Australian rapper Iggy Azalea released the celebrity meme coin “MOTHER” at the end of May, with a peak increase of over 3000% and nearly 700% since its inception. While Iggy Azalea is not the first celebrity to release a meme coin, her criticism of Vitalik has sparked a beef between the rapper and Vitalik.
Vitalik: Celebrities releasing meaningless meme coins make me very unhappy.
“Celebrity meme coins, go away!” The crypto community’s reactions to celebrity meme coins vary greatly.
Recently, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin expressed, “So far, I am very dissatisfied with ‘this cycle of celebrities.’ People are creating these meme coins just to make money, but I expect people to have charitable purposes and long-term operations.”
In response, Iggy Azalea stated in an interview, “I’m not angry at this person’s opinion. But I question your actions regarding Gas Fees, that’s a lot of money. And your perspective, whether it’s charity or whatever. Anyway, that’s a lot of money, let’s talk about Gas Fee taxes. Maybe some people shouldn’t have so many opinions.”
Iggy Azalea may be trying to blame Vitalik for the high Gas Fees on Ethereum, but Gas Fees are mostly earned by verification nodes, and Vitalik is more of an indirect beneficiary holding ETH. The whole issue is not directly related to making money through Gas Fees.
Uniswap founder Hayden Adams supports this trend. He said, “There is no problem with meme coins or celebrity coins. I think meme attention is valuable, and it’s cool that it can create a market. That is to say, the fundamental purpose and value of the technology far exceed financial games. The field’s best builders are inspired by active social change.”
He mentioned that Iggy could have made a positive response and donated profits to social causes or other things. Instead, she arrogantly treated the best builders in the field with disdain (because Iggy made a pretty mean meme).
Following some controversial remarks, Iggy Azalea’s “MOTHER” website began activities to donate to koala rescue charities. This is a visible act of goodwill amidst the noise of celebrities making money with memes.