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The Power of Community in Memecoin Success

If you still think that Internet memes are just funny (and not) images and videos for entertainment, prepare to be surprised. Technology is blurring the lines between reality and the digital world, and memes are becoming not only a means of expressing irony and humor, but also an object of investment. Well, let’s have a look at why this is the case and how it works. Memes in the Crypto Industry Let's start with what you can invest in. There are meme coins, and there are NFT memes. They are all meme-based digital assets, but their value and use vary. The capitalization of meme coins - an indicator of asset value in the market - is a bit more than at the time of this writing. $17 billion Sounds impressive, right? Let's see why meme coins are so popular and how it all started. Dogecoin: A Dog's Life Dogecoin is the most famous meme coin and one of the first cryptocurrencies after bitcoin, which emerged from a joke. In December 2013, developers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer created a cryptocurrency based on the then-popular Shiba Inu dog meme. Conceived as a way to poke fun at the growing interest in cryptocurrencies, Dogecoin gained popularity surprisingly quickly. In its early stages, Dogecoin was used as a tip on internet platforms and to fund various internet campaigns, such as . Over time, the Dogecoin community became more active, attracting the attention of investors and speculators. sending the Jamaican bobsled team to the Olympics The story of a crypto trader nicknamed Dogefather (a nod to "Godfather," you get the idea) stands out. He believed in the coin and invested $180,000 to help develop it. As influencer support and active social media campaigns increased interest in Dogecoin, its price began to rise, making Dogefather a millionaire. This story inevitably went viral, inspiring investors to explore the potential of meme coins and traders to search the cryptocurrency market for the next Dogecoin. The coin itself became a vivid example of how Internet culture can influence the world of finance and investment. Today, Dogecoin ranks 7th in capitalization among all cryptocurrencies – at the time of this writing. $10.3 billion Dogecoin Development Timeline Dogecoin was created by Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer. December 2013: Fundraising for the Jamaican Olympic bobsled team with the help of Dogecoin. January 2014: A period of relative stability for Dogecoin, with little investor interest. 2015-2018: A rise in interest in cryptocurrencies in general leads to an increase in the price and popularity of Dogecoin. 2020: : Dogecoin's popularity grows exponentially; thanks in part to tweets from Elon Musk and other celebrities. 2021 : The emergence and growth in popularity of other meme coins inspired by Dogecoin's success. 2021-2023 And What Other Meme Coins Are There? Today, the total number of existing meme coins, meme tokens, their analogs, and derivatives is approaching . It is likely that as you read this article, another Shiba Inu or Pepe the Frog version has been born. Of course, it would be too long and pointless to mention all of them, so let's limit ourselves to the most famous ones. 1200 Dogecoin (DOGE) One of the most famous cryptocurrencies, which you can use to buy a Tesla car on the company's official website. Shiba Inu (SHIB) Often referred to as the "Dogecoin killer". It was created in 2020 and uses an image of the Shiba Inu but with a different concept and design. Dogelon Mars (ELON) Introduced as an "interplanetary currency" for future Mars colonists. Pepe the Frog (PEPE) Popular among meme lovers, using an image of the famous frog. DogeCash (DOGEC) Positioned as a cleaner, more community-oriented version of Dogecoin, with an emphasis on transparency and community participation. Kishu Inu (KISHU) Another token based on a dog image, created in response to the growing popularity of Dogecoin and the Shiba Inu. The popularity of meme coins is on the rise. Although doubts about their long-term value persist, it is still possible to profit from their price fluctuations. But to sell meme coins, you first have to buy them. Here's where you can do it. Decentralized Exchanges (DEX) First, there are the "swap" platforms – Uniswap, SushiSwap, PancakeSwap, and others. Unlike centralized exchanges, these platforms offer more coins that have recently appeared and have not yet attracted significant public attention. Users purchase coins created by other users. Anyone can create their token, name it whatever they want, and invest in promoting it so that others will buy it. However, selling the token at a later date can be a problem. The fact is that this market