When life gives you lemons, make an NFT meme out of it! This year has been a roller coaster ride for the whole Web3 industry with crypto falling, NFT volumes declining, firms going bankrupt, etc., etc. We’re really starting to wonder how the community has survived these eight months.
Although the crypto winter clouded almost all of 2022, NFT memes made surviving this bear market a little better. There’s something about memes that gives one a sense of belonging, and we all know the NFT industry is very community-centric, which makes memes even better and funnier.
Besides making memes for fun, some NFT memes are the latest trends in the space.
Although these are just light-hearted jokes, they hold a lot of significance in the modern world. Memes are made to laugh a little, but the NFT industry takes it to the next level.
To be precise, memes are now valuable digital assets to own for investors and collectors. As the NFT industry continues to grow, people are finding new ways to make money and give value to digital content; NFT meme is one of them.
Before NFTs, memes used to be simple pictures or video clips that made you laugh. But who thought memes would become a valuable digital asset in 2022?
Memes in the crypto community have become more than just digital content to share jokes, they are now turning every legendary meme into an NFT that anyone in the world can own. These digital assets are sold on the best NFT meme marketplaces of 2022.
What are NFT memes?
An NFT meme is basically a meme turned into an NFT that gives one person digital ownership over that meme. The meme itself is defined as something “funny or interesting content spread around on social media platforms.”
The memes began in the early 2010’s and hold some of the best moments of the internet that got us laughing until our stomachs hurt. All the legendary memes, pictures, and videos that have made it to the mainstream internet hold value since they represent a certain historical moment of the internet.
The first NFT meme to ever be minted on the marketplace was Nyan Cat, sold for a surprising amount of 600,000 dollars!
Seeing a meme turning into an expensive NFT motivated other people to try making money by selling their personal-owned memes, and guess what? All NFT memes are now sold out.
From bad luck Brian, side-eyeing Chloe, and Pakistan’s first NFT meme “Friendship Ended with MUDASIR”, to Harambe the Gorilla and Grumpy Cat, all now have an owner listed on the marketplace.
But before we dive into how NFT memes became a digital asset, let’s look at some of the best NFT memes that made our 2022:
Best NFT Memes 2022
As the NFT market continues to look bearish, the NFT space is making humor out of it by creating memes.
Like every year, 2022 also saw some of the greatest NFT memes that you might have missed, but we didn’t. So, here are some of our favorite personally picked memes of 2022:
- Crypto is tanking, welcome to part-time jobs
- Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse avatar
- A meme for the NFT newbies
- What in the world is a non-fungible token?
- Disappointed Fan meme turns into “DFans” NFT brand
- The dream of financial freedom
- The booming artist career
- Vitalik Bear costume meme
- Does anyone want your NFT?
- The struggles of NFT artists
- Online friends in NFT community
- Arguing with NFT antis
- Rich people buying Beeple NFTs
- The reality for every small investor
- Tom Brady’s short-term retirement
- The tax dilemma
- NFT Roadmaps meme
- A typo into a meme and then NFT
- NFT art museums
- The famous my parents vs. me in 30s NFT meme
- NFT rugpull meme
- Trying to socialize with your non-NFT friends
- Why you should buy an NFT
- Explaining NFT to your parents
- Save the NFTs!
- Everyone wants ETH low gas fee
- Right-click-save NFT meme
- Who thought NFTs were a good idea?
- Future dads
- WL struggles
- The Steve Aoki curse
Crypto is tanking, welcome to part-time jobs
Although this is not a meme, it is still a long-running joke in the crypto community. Since all the crypto billionaires are financially dependent on the crypto charts, once it goes down, they will have to return to doing part-time and corporate jobs.
Mcdonald’s social media team didn’t miss out on the chance to tweet that when the crypto crashed. They made a classic light joke by putting salt to the injury.
