VNExpress-Nov 29
Vietnamese are rushing to invest in so-called ‘meme coins’, hoping to make a killing but ignoring the huge risks of buying a volatile asset talked up by social media. In the second quarter The Nghia in the northern province of Vinh Phuc invested US$20 to buy nearly 100 Dogecoins, a cryptocurrency that has overwhelmed the Internet this year. “I bought the coins because everyone was buying it”. As his investment doubled after billionaire Elon Musk spoke about the coin on Twitter, Nghia bought more of it and several other similar meme coins such as Shiba Inu and Rici Elon, hoping to make a giant profit from a small investment. On Facebook groups, Nghia and thousands of other Vietnamese discuss meme coins daily as they hope to make a killing though the risk of loss is commensurately high. Meme coins are cryptocurrencies that originated from an Internet meme or have some other humorous characteristic. Some 260 meme coins are currently traded, according to cryptocurrency data platform CoinMarketCap. But only a fifth have a daily trading value of over $100,000. To put that in perspective, the cryptocurrency market daily trading value is worth $131 billion.
One major feature of meme coins is their high volatility. Dogecoin, for instance, gained 1,160 percent in April-May before giving up 69 percent to fall to the current $0.2141. Read more at: https://e.vnexpress.net/news/business/economy/vietnamese-plunge-headlong-into-meme-coin-market-4395034.html