is saturated with scammers who create illiquid tokens for purchase by inexperienced investors. The developers of such tokens write a restriction into the code, and the scheme itself is called a "honeypot." In general, there is no shortage of tokens on DEX platforms. For instance, on dextools.io, you can find and purchase many tokens by connecting your wallet. And remember, before investing in any token, always do your research and learn as much as you can about the potential risks. Centralized Exchanges (CEX) Binance, OKX, Huobi, and Gate.io are just a few of the centralized exchanges where buying popular meme coins is certainly not a problem. However, the principle of placing the coins on these exchanges differs from what we see on DEX. In the case of meme coins, the initial prank has to get out of control, gain popularity, and attract investors. Only then is there a chance that such a token will be listed on centralized exchanges. This will attract new token holders, make it even more visible, and increase capitalization and liquidity. Also, don't forget about specialized platforms focused on meme coins - ShibaSwap, DogeSwap, SafeMoon Exchange, and the like. NFT Meme Coins These are a special category of non-fungible tokens associated with popular memes or Internet culture in general. Each such NFT is unique and has a certain value based on its rarity, history, and meme popularity. Such an NFT, whether it's the original image of the "Doge" meme or a viral GIF of a well-known Internet phenomenon, can be sold for a significant sum. Of course, over time, specialized platforms have sprung up for this purpose. Here are some of them: OpenSea The largest decentralized marketplace for NFTs, where you can find many unique art objects in addition to meme coins. OpenSea's interface is intuitive, and the platform itself supports a wide range of token standards. Blur NFT Marketplace A sophisticated Ethereum blockchain platform with no commissions on NFT transactions. It has a user-friendly interface, extensive analytics, and a portfolio management function. This aggregator collects and compares NFT offers from different platforms and is becoming increasingly popular due to its capabilities and potential. NFT Marketplaces of Centralized Exchanges The popularity of the asset has led many centralized crypto exchanges such as Binance or Coinbase to launch their own NFT marketplaces. For those who have already traded on these platforms, this is very convenient - the buying, selling, and auctions of NFTs take place in native walls. So why are people willing to pay top dollar for memes that have been turned into NFTs? Primarily, because of the uniqueness and the impossibility of forging these memes. Thanks to the blockchain, every NFT meme can be traced back to its original, and attempts to copy or counterfeit can be detected. Moreover, owning an NFT meme is owning a piece of Internet culture that is valued no less than a piece of art on a collector's wall. Therefore, if you acquire such an asset, you can resell it for a profit, which is exactly what many do. The NFT space is evolving rapidly, with new projects emerging constantly. By carefully evaluating those you like most, you can assess their potential for generating and the risks involved, and therefore, make educated decisions based on your interests and goals. returns on your investment Should You Invest in Memes? It seems that meme coins are here to stay – they've become an integral part of crypto culture, and it's hard to imagine it without them. Dedicated and passionate communities around coins grow incredibly quickly - all it takes is the right catalyst. The market for meme coins is one of the most dynamic in the industry. With the growth of technology and digital culture, memes and NFTs will continue to play an essential role in our lives. The next picture could be the next big NFT, making its owner millions. So, maybe it's worth considering memes as an investment? Or even create one yourself? In general, memes are not just funny pictures. They reflect our experiences, culture, and history, becoming digital monuments of our time. And blockchain technology allows us to invest in a cultural phenomenon, become a unique owner of a digital object, or add meme coins to an investment portfolio. Furthermore, meme coins are attracting more and more people to the cryptocurrency markets, which is undoubtedly a positive thing for the entire sphere. The issue of investment security is still relevant - any investment, even in harmless and funny pictures, can become a fortune or a doughnut hole. All actions related to buying and selling meme coins and NFTs are done at your own risk. Study as many different perspectives as possible to get your own picture of investing in crypto.

