狗狗幣價格飆升背後的原因是什麼？為什麼看似無關的品牌都在靠它的熱度炒作？
文 | Alicia Adamczyk
If you』ve seen a popular tweet about dogecoin, the volatile digital currency based on a meme about a shiba inu, recently, there’s a decent chance that the official Slim Jim Twitter account will have a top reply — or have authored the tweet itself.
最近，如果你看到一條關於狗狗幣（一種波動較大的數字貨幣，得名於一張日本柴犬的表情包）的熱門推文，那麼Slim Jim的官方推特帳戶很有可能在評論區的頂部——或者該推文本身就是它自己撰寫的。
Slim Jim — yes, the company that sells beef jerky snacks — has made dogecoin central to its recent marketing and social media efforts. And since the company started tweeting about the coin in February, its Twitter presence has grown fivefold, according to Lanie Friedman, a spokeswoman for Slim Jim parent company Conagra Brands (she did not answer whether actual sales have also increased).
Slim Jim——是的，就是那家銷售牛肉乾零食的公司——已經將狗狗幣作為其近期營銷和社交媒體工作的核心。Slim Jim的母公司Conagra Brands的女發言人蕾妮·弗裡德曼說，自從該公司2月份開始在Twitter上發布有關狗狗幣的消息以來，其在Twitter上的影響力已經增長了五倍（她沒有回答實際銷售額是否也有所增長）。
You』d be forgiven for not immediately understanding the marketing connection between a cryptocurrency and a beef jerky purveyor. But the dynamic is, to my mind, a perfect encapsulation of the current meme economy: Take some abstract, niche financial product like a joke cryptocurrency, hype it up on social media to the point that thousands of posters are churning out and engaging with free content about it and eventually exchange that hype for tangible cash.
如果你沒有立即理解加密貨幣和牛肉乾供應商之間的營銷聯繫，這是可以理解的。但是在我看來，這種動態是對當前表情包經濟的完美縮影：拿一些抽象的、小眾的金融產品（比如搞笑加密代幣）在社交媒體上大肆宣傳，讓成千上萬的發帖者大量生產免費的內容並與之互動，最終將這種炒作換成有形的現金。
The more absurd the product, and the more ironic and bombastic the discourse around it, the better. And Slim Jim has zeroed in on one of the weirdest and most popular out there, deeming its strategy a 「memes and meats″ approach to posting, says Friedman. The social media campaign is not related to the value of dogecoin, she says; rather it works because both companies are 「rooted in meme culture」 and share 「inclusive, positive」 communities online.
產品越荒謬，圍繞它的討論越具有諷刺性和浮誇性，效果就越好。弗裡德曼說，Slim Jim瞄準的就是最怪異、最受歡迎的一種產品，將其策略視為「梗和肉」的發帖方式。她表示，社交媒體活動與狗狗幣的價值無關；相反，它之所以有效，是因為這兩家公司都「植根於梗文化」，共享「包容、積極」的在線社群。
For its part, dogecoin, which was created in 2013 as a parody of bitcoin, has been trading at record levels these past few weeks thanks, primarily, to the antics of billionaire memelord Elon Musk, according to Mike Bucella, general partner at BlockTower Capital. No joke: Its market capitalization of over $63 billion, as of Wednesday, is bigger than three-quarters of the companies in the S&P 500.
狗狗幣於2013年創立，是對比特幣的模仿。BlockTower 資本（一家加密資產資公司--譯者注）的普通合伙人邁克·比塞拉表示，過去幾周，狗狗幣的價格達到了創紀錄的水平，這主要歸功於億萬富翁埃隆·馬斯克這個「梗王」滑稽的行為。這可不是開玩笑：截至周三（5月12日--譯者注），它的市值超過630億美元，超過了標準普爾500指數中四分之三的公司。
How can that be? A major driver of the meme economy is the desire to 「stick it」 to the establishment, says Avi Felman, head of trading at BlockTower Capital, noting that dogecoin has a lot in common with the GameStop rally from earlier this year. If the price of something like bitcoin can reach $60,000, or if the government can print trillions of dollars at once, people start questioning what is actually real, he says.
這是怎麼回事？BlockTower資本的交易主管阿維·費爾曼表示，「梗經濟」的一個主要驅動力是人們對權威的蔑視。他指出，狗狗幣與今年早些時候的遊戲驛站（的股票--譯者注）反彈有很多相似之處。他說，如果比特幣這種東西的價格可以達到6萬美元，或者政府可以一次性印出數萬億美元，人們就會開始質疑什麼才是真正的真實。
「If the richest man in the world is tweeting about a coin named after a dog, why can’t it be real?」 says Felman, referring to Musk, who has claimed the title of world’s richest person a few times.
