Early Dogecoin Backer on the Rise of the Meme Economy

Coindesk is turning 10 and we're taking a closer look at some of the biggest stories that have shaped the crypto industry in the last decade. Joining us now to discuss is early Doge coin backer, Gary, Lean. Hi, Gary. Um So yes, mean coin is huge right now. Um Great outfit like the whole the whole thing. Um So before we get into the doge issue, I think we do need to talk about about this other coin that selling right now, which is Pepe. And you know, of course, there are some people in the crypto community that are kind of like pitting them against each other, you know, dogs versus frogs or whatever. And I guess like my, you know, my question for you is, you know, what do you think the sort of Pepe mania means for um Doge? Are they just completely unrelated? Do you think Pepe is going to somehow surpass the kind of doge phenomenon? Where, where do you see the Doge just Doge in general fitting into this whole Pepe boom? Uh Yeah. Thank you for having me on to speak upon the Doge number. Everyone's favorite meme of all time. Uh Yeah, I haven't really been following the rise of pepe too closely what's going on there, uh, what's going on there. I mean, basically it's just, you know, um, huge. I mean, it's been exploding. Some people have made tons of money. It's getting a ton of press. Um, so, yeah, I mean, I think it's just, and then, you know, of course there's people saying that, you know, this will overtake the dog phenomenon, obviously that just sort of crypto speak. But um it's clearly an important, it's, it's, it's an important development in the mean world. I think that's, you know, something that we can say fairly unequivocally. Yeah, I mean, it's this wild anarchic Cambrian explosion of the crypto ecosystem. So anything that is funny, silly entertaining and moving is probably gonna do well and you see hundreds of derivatives of doge, but like nothing can ever touch the originator, the original meme coin, which was created purely out of fun as a joke. And for that reason, it has this pure positive intention behind it. And there's millions of people worldwide worldwide who resonate with that and the do only good everyday philosophy. So and the future of DOJ will continue to be very bright well into the future. We actually just went on a Doge pilgrimage and met the Doj and at Suko, her mama in Japan. And yeah, it was a beautiful time. We are creating a bronze Doge statue in her hometown, which will hopefully be unveiled on her 18th birthday. And yeah, I've been into Doge since the first week that it became a coin and hundreds thousands of friends worldwide who are as dedicated to it as I and Gary, I think, I think what Emily is alluding to is this phenomenon around Pepe feels very similar to what happened with Doge when you got into it. You know, you said you got into Doge within the first week. Now we hear people coming out and saying, you know, these meme coins, they don't have a lot of utility, they don't have a lot of value. Tell us about the value you think meme coins brings to the space? Yeah, I mean, the only value any of these tokens have is the value that we placed on them. And yeah, I mean, there's a lot of Pepe fans around the world and when you see the price going parabolic, a lot of people get excited and jump on that and if they build out some kind of crazy ecosystem, metaverse games, who knows what they'll create? I'm sure it'll keep going. But uh the amazing thing about do for me and a lot of us is that a time where pretty much everything is polarized and political Doge is a great unifier. I think it's very unique in that regard, especially in the world of crypto where things are pretty tribal in a lot of cases. So, I mean, I'm sure the Pepe thing will do well and go up and down like most meme coins. But uh I'm devoted to the Doge myself. You became a millionaire off of Doge. If, if I have my facts straight, what advice do you have for people who are FOMO to me, Fomo into meme coins, who kind of see your story and also want to become rich off of these meme coins. I mean, for me, it was never about becoming rich back in. I think it was 2014. I decided I need to be a doe jillion aii. So I took $300 which was I believe off of credit, bought a million Doge and I put it on a paper wallet and I said, no matter what I wanna be a doe because I think it's funny and I believe in this thing and then like six or seven years later, it went way up and that was briefly worth a million. And in the spirit of Doge, the objective became to give it all away in this crazy a rnft game called the Doge Disco, Million Doge Disco. So we were dropping Doge and NFT is all over the world. And for me making money is not the objective here. It's using this technology to hopefully create an open decentralized future that will uplift and unify everyone in the world. So that's why I'm here. I know a lot of people are here to strike it rich and Billy Marcus, the founder co-founder of DOJ, he lays it out pretty well. Like every time you make money on crypto, someone else is losing because money in money out, it's a net gain, net loss based on who is basically gambling on these things. So it's a fun game, but definitely one of the rules is never invest more than you're willing to lose overnight because that's good, generally good advice. Just final question, you know, there's so many mean coins as we just said and you know, do clearly has surpassed a lot of people's expectations. I think it's stuck around so so much longer than many people expected. You know, in those early days, what was it about? Do that signal to you that this was a real thing because it can be quite hard to tell, right? There's meme coins popping up all over the place and, and, and what, you know, what, how did you, why did you decide to make such a big bet on, on something like this? Well, we do a thing called the Decentralized dance party using these boom boxes. We create these giant roaming parties and we got super hyped on do put the stickers all over them. And then we were just in my apartment and every day the doge was just staring back at us from these boom boxes and it was just like months, years later, we were still just laughing so hard. Every time we looked at it and we're like, this is not getting old. Like there's just something very special that happened here. This is like the modern Mona Lisa or perhaps the Buddha assuming its ultimate form. And yeah, we're all in on doge consciousness and I still believe that this is the future of all trade and commerce worldwide. If we can get on board with this ocean and have the best time ever. Gary, thank you so much for joining us this morning. It was a pleasure seeing this outfit and, and getting to see that little Doge sticker that was early Doge coin backer, Gary La Chance.