From Laughs to Ledger: The Rising Value of Meme Investments

হাসি থেকে লেজার পর্যন্ত: মেমে বিনিয়োগের রাইজিং ভ্যালু

Vom Lachen zum Hauptbuch: Der steigende Wert von Meme-Investitionen

De la risa al libro mayor: el valor creciente de las inversiones en memes

Des rires au grand livre : la valeur croissante des investissements Meme

लाफ्स से लेजर तक: मेम निवेश का बढ़ता मूल्य

笑いから台帳へ: ミーム投資の価値の上昇

웃음에서 장부까지: 밈 투자의 가치 상승

Das risadas ao livro-razão: o valor crescente dos investimentos em memes

От смеха к бухгалтерской книге: растущая стоимость инвестиций в мемы

Gülmekten Deftere: Meme Yatırımlarının Yükselen Değeri

Từ tiếng cười đến sổ cái: Giá trị gia tăng của các khoản đầu tư Meme

从笑声到账本：模因投资的价值不断上升

Elon Musk has recently purchased a section of the popular social media platform, Twitter. With Musk's announcement, the Dogecoin cryptocurrency is now looking toward the moon for its future development and goals. In this article, we talk about how Elon Musk made a huge purchase of Twitter stock and what this means for Dogecoin. The article details how Dogecoin was created to be an ironic joke and why Elon Musk's purchase is bad news for this cryptocurrency. Elon Musk has been trading on Twitter for a while now. He began by selling Tesla shares and now, he's buying its competitor, Twitter. Will this buyout push Dogecoin to the moon? Elon Musk Buys Twitter Elon Musk's latest purchase is Twitter. Some are questioning whether or not this is a good decision given his previous statements about social media and its negative effects on society. Here we take a look at some of the pros and cons of making such a costly purchase. PRO: Twitter is an extremely powerful tool for spreading information and engaging with followers. It can be used to build relationships and create connections with people all over the world. It can also be used to promote your business or organization. : CON Twitter has been linked to negative consequences for society, such as increased anxiety and depression rates. Many experts believe that social media is causing us to lose touch with reality and fueling the spread of fake news. Additionally, Twitter can be used as a tool for cyberbullying or spreading hate speech. What is Dogecoin? Dogecoin is a digital currency created in December 2013. It uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority or banks. Dogecoin is unique in that it uses a meme as its logo. The Doge meme features a Shiba Inu carrying a sign that says "I am not a dog, I am a doge." Dogecoin is a digital asset and virtual currency created on December 8th, 2013. Dogecoin is decentralized, meaning it does not have a central authority or server. Dogecoin is peer-to-peer, meaning it is not subject to government or financial institution control. Dogecoin is a digital currency that started as a joke but has since become something of an underground sensation. Named after the Shiba Inu dog meme, Dogecoin is typically used to purchase goods and services online. While it's not backed by anything other than community belief, Dogecoin has surged in value in recent months, reaching a high of more than $0.10 per coin earlier this month. So what is behind the sudden popularity of Dogecoin? How Dogecoin Works Dogecoin is a digital currency that was created in December 2013. Unlike other digital currencies, Dogecoin doesn't use blockchain technology. Instead, it uses a system called Shibes. Shibes is a set of rules that determine how Dogecoins are created and used. The main purpose of Dogecoin is to make transactions quickly and easily. Dogecoin is a digital currency that uses peer-to-peer technology to facilitate transactions. Dogecoin is created as a tribute to the popular Internet meme, Doge. Dogecoin features a decentralized public ledger, which requires no central authority to operate. Twitter Purchase: Elon Musk buys Twitter for $1 billion Twitter is an incredibly powerful tool that can help people stay connected with friends and family all over the world. However, it's also been known to be a platform that can be used to spread vitriolic and hateful messages. That's why it's interesting to see that Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has decided to purchase Twitter for $1 billion. This is a definite sign that he recognizes the