In response, the crypto community dissed them over ice cream machine repairs and also replied with some memes of their own like this one:
Here’s another meme for the crypto community:
Source: Twitter
Bear market traders defending their portfolios:
Source: Twitter
Source: Meta
Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse avatar
Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse avatar selfie is the highlight of 2022. All the marketing and dreams Zuckerberg showed narrowed down to a hideous-looking avatar.
Meta doesn’t seem to have really grasped the idea of the metaverse and how high-quality it is. Horizon Worlds has become a big disappointment to all of Meta’s supporters, and yet Zuckerberg doesn’t seem to let go of this project.
Of course, the NFT community couldn’t let this one go and made a meme out of it.
Related Articles
A meme for the NFT newbies
NFTs has brought many new investors and collectors to the marketplace. As a beginner, they are still in the phase of learning and are more prone to fall for scams. So, here are two best memes by veteran collectors that closely describe newbies:
Source: MadebyTio
NFT newbies make such bad and dumb decisions when it comes to trading that it has become an ongoing joke between veterans whenever a newbie does a funny mistake.
Here’s one about minting NFT:
Source: Crypto_Doge
What in the world is a non-fungible token?
Trying to understand NFTs or non-fungible tokens as normie is a big struggle because you will doodles worth hundreds of dollars and you question everything about this industry.
This NFT meme describes it well:
Source: wikapediaman
Disappointed Fan meme turns into “DFans” NFT brand
Remember the Disappointed cricket fan? That meme turned into an NFT project called DFans last year.
Sarim Akhtar, the man in the picture, announced he will be collaborating with Alter to drop his own NFT project for NFT enthusiasts, sports collectors, and fandom communities around the world.
In an interview, Akhtar explained, “DFans is inspired by my iconic pose from the original meme as my fans recognize me through that. There will be a lot of relatable iterations of my iconic pose as you can see in the initial artwork.”
Similarly, many memes have empowered creators or owners to explore millions of possibilities within the NFT industry. One of them are the NFT memes. The oldest memes that hold an iconic history on the internet are now worth thousands of dollars as an NFT.
Crazy times? We know!
The dream of financial freedom
NFTs has become a great source of investment that can pay you back faster than crypto trading. Every NFT investor dreams of becoming financially independent or having enough assets to enjoy the champagne in a private yacht. However, sometimes these dreams are just castles in the air.
Here’s a perfect NFT meme for the investors:
Source: Twitter
Source: No-Champion4867
The booming artist career
One thing NFTs have brought, it’s the hype train which has become a source of income for small and emerging artists to make a living.
Source: elcorette
Vitalik Bear costume meme
Although there’s nothing wrong with wearing a bear costume at a conference, especially when you’re rich and have no worries at hand. Vitalik Buterin wearing a bear costume at an event caught the internet’s attention.
The post is funnier when you know the context of the time it was posted. During the event, the crypto market experienced a small crypto crash causing panic among the investors, but the programmer seemed indifferent about it.
Does anyone want your NFT?
So many NFT artists have released 1/1 NFT collections but they come with a risk of whether they will be popular in the market or not.
Source:greenleafproject
The struggles of NFT artists
The NFT industry is booming in business with a lot of competition, making it hard for small artists to find their pitch. Here’s an NFT meme by tocip to make you feel better:
Online friends in NFT community
Who cares about social life in IRL, when you make friends online? You probably won’t meet them physically but still share a bond. This NFT meme portrays it:
Arguing with NFT antis
Everything is hard, but convincing an NFT anti is another level of difficulty. This NFT meme by Krallorddark on Reddit describes so well:
Rich people buying Beeple NFTs
Beeple is now the best-selling artist whose NFT sold for $69M. Since then, every Beeple NFT bid has become too expensive for a small investor to win. Although this is a win for Beeple, it is painful for his old fans. Here’s a meme that describes it well:
Source: xperience626
The reality for every small investor
Source: Unknown
How many times did you bet all the savings for that one NFT but were outbid ten times higher by a rich investor? Because we have simply lost count. This meme is the perfect representation of every small crypto investor in the world.
