In 2022, an Indonesian college student named Sultan Gustaf Al Ghozali minted an NFT collection of selfies that he had taken every day over the course five years. Priced at $3 a piece, the “Ghozali Everyday” collection quickly became popular and earned the young man over $1 million.
After graduating from college in 2023, Ghozali announced that he had stopped taking selfies and disappeared from X. He added that he was grateful to have made money from “the stupidest idea” he ever had. Now, along with the resurgence in interest in memecoins, Ghozali is back with another project.
On March 24th, Ghozali posted on X that he was launching a memecoin and NFT project to be powered by the Base blockchain. Unsurprisingly, the latest drop from the king of selfies is already enjoying quite a bit of success. According to a report from Cointelegraph, the presale of the memecoin/NFT hybrid project has already reached 527 ETH (at the time of writing), or around $1.8 million.
The launch from Ghozali is another example of memecoin mania, which has been driven mainly by Solana traders. Though the latest round of memecoin presales has been criticized since traders are sending coins to wallets without a guarantee they’ll receive tokens, Ghozali took to X and in a show of good faith to say he would refund any traders who sent ETH after the cap had already been reached.
Though Solana has been the main stomping ground for recent memecoins, Base, a Layer 2 blockchain from Coinbase, is also becoming popular. Some of the top memecoins currently on Base include Base God (TYBG), Bret (BRETT), and Degen (DEGEN). While their market caps remain much lower than some of the memecoins on Solana, that could change as the L2 blockchain from Coinbase continues its ascent.
Memecoins Are Riding the Wave
While investing in memecoins is risky business, as the crypto market turns bullish, many degens and traders see them as a chance to make huge returns — and some have done just that. At Rarity Sniper, we’ve reported several stories about the memecoin craze recently. Here are the top three headlines.
First, last week, the iconic image of DogWifHat ($WIF), a Solana-based memecoin, sold for $4.3 million. The huge sale became the highest-selling meme NFT of all time, surpassing a Doge NFT that sold for $4.2 million back in 2021.
Next, on March 16th, Solana surpassed Ethereum in trading volume due largely from traders sending over $100 million worth of $SOL to new memecoins over the course of three days. Some of the most popular coins included Book of Meme ($BOME), Nap ($NAP), and ($NOS). The memecoins were launched through the controversial presale model that allows coins to generate investments before the token is delivered.
Finally, at the beginning of March, politically themed memecoins went on a tear. On March 6th, a Joe Biden-themed memecoin called $BODEN rose by over 1,000% to reach a market cap of $23.3 million. Other popular coins included $DANOLD and $TREMP — references to the ex-president of the U.S., Donald Trump.
We’ll have to wait to see if the Selfie Guy’s latest project has any legs. But considering the popularity of Ghozali’s debut NFT project, and the love of silliness in Web3, anything’s possible. For now, Ghozali’s certainly off to a good start.