Vitalik Buterin Criticizes Celebrity Memecoin Trend, Calls for Use Cases Other Than Enriching Founders

Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin is calling out the celebrity memecoin trend, saying that digital assets need other use cases than simply enriching founders and early adopters.

In a new thread on the social media platform X, Vitalik Buterin tells his 5.3 million followers that he’s unhappy with this cycle’s trend of celebrities experimenting with meme assets.

Buterin references Stoner Cats – a non-fungible token (NFT) collection backed by actors Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis – saying that the project at least had a semblance of a real-world use case.

“I’m feeling quite unhappy about ‘this cycle’s celebrity experimentation’ so far. ‘Financialization as a means toward an end,’ I can respect if the end is worthy (healthcare, open source software, art, etc).

Financialization *as the final product*, Ashton and Mila’s Stoner Cats was vastly more honorable than anything we’ve seen from this 2024 celebrity memecoin era – at least there was an actual show being funded.”

Stoner Cats was deemed an unregistered security by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2023. At the time, the regulatory agency said that the NFT collection had features that led investors to reasonably expect profits.

Buterin goes on to summarize what characteristics a celebrity meme asset would need to earn his respect. According to him, the tokens would need to aim to be relevant for at least multiple years, have use cases other than enriching the celebrity or early adopters, and have features other than just being able to be traded.

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