The CEO of Avalanche () development firm Ava Labs says that he now understands the cultural significance of memecoins.
In a series of tweets on the social media platform X, Emin Gun Sirer memecoins do not have to be like other crypto assets that derive value from use cases.
According to Sirer, meme tokens have value because they serve a specific group of people who like to send social signals to others – similar to how luxury brands work.
“I now understand the cultural importance of coins that are just social signaling mechanisms, and I hope you do, too. A coin doesn’t need a roadmap to be legitimate. It doesn’t need moon math or future promises. It doesn’t need a bunch of techie pretenders who parrot random crypto ideas they read about online as the one big thing to finally solve scalability…
It can just be something you own because you like it, and it signals to the world that you’re in with your chosen in-crowd.
Does Balenciaga keep you warmer than other clothing? No. But does Balenciaga keep the ‘clothing space’ back? Also no. It serves its specific audience very well. Its existence as a clothing brand is a net positive.”
But while the Ava Labs chief says that meme tokens can find value even without a technical use case, he warns that investors should be careful when delving into the asset class because of their highly volatile nature.
“They are very volatile, and this is in a space where all assets are already quite volatile. Back in 2015, I used to direct students toward Doge just because it was fun (a talking dog! much wow!), cheap and easy to experiment with. Memecoins are valuable only as long as they are fun.”
Sirer’s statement after the Avalanche Foundation announced that it is accumulating memecoins for its Culture Catalyst initiative.
“The Avalanche Foundation intends to start using Culture Catalyst to recognize and encourage the culture and fun symbolized by meme coins by purchasing select Avalanche-based meme coins to create a collection.”