importance of social media in today's society. What makes this purchase even more impressive is the fact that Musk is doing it using his own money. This shows how committed he is to improving Twitter's functionality and making it more accessible to the general public. Overall, this is a great move on behalf of Elon Musk and we can only hope that he continues to invest in Twitter in order to improve its functionality even further. How Did Dogecoin Start? Dogecoin is a meme-based cryptocurrency created in December 2013. Initially, Dogecoin was used as a way to make fun of Bitcoin. However, over time it grew into something more. Now, Dogecoin is used as a means of payment for goods and services online. Dogecoin, the funny-looking cryptocurrency that started as a joke, just hit a new all-time high. So how did Dogecoin start? Well, it all started with Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX. He decided to buy Twitter in March 2013 for $2 billion. At the time, it was the largest acquisition in history. Twitter is a social networking service where users can send and receive tweets. It was founded by Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone in March 2006. Dogecoin started as a joke, but somewhere along the way, it became a legitimate cryptocurrency. Here's how it all started. What Are Some Ways to Buy Dogecoin? There are a few ways to buy dogecoin. Some exchanges allow users to buy and sell Dogecoin directly, while others allow users to purchase dogecoin through bitcoin or other altcoins. Additionally, many online wallets allow users to store dogecoin offline, which can be useful for long-term storage. If you're looking to invest in Dogecoin, you can do so through a number of different methods. Some popular ways to buy Dogecoin include buying it on exchanges like Coinbase and Bittrex, or through online wallets like Electrum. If you want to get your hands on some Dogecoin quickly, you can also try mining it. Why Would Elon Musk Buy Twitter? Twitter is a social media platform where users can post short 140-character messages called "tweets." The platform has been around since 2006 and has over 300 million active users. Recently, Twitter has become more prevalent as a news source due to the president's use of it to communicate with the public. Elon Musk is the founder, CEO, and CTO of Tesla Motors, chairman of SolarCity, and co-founder of SpaceX. He also owns just over 20% of Twitter’s stock. So why would he buy Twitter? Here are two reasons: Tesla has been struggling to get its story out there. It's difficult for the public to find information about Tesla's vehicles and solar energy products without searching for it on Google or other search engines. Twitter allows Tesla to directly communicate with its customers and followers in a way that doesn't require them to go through third-party sources. To expand Tesla's media presence: SolarCity is one of Tesla's main competitors in the solar energy market. By buying Twitter, Musk can help strengthen ties between SolarCity and Tesla by sharing information about new products and services. This will help him compete better against his To strengthen ties with SolarCity: Conclusion In conclusion, Elon Musk has bought Twitter and this could mean big things for the company. Dogecoin could soon be worth a lot more if Musk can help promote it. He has already shown his dedication to the coin by donating a million dogecoins to the Jamaican bobsled team. Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, has just announced his latest venture: buying Twitter. This move comes as no surprise to many – Musk is known for his willingness to take risks and invest in new businesses. What is less well known is that Musk also invests in cryptocurrencies. In 2017, he put money into Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. He has also spoken about the potential of blockchain technology, which underlies cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. So why buy Twitter? It’s not clear yet. But maybe it’s an attempt to increase the reach of Tesla and SpaceX messages. Or it could be a way to get more people interested in cryptocurrencies. Whatever the reason, this is another example of how business leaders are looking at new ways to create value for their organizations.