Tom Brady’s short-term retirement
You may have seen many celebrities dropping their own NFT projects, but you might have never seen someone drop off their career for an NFT startup, Tom Brady did it. The Super Bowl champion became a center of attention when he announced he was retiring from NFL to focus on his NFT startup called Autograph.
However, this retirement didn’t last too long because 40 days later, the 44-year-old football player announced he will be playing his 23rd season as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers QB. Tom eventually became a meme on the internet.
The tax dilemma
It’s that time of the year when everyone revisits their wallet and income statement after the huge tax payouts to see how much net income they made, which is barely dim, but that doesn’t stop the NFT community from making a meme out of it. We felt this meme on a spiritual level:
We don’t know about you, but we barely even have the bones left in our wallets with all those taxes.
NFT Roadmaps meme
With so many NFT collections dropping almost every month, it has become quite hard to know which one is authentic. Although investors always look closely at the creators, artists, and contributors involved with an NFT project, there’s no guarantee whether they will succeed or not.
NFT projects tend to show castles in the air but give nothing in the end, just like the beer foam in the above tweet that is all air and no beer.
Source: Pixelmon Twitter
The biggest example is Pixelmon, a company that raised $70M in funds but dropped an incomplete NFT called Kevin, who also became an NFT meme in the NFT community. Kevin became a source of edits for memes.
Source: Twitter/Reddit
A typo into a meme and then NFT
We all do typos when chatting with people. Sometimes those typos turn into an inside joke because it’s funny for no reason. The same thing happened when a chat member in the NFT community wrote “bagner” instead of “banger.”
Bagner turned into an NFT meme:
Source: Twitter
Source:Twitter
And guess what? The bagner NFT meme gave birth to the BagnerWTF NFT collection.
NFT art museums
NFT art is becoming more and more popular as people spend millions of dollars on a single digital piece of art. Here’s a comedic NFT meme of what future art museums are gonna look like:
https://www.reddit.com/user/Goblins_from_Mars/
The famous my parents vs. me in 30s NFT meme
Azuki Zagabond rugpull meme
Even with the most convincing roadmaps and whitepapers, some NFT projects turn out to be rugpulls. The recent scandal of Azuki’s founder Zagabond being involved with Rugpull projects angered the NFT community but that didn’t stop them from posting an NFT meme about it:
Trying to socialize with your non-NFT friends
Do you have friends who don’t know about NFTs or don’t care about them at all, here’s an NFT meme to describe you striking up conversations with them:
Source: Reddit
Why you should buy an NFT
In today’s discussion of why you should buy an NFT instead of spending money on doing a degree. Here’s an NFT meme comparison chart for defense:
Explaining NFT to your parents
Adam Sack’s NFT meme perfectly impersonates us trying to explain NFTs to our parents.
Don’t try too hard or you will probably get scolded for wasting money on buying NFTs (personal experience).
Save the NFTs!
Everyone wants ETH low gas fee
The high transaction gas fee has everyone on their knees. Ethereum The Merge please come sooner
Right-click-save NFT meme
The most classic meme and the funniest of all is the right-click-save NFT meme. People who don’t like NFTs or do not understand the concept of NFTs are most likely to say this.
“Why should I pay for this JPEG image when I can just right-click and save it for free.”
Instead of taking offense to these comments, they simply laugh it off or ignore it because it sounds ridiculous to argue with people who don’t want to understand it.
But NFT artists do take it as an offense for people not paying and saving NFTs without permission:
This is an old but classic NFT meme to describe the NFT community.
Who thought NFTs were a good idea?
It always starts with a “let’s try it” but ends with an infinite amount of addiction and losing thousands of dollars. This NFT meme describes our sentiments.
Future dads
With NFTs, the future looks even funnier. Imagine your dad coming to the school to show off his NFT as his career. This NFT meme predicts the future of NFTs and dads.
You thought you would get real estate properties in inheritance? Well, your NFT collector dad is giving you his precious NFTs.
