The newest craze in cryptocurrency is the discharge of the $TRUMP and $MELANIA meme cash. Instantly upon issuance, the cryptocurrency cash surged in worth, turning nugatory 0s and 1s of pc code into tens of billions of {dollars}.
Many within the monetary media, alongside crypto devotees, declare these meme cash, and others like Fart Coin, DOGE Coin, and the aptly named Shit Coin, create wealth. Whereas they’ve made sizable earnings for numerous coin issuers and merchants, the quantity of {dollars} within the monetary system stays unchanged. The cash don’t create wealth; they switch it from consumers to sellers.
Extra importantly and never marketed by the pro-crypto bandwagon, our potential nationwide wealth suffers because the valuations of most cryptocurrencies develop. As a substitute of specializing in the glamor of prompt millionaires that meme cash create, we take a unique course: their influence on the economic system and the residents’ mixture wealth.
Earlier than increasing on these ideas, we share a quote from John Authers of Bloomberg regarding meme cash:
The extremely risky tokens haven’t any underlying property to again up their worth and no apparent sensible objective.
Crypto and Meme Coin Context
We begin this dialogue with some context to the quantity of capital tied up in meme cash and the broader cryptocurrency markets.
The desk beneath, courtesy of CoinGecko, reveals the ten largest cryptocurrencies by market cap. The second graph from TradingView estimates the overall worth of all cryptocurrencies is roughly $3.5 trillion.


The next desk, courtesy of CoinGecko, reveals the highest meme cash and their respective market caps. They sum as much as practically $90 billion. Moreover, CoinGecko estimates the overall worth of all meme cash as of January 21, 2025, was $123 billion.


Sorts Of Cryptocurrencies
Cryptocurrencies fall into 4 broad classes. Some cryptocurrencies, similar to meme cash, have completely no worth. Nonetheless, some do serve a objective. To assist higher respect the variations amongst these currencies, we share the next descriptions courtesy of the Company Finance Institute:
Fee- Bitcoin, maybe probably the most well-known cryptocurrency, was the primary profitable instance of a digital cost cryptocurrency. The aim of a cost cryptocurrency, because the title implies, is just not solely as a medium of change but additionally as a purely peer-to-peer digital money to facilitate transactions.
Tokens– are any cryptographic asset that runs on high of one other blockchain. Ethereum community was the primary to include the idea of permitting different crypto property to piggyback on its blockchain.
Stablecoins- are designed to supply a retailer of worth. They preserve their worth as a result of whereas they’re constructed on a blockchain, one of these cryptocurrency might be exchanged for a number of fiat currencies. So stablecoins are literally pegged to a bodily foreign money, mostly the US greenback or the Euro.
Central Financial institution Digital Currencies (CBDC)– CBDCs are issued by central banks in token type or with an digital file related to the foreign money and pegged to the home foreign money of the issuing nation or area.
Meme cash are a subset of the token class. These cash are sometimes impressed by jokes, social media fads, or, because the title implies, memes.
Wikipedia defines meme cash as follows:
A meme coin is a cryptocurrency that originated from an Web meme or has another humorous attribute. The time period is usually used interchangeably with the time period shitcoin, which usually refers to a cryptocurrency with little to no worth, authenticity, or utility.
Meme Cash Produce Damaging Worth
As we wrote within the prior part and Wikipedia affirms, meme cash have zero intrinsic worth and serve zero objective. Assigning they’ve zero worth is complimentary. Meme cash cut back wealth from society in mixture. We expect they’ve unfavourable inherent worth.
Meme cash and all different types of cryptocurrency don’t create {dollars}. {Dollars} are transferred into the crypto markets to purchase crypto property and typically transferred out upon promoting. As famous earlier, about $3.5 trillion is at present within the crypto markets.
The capital or “wealth” tied up in meme cash is cash not getting used for different functions. These functions entail many issues, from playing or holidays to productive funding or charity and billions of different productive and unproductive makes use of.

Much less Capital For Productive Ventures
We have now railed on the economic system’s rising debt-to-GDP ratio a number of occasions, proving that mixture debt has been unproductive. That isn’t debatable. If debt in mixture have been productive, the ratio would decline, no matter how a lot debt was employed.
For instance, the graph beneath reveals the greenback quantity of GDP development for five-year intervals and the corresponding greenback of debt development. Immediately, every new greenback of private and non-private debt buys 14 cents value of development. Earlier than 1981, every greenback of debt resulted in additional than a greenback of GDP development.

Unproductive debt isn’t the one wrongdoer behind slowing productiveness development. The misallocation of capital by way of meme cash has the identical undesirable impact.
What’s Productiveness?
Productiveness measures the leverage an economic system can generate from its two main inputs: labor and capital. With out productiveness, the financial development charge depends solely on the expansion of the 2 main inputs. The restricted nature of labor and capital naturally results in declining development charges over lengthy intervals if society neglects productiveness.
Leveraging labor and capital by productiveness supplies dynamism to an economic system. Sadly, productiveness requires work, time, funding, and sacrifice. It’s a perform of numerous components, together with innovation, training, authorities insurance policies, and monetary incentives.
The extra successfully or productively we use our assets, the extra financial development per unit of useful resource might be attained. Thus, extra wealth per capita might be generated.
Like unproductive debt, when a greenback is used to buy a meme coin or different cryptocurrency, that may be a greenback not used for productive means. Consequently, the $90 billion tied up in meme cash is just not being invested into most cancers analysis, job coaching, training, or AI innovation, to call a couple of productive makes use of.
Apart from giggle, do meme cash present advantages to society? If the reply isn’t any, meme cash provide instance of how unproductive capital impedes long-term financial development, instantly impacting the populace’s wealth.

Not All Tokens Are Unproductive
It’s necessary to notice that meme cash are tokens, however not all tokens are meme cash. Some tokens are productive. They’ll signify a bodily asset, contract, settlement, or service. In some instances, they make transacting and transferring possession extra environment friendly. Within the course of, they will make these property extra liquid.
For instance, tZERO, a three way partnership of Past and the Intercontinental Alternate Inc. (ICE), is growing the power to tokenize lodge rooms, sports activities groups, actual property, and lots of different property and providers. Resort rooms, for instance, are extremely illiquid property and practically inconceivable for many traders to personal. With tokens backing such property, they will grow to be extra liquid. Thus, capital can extra simply movement to such ventures. The power for capital to movement extra simply and cheaply makes mentioned property extra productive.
Abstract
If our nation is to proceed to prosper because it has for the final 250+ years, our deal with productiveness have to be extra of a precedence at the moment than at any time since America was a sleepy British outpost. Our assets are nonetheless huge however dwindling. We are going to stagnate if we proceed to forego investments in productiveness development and favor investing in memes and different unproductive ventures.
Meme cash are simply the tip of the iceberg representing unproductive makes use of of capital. We may write volumes on different examples. However given its present reputation, we use it to assist unfold the productiveness gospel as soon as once more.