By Reza Jafery
5 min read
The cryptocurrency industry is a diverse place, encompassing everything from serious projects with lofty goals like “banking the unbanked” to light-hearted and sometimes satirical meme coins.
Meme coins have been around since Dogecoin, but have captured increasing attention as the industry matures. One of the latest developments in the space is PolitiFi—meme coins that offer a unique blend of political satire and financial nihilism.
If one were to wax poetic, one might say that PolitiFi is a social experiment depicting current political climates and the public's opinion of them. Alternatively, people just like to gamble, and PolitiFi coins offer another way to wager on unfolding current events.
PolitiFi coins are a subset of meme coins that draw inspiration from political figures, events, and ideologies.
They’re often satirical: popular PolitiFi meme coins include Doland Tremp (TREMP) and Kamala Horris (KAMA). Both are misspelled variations of the 2024 U.S. election candidates inspired by the Spoderman meme—a Microsoft Paint character that appeared in a series of online comics.
PolitiFi coins can feature anything from caricatures of politicians to parodies of political slogans. The core idea is to blend political commentary with a speculative asset, creating tokens for people to speculate on based on what’s going on in politics at any given time.
Often tied to a specific individual in politics, PolitiFi coins also pop up in response to current events. For example, following an assassination attempt on Donald Trump during a rally in 2024, hundreds of meme coins referencing the event sprang up within minutes.
Much like other meme coins, PolitiFi coins are often created on Ethereum or Solana, where the majority of meme coin volume tends to be. Their value is purely speculative, driven by community interest, meme culture, current events, and the whims of social media trends.
For example, following Donald Trump's conviction on 34 felony charges, Trump-themed meme coins such as MAGA plunged in value, while they surged in the aftermath of his pro-crypto speech at the Libertarian National Convention.
Despite their humorous origins, these coins can sometimes reach significant market capitalizations, driven by the virality of their associated memes.
Several PolitiFi coins have captured the attention of the crypto community. As the U.S. tends to get the most attention around its elections, PolitiFi coins tend to focus on U.S. politicians. Here are some of the more notable examples:
PolitiFi itself has proven to be a growing narrative in the meme coin space, with some of its larger coins boasting market capitalizations in the tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars.
For some degens, they’re effectively another way to gamble on unfolding political narratives, similar to prediction markets. For example, following Joe Biden's decision to drop out of the U.S. presidential race, the Kamala Harris-themed KAMA meme coin surged by over 120% prior to Biden's endorsing her candidacy.
That being said, a week is a long time in politics, as the saying goes. Politics is as rife with uncertainty and unexpected reversals as cryptocurrency itself, and meme coins in particular are highly volatile and tend to burn out quickly once the narrative moves on—so bear that in mind if you’re thinking of experimenting with PolitiFi coins.
The 2024 U.S. presidential election is the first major event that’s seen PolitiFi coins spun up around it, and whether interest in them outlasts the election itself remains to be seen.
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