WL struggles
Ever registered for a whitelist to mint an NFT project but forgot to mint one when it came out? This NFT meme describes it well:
The Steve Aoki curse
Steve Aoki is a myth created by the NFT community surrounding the famous DJ. Whenever Steve Aoki buys an NFT, the floor prices drop drastically out of nowhere. This has happened with Azuki, Moonbirds, and other collections. People are really starting to believe in it.
The NFT meme makes it funnier:
Now that you’ve had your time laughing over these NFT memes, it’s time to introduce you to the NFT meme marketplace where every legendary meme ends up sold for over a thousands dollars and has owners.
Donald Trump NFT meme
One of the mind-blowing NFT meme art that sold for an expensive price was by a well-known artist called Beeple. He is also the artist behind $69.3M NFT collage.
Among many artworks by Beeple, CROSSROAD, a 10-second video clip became a center of attention and a meme as it gave a political commentary on Donald Trump’s career. The NFT-based meme is a naked body of Trump lying in the grass, giving off a powerful yet comical message to the viewers.
The NFT meme is more than just an artwork, in fact, it was to show Trump’s loss in the US elections against Biden. The video opens with people walking and ignoring the massive body of a blonde naked body with pen marks of “Loser,” “Eat-Shit,” “Proud Boy,” “Poor Boy,” and also a Trump election stamp.
The meme is a commentary on all the chaos the politician brought to America during his government and now he lies by the crossroad around peaceful surroundings, a bird tweets and sits on his body showing Beeple’s provoking details about Trump. It shows the power of memes that hold a big meaning but are all for the laughs.
The NFT art meme, CROSSROADS, sold for $6.6M at Nifty Gateway and Christie’s Auction.
NFT mania: 10 classic memes that turned into NFTs
As the NFT community is busy making memes over their sufferings, the creators and investors are turning them into a money-making asset.
Over the past year, the NFT community has seen many classic memes turned into NFTs minted by uploaders and owners. The NFT memes range from old funny videos to classic characters that were once internet sensations and are still widely used by social media users.
Following are the top 15 NFT memes that were sold out for thousands of dollars:
| Sr. | NFT name | Date | Price sold | Founder | Owner | NFT platform |
| 1. | Nyan Cat | 09-02-2021 | $600,000 | Chris Torres | Unknown | Foundation |
| 2. | Bad Luck Brian | 07-03-2021 | $36,000 | Kyle Craven | Unknown | Foundation |
| 3. | Grumpy Cat | 13-03-2021 | $78,000 | Tabatha Bundesen | Unknown | Foundation |
| 4. | Scumbag Steve | 09-03-2021 | $57,000 | Blake Boston | Unknown | Foundation |
| 5. | Overly Attached Girlfriend | 01-04-2021 | $411,000 | Laina Morris | @3FMusic | Foundation |
| 6. | Disaster Girl | 16-04-2021 | $500,000 | Zoe Roth | @3FMusic | Foundation |
| 7. | Doge | 11-06-2021 | $4M | Atsuko Sato | @pleasrdao | Foundation |
| 8. | Charlie bit my finger | 23-05-2021 | $760,999 | Howard Davies-Carr | @3FMusic | charliebitme.com |
| 9. | Leave Britney Alone | 11-04-2021 | $42,971 | Chris Crocker | Unknown | Foundation |
| 10. | Success Kid | 09-04-2021 | $32,000 | Laney Griner | Unknown | Foundation |
| 11. | Trollface | 05-03-2021 | $69,000 | Carlos Ramirez | @fool | Foundation |
| 12. | Keyboard Cat | 11-03-2021 | $64,455 | Charlie Schmidt | Unknown | Foundation |
| 13. | Harambe the Gorilla | 03-06-2021 | $86,537 | Jeff McCurry | Unknown | Foundation |
| 14. | Friendship Ended with MUDASIR | 11-08-2021 | $51,128 | Muhammad Asif Raza | Unknown | Foundation |
| 15. | Side Eyeing Chloe | 12-07-2021 | $73,271 | Katie Clem | @3FMusic | Foundation |
1. The first-ever NFT meme to be sold: Nyan Cat NFT for $600,000
Nyan Cat is the first-ever NFT meme to be sold in the marketplace.
