“这是一种纯粹的赌博形式”：模因币的惊人繁荣

这是注意力经济的一个寓言。完全由社交媒体创造的名人“鹰图亚女孩”哈莉·韦尔奇 (Haliey Welch) 帮助推出了一种加密资产，该资产引发了病毒式的狂热，然后又熄灭了。

Social media star Haliey Welch, who became an internet sensation after her response to a racy interview question went viral earlier this year, has now been accused of scamming her followers with a cryptocurrency launch.

社交媒体明星哈莉·韦尔奇(Haliey Welch)今年早些时候对一个生动的采访问题的回答在网上疯传，引起了网络轰动，现在她被指控通过推出加密货币来欺骗她的追随者。

Welch, who is known as the “hawk tuah girl” because of her distinctive laugh, helped launch a memecoin called Hawk on Dec. 4. The coin was named after Welch’s catchphrase, which translates to “spirit of a hawk.”

韦尔奇因其独特的笑声而被称为“鹰图阿女孩”，她于 12 月 4 日帮助推出了一种名为 Hawk 的模因币。该货币以韦尔奇的口号命名，翻译过来就是“鹰的精神”。

But the launch quickly turned sour, with Welch’s critics accusing her team of selling off their Hawk coins and crashing the market. The memecoin was valued at US$490 million hours after it launched, but now has a market capitalization — the value of all Hawk coins in circulation — of US$17 million, according to CoinMarketCap, which monitors crypto prices.

但这次发行很快就变糟了，韦尔奇的批评者指责她的团队出售了他们的 Hawk 币并导致市场崩溃。根据监控加密货币价格的 CoinMarketCap 的数据，memecoin 推出后的估值为 4.9 亿美元，但现在的市值（所有流通中的 Hawk 币的价值）为 1700 万美元。

Welch, a Tennessee native, has denied the allegations, saying her team “hasn’t sold one token.” Her representatives have been contacted for further comment.

田纳西州人韦尔奇否认了这些指控，称她的团队“没有出售过任何代币”。我们已联系她的代表寻求进一步评论。

The furore has taken place amid a boom in memecoins, which were valued at about US$20 billion in their entirety at the beginning of the year but are now worth US$118 billion, according to CoinMarketCap. And they are flooding the market place in their thousands. At one point in November, the memecoin platform pump.fun launched 69,000 tokens in a day, according to data from the crypto analysis firm Dune.

据 CoinMarketCap 称，这场风潮发生在模因币的繁荣时期，年初模因币的总价值约为 200 亿美元，但现在价值 1180 亿美元。成千上万的人涌入市场。根据加密分析公司 Dune 的数据，memecoin 平台 Pump.fun 在 11 月的某个时刻一天内发行了 69,000 个代币。

Experts say memecoins, the latest darling in a crypto field whose true economic worth is endlessly queried, have no fundamental value.

专家表示，模因币是加密货币领域的最新宠儿，其真正的经济价值受到无休止的质疑，但它没有基本价值。

“It’s just a phrase attached to a digital coin. There is no value whatsoever,” says Carol Alexander, a professor of finance at the University of Sussex.

“这只是数字硬币上的一个短语。没有任何价值，”萨塞克斯大学金融学教授卡罗尔·亚历山大说。

Memecoins riff on two prominent features of the digital economy: memes and cryptocurrencies. The former is an online image or video clip that is endlessly tweaked and recycled on social media to capture the zeitgeist (think Moo Deng the hippo or, more timelessly, distracted boyfriend). A cryptocurrency is a digital asset built on top of a blockchain, a decentralized ledger that tracks the ownership of a cryptocurrency or other digital asset.

模因币体现了数字经济的两个突出特征：模因和加密货币。前者是在线图像或视频剪辑，在社交媒体上不断地调整和回收，以捕捉时代精神（想想河马 Moo Deng，或者更永恒的分心男友）。加密货币是一种建立在区块链之上的数字资产，区块链是一种追踪加密货币或其他数字资产所有权的去中心化账本。

Sam Baker, a UK-based memecoin trader, says a lot of the coins’ launches are based on Internet trends “you have never even heard of” and rely heavily on influencers to push them on a range of channels from Discord to X and Telegram.

