Crypto, India and Meme Coins

-Saee Pawar

Cryptocurrency is to millennials what gold is to boomers. It is the new trending form of investment, the asset garnering all the hype. I mean, the passion with which our generation defends cryptocurrency is overwhelming, isn’t it? No wonder, looking at how all the centralized systems hold power over us, people are bound to root for something as decentralized as blockchain and cryptocurrency.

India still does not seem to favor cryptocurrencies. But the co-founder of the Ethereum crypto network, Vitalik Buterin sure lent a helping hand through cryptos. So, there’s this Shiba Inu coin, popularly known as SHIB meme coin, which was created in August 2020 based on the Ethereum blockchain and was recently listed on major Indian Cryptocurrency exchanges. Now, 50% of its supply was apparently transferred to Vitalik Buterin’s public wallet when the coin was created in order to create an element of scarcity. He, in turn, donated $1 billion worth of these meme coins to India’s Crypto Covid-19 relief fund. And, this happens in the midst of India looking towards bringing legislation to ban cryptocurrencies. How ironic is that?!

There are people who look at crypto strictly as a form of exchange while there are others who have recognized it as means to make a quick buck out of the immense volatility that it provides. Thanks to these famous believers in Crypto like Elon Musk, these crypto assets have given returns higher than any other asset class.

It was bound to collapse though, when on May 12, Elon Musk announced that Tesla had suspended vehicle purchases using Bitcoin citing environmental reasons. Where was this concern for the environment hidden when he had announced barely four months ago that Tesla had bought $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin and would start accepting it as payment?

Let’s look at the meme crypto Dogecoin. It started as a joke in 2013 but it certainly isn’t a joke anymore. People cried when they missed out on the Doge rally in April when Twitter as well as the entire social media was flooded with ‘Dogecoin to the moon". This did not have any base. Unlike other cryptocurrencies, Dogecoin does not even serve any purpose. It was merely a means for the rich to exercise their ‘pump and dump’ strategy. Even after knowing this, there were people putting their money into such an obviously risky asset. Not going to lie, even I experienced major FOMO during these days.

Now again after all this, Elon Musk recently tweeted that he’s working with Doge developers to improve system transaction efficiency. I read this and I just burst out laughing. You know like one of those smiles thinking, “This man has no limit. Wonder what he is going to do next!” People were agitated, saying it is all a scam.

With all that is currently happening, it wouldn’t be wrong to call Elon Musk ‘The Harshad Mehta of Cryptocurrency’. People lost their faith in the Indian stock market after the 1992 scam. Blockchain and cryptocurrency are such useful and robust systems that could bring a lot of good change in the coming years. My only concern right now is that, with all this manipulation of a select few cryptocurrencies going on, I hope people don’t lose faith in the entire system which is capable of bringing on a completely new era.