January 2021: Reddit’s WallStreetBets subforum orchestrated a short squeeze on GameStop stock that transferred billions from hedge funds to retail traders. The lesson was clear — retail traders, organized by memes, could move real markets. A few days later, Elon Musk started tweeting about Dogecoin.
What followed was surreal. Musk posted Doge memes. Dogecoin pumped 800% in weeks. He called himself “The Dogefather” and hosted Saturday Night Live, where his mother Maye Musk accepted Doge as a Mother’s Day gift on live TV. The meme coin reached a market cap of over $85 billion. Jackson Palmer, who had quit crypto years earlier, watched in horror. Billy Markus, still holding none, watched in amusement.
The GameStop–Doge era fused two internet cultures: retail stock traders and crypto degens. They discovered they were the same people. The meme had become a weapon against institutional finance. For a brief moment, it felt like the jokesters had taken over Wall Street — and the memes were running the market.
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