# The Memecoin Grift and How It Threatens Ethereum Culture

Source: https://www.coindesk.com/opinion/2023/06/09/the-memecoin-grift-and-how-it-threatens-ethereum-culture
Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/The-Memecoin-Grift-and-How-It-Threatens-Ethereum-Culture?index=0x67b313c6bad934bd0bd3eddfc1445075d1b3dcb3fe09663a652246e6753e0031e0e27295
Submitted by 0x4DD0...85D9 on 2025-02-17 UTC, 4 upvotes, 1 comment

## Summary

Paul Dylan-Ennis argues that memecoin promotion, which he says is a cynical pumping of valueless tokens, threatens Ethereum's reputation and must be addressed for cryptocurrency to be widely adopted. He describes influencer grifters who post Ethereum addresses and ask people to send ether with no promise of return. Because Ethereum is permissionless and has no one who can sanction such activity, he proposes an annual Citizen's Assembly where stakeholders from validators to Average Joes could discuss issues and encourage a shift from degen to regen culture.

## Comments

**tim**: I think the citizens assembly is a good idea; however, I do wonder if it will have any effect on the grifters trying to extract money from Ethereum because these people are not part of our group. I have, for example, never met a grifter at an Ethereum conference. So, I think these people intentionally play with our good-faith efforts, and they are essentially freeriding on the good things that we do for humanity because they can then pretend to also do good for humanity, but they turn around and rug people. So, I don’t think we should actually intentionally fight against them. Instead, I think we have to uncancel the original visions of Ethereum, and we have to make the memecoin casino irrelevant in terms of how many people engage with it. If Ethereum is known for hosting network states, for building the best social networks, for enabling cross-border transfers, for enabling financial privacy, then the memecoin trading will eventually just become a small fraction of the overall value of Ethereum. So, I think we have to push on developing these visions faster than how fast the memecoin casino is currently developing.