The creator behind Nyan Cat, Chris Torres is among the pioneers of introducing memes into the crypto world as NFTs. He put the Nyan Cat in the marketplace at the price of 300 ETH, around $600,000 on 9th February 2021, and instantly got sold.
This caused a sudden spike of interest among investors and creators with the possibility of NFT memes becoming the new trend in mainstream pop culture.
The CEO of the Foundation, Kayvon Tehranian says, “One thing I would just share with you is that Nyan Cat was worth almost a million dollars when it was auctioned. But I can tell you right now, if you auctioned it again, it would be worth more than that.”
Ever since the Nyan Cat was sold, many memes owners also decided to mint their NFT on the marketplace. In a way, Nyan Cat is a trendsetter for NFT memes in mainstream pop culture.
2. Bad Luck Brian NFT: $36,000
If you grew up with the internet, you might remember some of the earliest memes that were widely used on Facebook or Twitter in almost every situation, Bad Luck Brian was one of those classic memes.
It didn’t end with just becoming a meme; instead, the crypt community turned it into an NFT meme and sold it at the price of $36,000 in the marketplace in March 2021.
3. Grumpy Cat NFT Meme: $78,000
We all have seen the Grumpy cat meme on Twitter, Facebook, and even Reddit. So, what if we told you this is also an NFT meme owned by an anonymous user? With all the NFT craze, Grumpy Cat also made it to the crypto universe.
Grumpy Cat became an internet meme when the owner of Tardar Sauce (its real name) posted an image on Reddit on September 23, 2012, with the caption “Meet Grumpy Cat.” The internet is already a fan of cats, the image became more than just an adoration.
Grumpy Cat was featured in the “Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever” movie, A Grumpy Cat book became The New York Times best-seller, and Grumpy Cat also became a mascot for “Friskies.” All because of one image.
Sadly, the Grumpy Cat passed away in 2019 but the memes have kept her alive. The Grumpy Cat NFT meme was listed by the owner on 13 March 2021, which sold out instantly for 44.2 ETH, around $78,000.
4. Scumbag Steve NFT: $57,000
Scumbag Steve is an image of a 16-year-old Blake Boston captured by his mother in 2006 and was uploaded on MySpace, which became a center of laughter among users. The meme doesn’t just end there, Blake decided to make this image the cover for his rap album, Beantown Mafia.
Seeing that the internet still hasn’t moved on from the classic meme, Blake decided to mint it on the marketplace. The NFT meme sold out for $57,000, bringing him more profit than his rap album.
5. Overly Attached Girlfriend NFT meme: $400,000
Uploaded by Laina Morris for Justin Bieber’s contest “Girlfriend,” a POV video about an Overly Attached Girlfriend made the world burst into laughter 10 years ago. This video was not only Morris’ pathway to becoming an internet personality but also widely used on Twitter and Reddit in almost every situation.
Later in 2019, Morris retired from YouTube as she suffered from symptoms of depression and anxiety but the meme never died out. In 2021, the crypto community brought the meme back by turning it into an NFT.
The Overly Attached Girlfriend NFT meme was sold for 200 ETH, around 411,000 dollars, becoming one of the most expensive NFT memes in the marketplace.
6. Disaster Girl NFT meme: $500,000
Even if you aren’t a fan of memes, you still have seen or used this meme at least once in a lifetime. Disaster Girl is all of us in real life, ignoring our burning problems or seeing things or people we hate burn while we smile at the camera.
This image was taken by Dave Roth in 2005 of his daughter, Zoe, while a house burns in the background for a magazine contest. The image became a massive global hit with millions of memes made on it.
Later, in 2021, Zoe herself decided to mint her meme as an NFT. Surprisingly, the internet hasn’t moved on from the legendary meme as an anonymous user bought the Disaster Girl NFT meme for 180.00 ETH, around $500,000.
