If you thought crypto could not get any weirder, 2024 stared us straight in the face and said: “Hold my Blockchain.”
From memecoins funding cancer research to $6 million bananas, this year’s crypto activity ranged from the heartwarming to antics that were peak absurdity. A fever dream but with a market cap.
Let’s dive into the outright bonkers year crypto had in 2024.
‘Degens’ to the rescue
Who says memecoins have no utility? Yeah, this story is about the “good” crypto can do.
Siqi Chen, who was fundraising for his four-year-old daughter Mira’s cancer treatment, shared her story online.
Enter crypto “degens”, i.e. those in crypto who find new coins, invest, and get big gains. They launched $MIRA and sent half the supply to Siqi, who had planned to raise $300K.
Siqi’s holdings have since soared to around $18 million. And he’s already donated $1 million to Children’s Hospital Colorado.
Read more: Crypto’s big year: The laws, politics, and tech setting the stage for 2025
Justin Sun’s $6 million snack
You read that right: a banana taped to a wall sold for $6 million.
Sun, the Tron blockchain founder, bought it, ate it, and called it “a cultural phenomenon” that bridges memes, art, and crypto.
Critics, like a CoinDesk reporter who was witness to the banana gobbling, did not get it.
Neither did three of CoinDesk’s editors — who were fired soon after for publishing and then standing by a snarky article after Sun’s team allegedly complained about the tone.
A crypto drama peeled to perfection?
Spat on everyone
Did Hailey Welch, the viral sensation behind the Hawk Tuah meme, finally take it too far?
Welch, who went viral after phonetically imitating a sexual act, launched a memecoin reflecting her moment of fame.
Predictably, the HAWK (coin) collapsed soon after, but allegations of insider trading triggered legal action against her and others. Welch insists she is “fully cooperating” with lawyers but has not publicly named any collaborators yet.
I guess we found the point where memes and markets should stop mixing.
Read more: Trump’s crypto promises have Asia’s Gen Z hooked
A 13-year-old rug-puller
A middle schooler made $30k by creating, hyping, and rug-pulling a memecoin called Gen Z QUANT in eight minutes flat.
Investors, furious and vengeful, doxxed his family and pumped the coin’s market value to $70 million just to make the boy feel bad for cashing out too soon. Did it teach him a lesson?
No. The boy created more memecoins: sorry, test and (literally) dontbuy.
Spoiler alert: people still bought, and he made more money. $50,000 in all.
Read more: Trump’s crypto agenda has the world scrambling to catch up
Moo’s new dad
He’s the co-founder of Ethereum, the biggest blockchain in DeFi, and he adopted a pygmy hippo-turned-viral-meme-turned-memecoin.
Crypto OG Vitalik Buterin also threw in $300K for the zoo near Bangkok where the six-month-old lives. The market cap of the MOODENG memecoin, you ask? Only about $260 million.
If that was 2024, what 2025 brings may just simply be unimaginable. Expect the unexpected: coins named after houseplants, billion-dollar bets on cat videos, and maybe even a blockchain-powered reality TV show.
In crypto, the only constant is chaos.
Graphics by Alia Chughtai. Edited by Ankush Chibber. If you have any tips, ideas or feedback, please get in touch: talk-to-us@moniify.com
