Домой United States USA — IT Memes are serious business with their own stock exchange

Memes are serious business with their own stock exchange

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Memes are becoming mainstream. Now a dedicated group wants to find out how much they’re worth.
A look inside the Nasdanq closed beta.
With my best » My Dad Will Sue You » outfit on, I was ready to strike it rich buying and selling memes.
It was 9 a.m. ET on a Thursday, early enough that Donald Trump memes hadn’t rolled in yet. Feeling lucky, I bought 30 shares of $TRMP. They immediately tanked 21 percent. But I wasn’t fazed — there was plenty of time for the president to, you know, be Trump.
I’m not living in a fantasy land. I’m logged in to Nasdanq, a site that lets you to wager on the value of internet memes, similar to how you might punt on shares of a company. Sure, you don’t use real money to play, but there’s still the satisfaction of knowing you’re internet savvy.
Memes aren’t just digital amusements. They brought Rick Astley’s career back from the ashes and sent Oculus founder Palmer Luckey into the shadows. They’ve seeped into international diplomatic efforts; the UK’s Russian embassy posted pictures of Pepe the Frog and netted thousands of retweets in the process.
The stock market represents the current value of a company based on expectations of how it will perform in the future. Similarly, the Nasdanq can give you an idea of which meme is about to go viral.
Mock markets aren’t new, and dedicated fans have created exchanges to turn their knowledge of a subject into games. The Hollywood Stock Exchange lets players «invest» in actors, rewarding those who find hidden stars before their big break. The University of Iowa developed its Iowa Electronic Markets for its business school students to learn how the economy works. It’s now used to forecast elections.
Memes are a logical step.
The Nasdanq traces its origin to the Meme Economy subreddit. It started out as a joke about six months ago, but now members use it to hash out the latest trends in web culture. SpongeBob memes are still blue chips, just like Intel shares, while the hooded » Evil Kermit » meme has been on a downward spiral since January.

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