and can’t say them all here, but I found this project fascinating and wanted to note it. The fact is that memes are internet art (sorry). They are unique creations that took elements of participatory and performance art and injected them into the veins of the internet. In many ways, they have