Memecoins Get a Gen Z Boost as Promotion Moves to TikTok

Memecoins are getting an added boost of virality as promotion of these tokens has moved beyond simply Twitter and onto other social networks

Memecoins are getting an added boost of virality as promotion of these tokens has moved beyond Twitter and onto other social networks, notably TikTok, the video-based app with a huge following among Gen Z, or those born between 1997 and 2012.

Nowhere is this dynamic clearer than in the case of Chill Guy, a very popular meme on Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram that’s based on a dog cartoon and associated with the CHILLGUY cryptocurrency. The token was launched on Pump Fun two months ago, but has since seen exponential growth recently. The memecoin’s price has rocketed 251% in the last 24 hours and an astounding 482,270% in the past seven days, data from trading platform DexTools shows, although it has a liquidity level of just $4.7 million.

CHILLGUY had a market cap of $374 million at presstime, making it the seventh-largest memecoin generated by Solana-native memecoin factory Pump Fun, behind only PNUT, GOAT, FWOG, ACT, MOODENG, and ZEREBRO.

The CHILLGUY token’s meteoric rise in price and market cap coincides with the growing popularity of its associated meme across several social media networks, but especially TikTok. One TikTok created on Tuesday that already has more than 7,700 likes refers to, “When you buy the Chill Guy Token because… your (sic) just a Chill Guy trying to make some Money.” And a post on Twitter with 1.5 million impressions shared the meme with the caption, “When they tryna brokeshame u but you’re just a chill guy.”

when they tryna brokeshame u but you’re just a chill guy https://t.co/LyB2KplMB7 pic.twitter.com/6g01HxbWw4

— Satorini Satizzle (@vj_sato) November 20, 2024

Read More: Solana-Based Memecoin Generator Pump.Fun Shatters Adoption, Usage Records

TikTok’s growing relationship with memecoins adds more fuel to the latter since many of the people trading memecoins are members of Gen Z, noted Suki Yang, the founder of memecoin platform LMAO. “Twitter is [full of crypto] OGs– it’s a wealthy [group of] crypto people. But TikTok is real [normie] users…where coins can go viral,” Yang said. The China-based TikTok has more than one billion monthly active users worldwide.

Yang added that “I’m personally extremely bullish on the new business model of people creating culture, creating memecoins on TikTok, and financial[izing] that attention span.”

Similarly, Nicolai Søndergaard, a research analyst at blockchain analytics firm Nansen, discussed Gen Z’s crypto-friendly financial mindset in a research report published Monday. “Generation Z [was] raised during periods of economic instability, faced with rising living costs, and immersed in a digital-first environment [and so] many Gen Zers are adopting a mindset some describe as financial nihilism—a skepticism toward traditional financial systems and a focus on immediate outcomes over long-term planning,” Søndergaard wrote.

Søndergaard further told Unchained that “the recent success of the past couple of days in terms of TikTok as a media for new trends in crypto or new memecoins in crypto makes sense because the demographic [that] often uses TikTok and likewise the demographic [that’s] primarily investing in crypto and memecoins is Gen Z and millennials.”

Søndergaard added that it felt like TikTok has become the idea generator for memecoins since it has such a large user base. ”And then crypto Twitter [is] primarily taking the bits and pieces that they kind of want and running with it,” Søndergaard said.