「如果說這個世界的有錢人正在發一條關於用狗命名的貨幣的推文，為什麼它不能是真實的呢？」費爾曼說，他指的是馬斯克。馬斯克曾幾次成為世界上最富有的人。
It all comes down to the community dogecoin fosters, Billy Markus, the software engineer who co-created the coin, writes in an email to CNBC Make It.
這一切都取決於狗狗幣所培育的社區，軟體工程師比利·馬庫斯在給美國消費者新聞與商業頻道Make It專欄的電子郵件中寫道。
「The crypto community can be pretty elitist and not very inclusive, and we wanted to make a community that was more fun, lighthearted and inclusive,」 Markus writes. 「It worked, and is why the dogecoin community consistently maintains a presence.」
「加密社區可能是非常精英化的，不具有很強的包容性，我們希望打造一個更有趣、更輕鬆、更包容的社區，」馬庫斯寫道，「它起作用了，這也是狗狗幣社區一直存在的原因。」
It’s not just 「the absurdity of Dog Money,」 he adds, pointing to this YouTube video. 「There’s something pure about it too.」
他補充說，這不只是「狗狗錢的荒謬」，他指著這個YouTube視頻補充道， 「它也有一些純粹的東西。」
Dogecoin to the moon
狗狗幣去月球
Slim Jim’s embrace of dogecoin is just one example of the weirdness of the modern meme economy. The aforementioned GameStop saga of yore is another, as is a 23-year-old software developer making a nonfungible token (NFT) out of 「cheugy,」 the buzzy word she coined that loosely translates to 「basic」 and is a meme in its own right.
Slim Jim對狗狗幣的接納只是怪異的現代「梗經濟」的一個例子。之前提到的遊戲驛站的昔日傳奇是另一個例子，還有23歲的軟體開發者用「cheugy」（她創造的流行詞，大致可以翻譯為「基本」，這本身就是一種梗）製作了不可替代的代幣(NFT)。
If you’re confused about what any of those words mean, you’re not alone. The meme economy has spawned its own vocabulary, comprised of NFTs (unique, digital assets) and stonks (stocks) that you hodl (hold) in hopes of going to the moon (benefiting from a rapid and enduring increase in price). It’s all part of the joke, showing that the investors don’t take any of this too seriously. Except that they do, of course — they’re in it to make money, not just memes.
如果你對這些詞的意思感到困惑，你不是一個人。梗經濟催生出了自己的詞彙表，包括NFT（獨特的數字資產）和stonks（股票）——你hodl（持有）這些股票，希望能登上月球（得益於價格的持續快速增長）。這都是玩笑的一部分，表明投資者並沒有把這些事情太當真。當然，除非他們是為了賺錢，而不僅僅是為了玩梗。
Still, snapping up 100 shares of a meme stonk in the hopes that it will continue to rise in tandem with its Reddit upvotes is not a money-making strategy that will work for most people long term. Some people are watching their holdings grow, but where there is a crush of enthusiastic investors trying to cash in on a crypto craze, there will be losers.
儘管如此，搶購100股「梗票」（meme stonk），並希望它會隨著Reddit上的點讚繼續增長，對大多數人來說並不是一個長期有效的賺錢策略。有些人看著自己的持倉增加，但如果有一群熱情的投資者試圖從加密貨幣熱潮中獲利時，就會有輸家。
「My guess is that [the rally] won’t last, especially for something like dogecoin which was never meant to be a payment system or a store of value,」 Adam Zadikoff, COO of BRD, a crypto wallet that boasts more than 7 million users, told my colleague Nicolas Vega. 「Yes, you can make a quick buck if you time it right, but timing the market is a terrible thing to try to do. It does not work.」
BRD的營運長亞當·扎迪科夫告訴我的同事尼古拉斯·維加：「我猜（公眾熱情）不會持續太久，尤其是像狗狗幣這樣的東西，它從來就不是一種支付系統或價值存儲手段。」BRD是一種擁有700多萬用戶的加密貨幣錢包。「是的，如果你把握好時機，你可以很快賺到錢，但把握好市場時機是一件可怕的事情。這行不通。」
But with trading more affordable and accessible than ever, and billionaires using their massive platforms to push their favorite stocks and cryptocurrencies, BlockTower’s Felman says the meme economy is just starting to take off. Some investors may make it to the moon.
但隨著加密貨幣的交易比以往任何時候都更便宜、更容易實現，億萬富翁們也在利用他們的大型平臺來推廣他們喜愛的股票和加密貨幣，BlockTower的費爾曼表示，梗經濟才剛剛起步。一些投資者可能確實能靠玩梗登上月球。
原載：CNBC（美國消費者新聞與商業頻道），2021年5月12日。翻譯：閆楷文
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