英国 memecoin 交易商 Sam Baker 表示，许多代币的发布都是基于“你从未听说过”的互联网趋势，并严重依赖有影响力的人在从 Discord 到 X 和 Telegram 等一系列渠道上进行推广。

He acknowledges there is “no intrinsic value” in memecoins and there is no “rhyme or reason” to which ones will succeed. Recent launches include coins based on the new Squid Game series on Netflix and on the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.

他承认模因币“没有内在价值”，也没有成功的“规律或理由”。最近推出的硬币包括基于 Netflix 新《鱿鱼游戏》系列和叙利亚巴沙尔·阿萨德政权垮台的硬币。

“It is a pure form of gambling,” says Baker. “It is like buying a lottery ticket. But some of them are going to rise by 10,000 percent or 20,000 percent.”

“这是一种纯粹的赌博形式，”贝克说。 “这就像买彩票一样。但其中一些将会上涨 10,000% 或 20,000%。”

Memecoins, says Baker, are a merger of two digital economy cornerstones that span different eras of the online boom.

贝克表示，模因币是跨越网络繁荣不同时代的两个数字经济基石的合并。

“It’s monetizing people’s attention from social media,” he says. “It’s a crossover from Web 2.0, which is social media, to web 3.0, which is decentralized finance and crypto. Although they are bonkers, memecoins represent the modern monetization of the attention economy.”

“它利用社交媒体上人们的注意力来赚钱，”他说。 “这是从社交媒体 Web 2.0 到去中心化金融和加密货币 Web 3.0 的交叉。尽管它们很疯狂，但模因币代表了注意力经济的现代货币化。”

There is also a link with meme stocks, or shares in publicly listed companies that posted huge gains after being hyped on social media and bought by amateur investors. The classic example is GameStop, a struggling video games retailer that surged in value after a Reddit community piled into the stock.

这也与模因股票有关，即上市公司的股票在社交媒体上大肆宣传并被业余投资者购买后大幅上涨。典型的例子是 GameStop，这是一家陷入困境的视频游戏零售商，在 Reddit 社区大量买入该股票后，该公司的股价飙升。

The renewed popularity of memecoins can be traced to Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election, with the market doubling in value since his win. Trump is strongly associated with crypto, having pledged during his campaign to end the “persecution” of the industry. Bitcoin, the most valuable digital asset, has been the big beneficiary, with its value crossing $100,0000 for the first time a month after Trump’s win.

模因币的重新流行可以追溯到唐纳德·特朗普在美国总统选举中的胜利，自他获胜以来，市场价值翻了一番。特朗普与加密货币有着密切的联系，他在竞选期间承诺结束对该行业的“迫害”。最有价值的数字资产比特币成为最大受益者，特朗普获胜一个月后其价值首次突破10万美元。

Cryptocurrencies appeal to influential figures on America’s political right such as Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire, because they eschew the establishment by flying under the radar of regulators and having no underpinning from a central bank. Memecoins are also cheap for retail investors, with many of the tokens costing a fraction of a cent.

加密货币吸引了硅谷亿万富翁彼得·蒂尔等美国右翼政治人物的青睐，因为它们避开了监管机构的监视，也没有中央银行的支持，从而避开了当权派。 Memecoin 对于散户投资者来说也很便宜，许多代币的价格不到一美分。

Creating them is relatively simple, according to Alexander: just mint, say, US$4,000 worth of tokens on a blockchain (Solana is especially popular with memecoin creators) and advertise them across social media, with the hope of selling them at a profit. Once bought, they can also be traded on exchanges.

Alexander 表示，创建它们相对简单：只需在区块链上铸造价值 4,000 美元的代币（Solana 特别受 memecoin 创造者欢迎），然后在社交媒体上为它们做广告，希望通过出售它们来获利。一旦购买，它们也可以在交易所进行交易。

One of Trump’s key backers, Elon Musk, is a longtime supporter of the first ever memecoin, Dogecoin, based on a meme featuring a shiba inu dog.

特朗普的主要支持者之一埃隆·马斯克 (Elon Musk) 是有史以来第一个模因币 (Dogecoin) 的长期支持者，该币基于以柴犬为主题的模因。