In Brief
- Chillhouse, a Solana meme coin launched in April to satirize Housecoin and Chillguy, surpassed Housecoin in market capitalization.
- It is now reportedly targeting Chillguy, another meme token, has surpassed a prior victim.
- The success has spawned further waves of emerging, even more obscure meme tokens.
On Thursday, the absurdist Solana meme coin Chillhouse significantly flipped one of its two creators – Housecoin – prompting the emergence of numerous derivative tokens like Farthouse and Chillgull.
With its rapid jump, Chillhouse (market cap >$26M) momentarily claimed the second spot on the Solana meme coin leaderboard, having originally been created as an inside joke to poke fun at Housecoin (surged to $120M peak due partly to social media endorsements) and Chillguy ($775M peak).
While Chillhouse later retreated, this week’s meme price action highlights the cyclical nature of the meme coin market, where tokens with perceived risks or catalysts can see dramatic surges.
Housecoin dropped below $19M during these price movements, but according to reports from Monday to Thursday, its price had remained relatively flat from its May peak despite persistent economic headwinds in the real-world housing markets the meme parodies.
Economically, pending U.S. home sales are reportedly at record lows, while members of the European Parliament noted a significant 48% average price increase across Europe since 2015. This widespread housing cost escalation contributes to the meme coin investment phenomenon.
Consequently, young people have shown apathy towards traditional property investment’s slow returns, leading some to gamble on highly volatile meme coins instead. This affordability gap and resultant financial nihilism encourage such speculative bets.
Housecoin – a meme coin founded on the disbelief concerning the housing market – has itself been flipped by Chillhouse, which shares its own questionable foundation: both are constructed solely on fanatical speculation.
Meme coins typically lack intrinsic value; their price movements are driven purely by network effects and perceived hype, chasing potential future catalysts – be they an announced feature, a viral news event, or perhaps, an extreme like global crop failure.
Although the goal of latter-day Chillhouse followers (to bring down Chillguy’s market cap) is seemingly improbable, their actions underscore the inherently destabilizing power of these digital jesters in the cryptocurrency landscape. From meme wars over ownership to poking fun at serious world problems, these irreverent tokens leave their influence felt across the crypto ecosystem.