Lucky for Zoe, she paid off her tuition fee with all the earnings in one go!
7. Doge NFT meme: $4M
Doge is the Shiba Inu named Kabosu owned by Atsuko Sato. In 2010, the owner decided to upload a few pictures of her dog on the internet. Within those pictures was a unique image of Kabosu with a curious expression that went viral with the name of Doge.
Now Doge is the face of an official crypto coin called DogeCoin, backed by Elon Musk. This coin was also made as a meme but later rose to become one of the most valuable cryptocurrencies in the market.
Doge became an NFT meme worth millions of dollars; in fact, the Doge NFT meme was sold for 4 million dollars in 2021, breaking all-time sales records for all NFT memes. Now, it is worth $220M.
8. Charlie bit my finger NFT: $760,999
Charlie bit my finger is an adorable video that gained around 900 million views on YouTube. The video later entered the blockchain world in 2021 as an NFT meme which sold for 389 ETH, around $760,999.
The family removed the video from YouTube once it sold out to maintain its scarcity in the marketplace. Only the NFT meme owners can see the legendary video that holds many memories about the old internet.
9. Leave Britney Alone NFT meme: $41,971
If you thought a YouTube video couldn’t possibly become an NFT meme, well you were wrong. Leave Britney Alone is an old video uploaded by Chris Crocker in 2007 that became an internet sensation by recording 2M in 24 hours, making it the first viral video to reach this many views.
Crocker made the video to defend Britney Spears against the tabloids which became the talk of the town on the internet and soon became a meme in the mainstream media. Later in 2021, the YouTuber minted their video as NFT which sold out for $41,971.
10. Success Kid NFT meme: $32,000
Success Kid is one of the best memes to be born on the internet. This image was a failed attempt of a mother trying to capture her 11-month-old kid, Sammy. She uploaded it on Flickr, where it turned into a meme and spread on other social media platforms like wildfire in the early 2000s.
The fist-pumping toddler turned into an NFT meme and was sold at the price of 15 ETH in 2021, which is around 32,000 dollars. We don’t know about Sammy, but his image has already achieved an NFT success.
11. TrollFace NFT meme: $69,000
Remember the early internet Trollface meme? Well now, that has also turned into an NFT meme. The image was originally drawn by Carlos Ramirez in Microsoft Paint on September 19, 2008.
This image was of the most used expressions when even emojis weren’t much popular. Although the image was all over the internet, Ramirez had the IP rights to the Trollface, so he turned it into an NFT.
The Trollface NFT meme was sold on the marketplace for 42 ETH, which is around $69,000 on March 5, 2021.
12. Keyboard Cat NFT meme: $64,455
Keyboard Cat NFT meme also has an owner with IP rights. Sold for 33.5501 ETH, Keyboard Cat is a video filmed by Charlie Schmidt in 1984 of his cat named, Fatso, who died in 1987.
Schmidt uploaded Fatso’s keyboard-playing video later on YouTube in 2007. At first, it didn’t gain much attention but then Brad O’Farrell uploaded this video at the end of his blooper video in 2009, causing Keyboard Cat to go viral.
Although Fatso passed away decades ago, the NFT meme was sold on the marketplace.
13. Harambe the Gorilla NFT meme: $86,537
Harambe the Gorilla NFT meme is made after the famous Harambe meme that was popular in the early 2000s. Harambee was a 17-year-old gorilla who was killed by Cincinnati Zoo officials after he grabbed a kid and murdered him on spot.
The zoo officials were highly criticized by the public and Harambe’s picture taken by Jeff McCurry eventually became a meme on the internet.
The photographer decided to launch an NFT meme collection of Harambe, which sold out completely once it dropped on the Foundation.app.
14. Pakistan’s first NFT Friendship Ended with MUDASIR sold for $51,128
The famous Friendship Ended with MUDASIR meme by Muhammad Asif Raza turned into an NFT meme on August 1, 2021; sold for 20 ETH (~$51,000).
