Kayamandi has some of the best vistas in the Stellenbosch winelands, and now fast fibre to communicate it. (Photo: Lindsey Schutters) 
Rule 34. If you need to know what that means, go ask someone who grew up alongside the internet. While that rule makes reference to adult pleasures, there should be a new guideline to deal with more childish things: memecoins.
When the sultan of self-pleasure launched a memecoin to honour his pending inauguration, the Trump coin reportedly netted $350-million from the token sale and associated fees. If you’re older than 18 and have a unique meme or fundraising idea, you can mint a memecoin of your own design in under 20 minutes – with some platforms even promising “fair launch” to ensure mass participation.
Memecoins are a pure conversion of technology-induced attention traps to money, and have become crypto startup community shorthand for crowdfunding. If you can drive enough interest (read: hype) you can send that coin to the moon. Be warned: if the meme exists then there is probably a memecoin for it already. Rug pulls are harder than you think.
That volatile black sheep of the crypto family shouldn’t be confused with other blockchain innovations we’re seeing mature in the real world. Alan Knott-Craig’s latest venture into connecting the masses, for instance, pegs the Fibertime token (read: the R5 airtime voucher) to a 24-hour period.
To clarify: Fibertime is rolling out fibre internet into townships and installing routers in homes, and all the people who want to use the service need do is buy a R5 voucher to get 24 hours of uncapped, unshaped, unthrottled internet access on their device. Vouchers cost R5 because that’s the size of the blocks on the blockchain which handles the transaction ledger.
Read more: Walking the township fibre fault line with Alan Knott-Craig
This makes the airtime vouchers, effectively, stablecoins. “If the rand starts to lose its value, people can still connect to the internet if they have a voucher – and then trade the connectivity vouchers among themselves,” Knott-Craig explains.
It’s low-key genius and the most practical example of the mythical concept of crypto utility I’ve yet seen. It is, also, a model that could only have ever come from the brain of a serial entrepreneur who has learnt many hard lessons growing up with a surname that is woven into the very fabric of South Africa’s digital infrastructure.
There seems to be no more time for childish games, rug pulls or pump and dumps in the maturing crypto market. DM