Memes: The New Currency of Belief

A few decades ago, a joke could ruin your life. In some places, it could even get you killed. Today, a joke can become a financial product. It can raise millions for charity. It can mint a cryptocurrency. It can turn a cartoon cat into a half-million-dollar sale. The big change is not that people suddenly became funnier. The change is that the internet learned how to turn humor into coordination, and coordination into money.

When humor was treated like a weapon

Power has always been nervous about laughter. Not because jokes are “disrespectful,” but because jokes do something dangerous: they make fear look stupid. Once a crowd laughs, the spell breaks.

That is why regimes have often treated jokes like treason.

In Nazi Germany, criticizing the government was illegal, and even joking about Hitler could be treated as treachery. In the Stalin era, people could be sent to the Gulag for telling “an innocent joke” about a Communist Party official, according to GulagHistory.

Even in democracies, humor has carried risk when it hits sensitive nerves. The Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris killed 12 people at the satirical magazine’s office in January 2015. That is the most brutal reminder that satire is not “just comedy” to everyone. Sometimes it is taken as an attack.

So historically, humor was “expensive.” The cost was social exile, prison, violence, or worse. Jokes were whispered, not broadcast.

What changed: the internet turned jokes into systems

The modern meme is not just a funny picture. It is a simple machine.

1. It compresses an idea into something you can copy quickly.

2. It invites remixing, so other people do free creative work.

3. It signals belonging, so communities form around it.

4. It spreads fast, because platforms reward what gets reactions.

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That is why memes can move faster than essays, and sometimes faster than news. The meme is not only the message. It is the delivery method.

From laughter to liquidity

Now comes the weird part: once you can coordinate millions of people with a template, you can attach money to the template.

Dogecoin is the cleanest example. It was created in late 2013 by Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer as a joke, a satirical response to crypto hype. The Doge image itself came from Kabosu, the Shiba Inu whose photo became iconic, and her death in 2024 was covered globally because she had become a symbol bigger than the original meme.

Dogecoin shows how “value” can form from shared belief. Not belief in a company’s cashflow, but belief in a community, a vibe, a running joke that refuses to die. When enough people agree the symbol matters, the symbol starts behaving like an asset.

NFTs pushed the same idea into art and collectibles. Nyan Cat selling for 300 ETH (reported around $590,000 at the time) made headlines because the internet watched a meme jump from “copyable” to “ownable.” This is the new economy of culture: the joke is free, but the receipt can be sold.

“People’s conscience opening” and the meme as charity engine

Not every meme becomes a casino chip. Some become a donation machine.

The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge worked because it turned giving into a loop: do the act, nominate others, share the proof. The ALS Association says the challenge raised $115 million. That is conscience, yes, but it is also design. The meme made participation easy, public, and contagious.

This is the hopeful side of the meme age: humor can lower the barrier to caring. People who might ignore a formal campaign will join a playful one, and the money still reaches the cause.

The real story: attention got financial plumbing

So why does humor generate money now, when it used to generate punishment?

Because attention finally has plumbing.

• Platforms measure attention instantly (views, likes, shares).

• Communities form instantly (group chats, subreddits, fandoms).

• Payments move instantly (crypto, tips, merch, subscriptions).

• Speculation moves instantly (coins, NFTs, “meme stocks”).

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In older times, a joke could spread through a town. Today, it can spread through the planet before lunch. Once the joke reaches scale, money shows up, because money always follows coordinated crowds.

The warning label

Humor has not stopped being dangerous. It has just gained a second life as a financial instrument.

The same forces that let a meme raise $115 million can also let a meme harass someone at scale, or let propaganda wear a clown mask, or let a joke currency become a trap for people who can least afford losses.

We used to fear jokes because they could get a person punished by power. Now we also need to fear the opposite: jokes that get people to punish themselves, by buying hype, chasing status, and confusing community with safety.

The meme age did not make humor shallow. It made humor powerful. And power, as history keeps proving, always finds a way to turn into money.