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MEME COIN GENERATOR GO BRRR… In last week’s The Protocol, we made the point that blockchain teams have, generally speaking, succeeded in coopting the über-power of printing one’s own money , long reserved for governments and banks. An integral element of the process are the various “launchpads” that teams use to spin up their new tokens. In an article this week, CoinDesk’s Shaurya Malwa highlighted a project called Pump , which in the short period since going live last month has already earned $5 million in fees – partly due to the meme coin frenzy on the Solana blockchain . “Selling shovels in a gold rush was one of the surest ways to make profits, and it’s no different today in the digital asset world,” Malwa wrote. “While there are likely tens of thousands of tokens that have been released on Pump since its March launch, only a few have reached market capitalizations of more than $10 million. The largest tokens so far are Shark Cat (SC), a cat wearing a shark cap, and Hobbes, named after the cat of popular Solana trader Ansem, with valuations of $100 million and $35 million, respectively,” according to Malwa. Even so, Pump is on track to reap about $66 million of annual revenue, based on current usage and growth, DefiLlama data shows. Whether this token-generation business is legal, or approved by securities regulators, may depend on the circumstances, or the terms of use, or on the jurisdiction. But in the meantime investment bankers who used to lead elaborate offerings in exchange for Wall-Street-size fees (and Lambo-scale bonuses) are basically being replaced by apps.