Who Gets to Have Fun? The Alternative Earmarking of a Memecoin Marketplace

Past research on cryptocurrency has highlighted its sociotechnical aspects, framing crypto projects as community-grounded movements disrupting traditional state and market structures through technological advancements. What happens when these disruptive promises are absent or only playfully invoked? Cryptocurrencies known as “memecoins” have grown their own followings without pledging future legitimacy that would seriously challenge existing institutions, instead linking their value to the meme they brand themselves with and vague democratic promises. That new scheme of valuation is especially evident in coins launched on the site pump.fun, which has lowered the barriers to crypto-coin creation. The platform's accessibility provides a new dimension for analysis, as its content demonstrates what users drawn to these alternative cryptocurrency schemes choose to create and support when technological barriers are reduced. This paper builds on existing research by incorporating literature on memes, economic sociological theories, and social theories of technology and digital structures. Analyzing the pump.fun website, external promotional materials, and a sample of the top coins on the site in a 30-day period, this project argues the site earmarks itself and its contents as a distinct form of legitimacy, rooted not in financial pragmatism or institutional endorsement, but in memetic subcultural performance and the gamified mechanics of its platform. It does so in contrast to previous generations of cryptocurrency through referencing memes and subcultural language and leveraging the social and gamified site mechanics to construct an image of meritocratic success.