The meme was initially posted on Facebook by Raza being petty about ending his friendship with his best friend Mudasir and befriending a new person, named Salman. The meme was everywhere on social media and is still used when someone wants to express pettiness on the internet.
15. Side Eyeing Chloe NFT meme: $73,000
Side Eyeing Chloe is a famous meme of a small kid with disinterested/judging eyes that spread on the internet like wildfire. In fact, the whole video became the talk of the town because of how funny it was.
The video is basically made by a mom of two kids telling them that they’re going to Disneyland. Her eldest daughter screams out in excitement and suddenly the camera pans over to the younger daughter, Cloe who gives a side-eyed judgy look.
Chloe’s mother decided to turn this meme into an NFT meme and posted it on Foundation.app. Side Eyeing Chloe NFT meme was sold for 25 ETH; around $73,000.
Other than the above-mentioned memes, many other famous NFT memes became sensational hits in the NFT space such as Why You Always Lying, Creepy Chan, and many more.
Why are owners selling their memes as NFTs?
Seeing the sudden burst of creators minting NFT memes on the marketplace, many people wonder, why are meme owners so interested in selling their NFTs online. To which, Chris Torres, the creator of Nyan Cat, has the perfect answer.
Many people have used his creation for commercial purposes without his permission. He previously sued Warner Bros for using the cat for commercial uses. In an interview with The Guardian, Torres said, “It has been pretty much a constant for me that my ownership of Nyan Cat has been brought into question. When something is on the internet, people assume it is something that can be taken for commercial use, without attribution.”
When Torres decided to turn Nyan Cat into an NFT meme, all his concerns went away., “When Nyan Cat the NFT was sold, I got messages from so many other meme creators,” Torres said. “They all had the same story. They created something and put it out there not knowing what would happen. The internet took over and they lost control … these people were looking to me for help in getting a little bit of control.”
In other words, NFTs have given creators and owners control over who gets to see and share their content and who doesn’t. Jeff McCurry, the photographer of the famous Harambe NFT meme, also shares his experience. He said: “I didn’t mind the meme people. I wasn’t bothered about them. But when professional publications used the photo without my permission, that was disappointing. It shocked me how much they did it.”
Despite having the copyright to the original Harambe image, it still didn’t matter to the brands because there was no one to hold them accountable until the NFTs arrived with the concept of ownership. McCurry was thrilled by this technology because this meant no one could misappropriate his image for personal interest.
Similarly, other NFT meme owners such as Zoe from Disaster Girl, and Kyle Craven from Bad Luck Brian were also able to pay their college tuition after selling their NFT memes to the rightful owners instead of leaving them on social media.
So, in a way, NFT memes have brought something positive for the meme owners other than being the center of jokes and humor.
Criticism of NFT memes
Many critics are against NFT memes as they believe that they will become a capital product. If memes become monetized, no one will make jokes to share but to sell, and this can be damaging to the whole global community. Memes were made for free and should always be free without any copyright ownership involved.
Although many people believe that NFT memes are a time investment and might lose their worth in the coming years. They see cryptocurrency and NFTs are bubbles that keep filling up with high prices and will burst into their lowest lows at some point, similar to the Wall Street Crash in 1929.
Future of NFT meme
If you told someone from 2005 that viral memes would become a digital asset worth millions of dollars, people would laugh at you and probably make a meme out of it. But now, it is not a joke anymore. A viral NFT meme holds much more value than any other art or digital content.
Despite the harsh criticism about credibility and market stability, NFT memes are bound to change the social media and NFT industry as more and more memes become monetized. In the near future, NFT memes can also become a strong source of income for meme pages and creators who have been making these masterpieces for free as a hobby.
Furthermore, since memes are part of pop culture, people would want to buy more rare NFT memes just to show them off on the internet. Just as Sotheby’s Max Moore says in The Guardian article, “Individuals value buying a piece of history. It comes back to human nature and the desire to own.” So, even if the ownership of an asset is not physical, it will still be valuable because it attracts pop culture.