Elon Musk Buys Twitter: Now Dogecoin to the Moon

Elon Musk compra Twitter: ahora Dogecoin to the Moon

The rise of meme coins has been a surprise not only in terms of the growth of their collective market value, but also their utility. The leading meme coin Dogecoin was originally launched as a joke by its co-founders in 2013 had reached a market cap of over $65 billion in May. Maybe the clue to its later success is in its origination, as a fork of Lucky Coin, itself a fork of Litecoin, which was a fork of Bitcoin! While its original creators never intended it to become so popular, or to rise in value to such stratospheric levels, it’s clearly ‘taken on a life of its own’ to coin a phrase. Now there’s a new twist in the Dogecoin’s tale, with the backing of celebrities like Tesla’s Elon Musk and Shark Tank’s Mark Cuban, it’s now being used for payment. So how seriously should we take this latest chapter in the development of meme coins, as a form of payment? While it’s tempting to see the use of Dogecoin for payment as one more inexplicable jump in its unlikely evolution, its brief history shows what’s a consistent driving force behind this – its community. Just two weeks after its launch in 2013 the Reddit forum r/Dogecoin had over 19k members. It’s this community that drove the first real use of the coin, when in 2014 it quickly raised $30,000 to send the to the Winter Olympics, in a real-life version of the comedy sports movie ‘Cool Runnings’. Jamaican bobsled team And without a PR agency to spread the news, the story was picked up by media outlets, broadcasting the meme coin to the world. Dogecoin’s fun meme-driven community backing and simplicity to use are key to its popular success. Maybe it found a market by accident rather than design, but that also underlines the power of memes to spread ideas and grow products. It’s perhaps not surprising that Shark Tank star and billionaire owner of the NBA team Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban, told US-broadcaster CNBC recently that not only is Dogecoin “a medium that can be used for the acquisition of goods and services,” but that also "the community for doge is the strongest when it comes to using it as a medium of exchange". This was in turn endorsed by Elon Musk, who tweeted: “I’ve been saying this for a while.” So how did Musk, with his Tesla and SpaceX commitments, get so involved with Doge? Apparently, his first contact was in 2018 when Musk asked Doge co-founder, Jackson Palmer, to help him with Twitter scam bots. The next year in 2019, he tweeted that, “Dogecoin might be my fav cryptocurrency. It’s pretty cool.” His follow-up tweets in 2020 only served to inflate the prices of Doge, including in January 2021 when Musk helped send Dogecoin prices up 800%. So how is Musk ‘putting his money where his mouth is’ and going from meme to payment promoter? The answer lies in his SpaceX business. In the first quarter of 2022 SpaceX will accept Dogecoin as full payment for a payload on the officially titled ‘DOGE-1 mission to the Moon’. DOGE-1 will fly a 40-kilogram cube satellite as a payload on a Falcon 9 rocket, with a hi-tech payload. SpaceX also confirmed that the DOGE-1 mission would adopt Dogecoin to set the standard for “interplanetary commerce”. Musk sees the meme coin as having a future in payments that’s not simply confined to planet Earth! A latecomer to the meme coin payment party, entrepreneur, and star of Shark Tank Mark Cuban, is altogether more down to earth with his meme coin payment proposals. Cuban’s basketball team, the Dallas Mavericks, is rolling out the coin for payment with the help of BitPay, which is providing it as a payment option for its merchants and consumers. The blockchain payments company confirmed that, “Mavs Fans for Life (MFFLs) can now use Dogecoin to buy tickets and , making Mavs merchandise more accessible to MFFLs everywhere, a decentralized, peer-to-peer digital currency, Dogecoin enables customers to easily send money online with very low transaction fees and fast transaction times.” Commenting on the Doge-related deal Cuban admitted they provided Dogecoin “because we can!”. He added that for fans who wanted to know more, “we strongly encourage you to talk to your teenagers who are on tik tok and ask them about it”. So, what makes the meme token so attractive for payments, beyond its popularity? BitPay said Dogecoin’s large supply and low price facilitated ‘efficient micro-tipping content’. "It has an advantage Bitcoin or Ethereum doesn’t necessarily have at this time: Dogecoin has low fees. And when you combine a strong community with low fees, that’s a great recipe. I expect it to continue to grow, and that utility will get greater," said a BitPay spokesperson. The well-known crypto exchange Coinbase that it’s e-commerce platform ‘Coinbase Commerce’ has begun accepting Dogecoin for payments, allowing its merchants to start accepting the meme token. Talking of e-commerce, it may be a little ambitious to believe the giant online retailer Amazon will take up Dogecoin for payment purposes, but that hasn’t stopped a petition titled ‘Doge4Amazon’ from picking up strong support in 2021. Started three years ago with 20k supporters, in the last 6 months its jumped from 75k, to 100k, and now to close to 250K signatures. The petition reads: “Amazon.com, being a leader in innovation, should accept Dogecoin as a form of payment. Dogecoin is fast, cheap, and stable. It is stable in value, has the lowest transaction fee of other major coins, has a huge supply of coins, and has a very large, active community with ongoing development.” merchandise online At the other end of the e-commerce scale from Amazon, it’s reported that SamandZoey.com, a company that produces custom textile designs said they are accepting Dogecoin. “Accepting cryptocurrency, including Dogecoin, seemed like a natural next step for us—we have a history of listening to what our customers want. I’m surprised other eCommerce stores aren’t doing the same,” a spokesman said. Dogecoin may dominate the meme coin landscape but that’s also starting to change, as the demand continues to grow. In July it was reported that Baby Doge, in a bid to follow in Dogecoin’s footsteps, is also moving into e-commerce as a payment option. It’s teamed up with Coin Payments, allowing the meme coin to be used with over 5 million e-commerce businesses worldwide. For aficionados of meme coins, Dogecoin isn’t the only popular crypto coin that was created in 2013, with a fun animal identity and with strong community backing. MONA was launched in 2013 as part of the MonaCoin Project and is based on the meme of a cat-like figure. It was designed by an anonymous developer who goes by Mr.Watanabe, who like Bitcoin’s anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto has never been officially identified. The meme token, which in March had a market value of around $134 million, is mainly used in Japan which may explain why it’s not more widely known. Its key practical use is as a currency in several stores (both online and on the high street), and according to Investopedia the currency can also be used through Monappy, “an online platform where MonaCoin holders can exchange coins for digital assets, such as coupons, electronics, and other items”. While its success for use in payments was helped by Japan’s Financial Services Agency approval in 2017, the cat-like currency is still dwarfed by Dogecoin in terms of popularity. Clearly, despite their fun-filled origins meme coins are here to stay and rising in global popularity. Led by Dogecoin, especially in the US, and with celebrity backing from Musk and Cuban, it’s not difficult to see the advantages of its payment-friendly features in terms of low fees and infinite supply. If a major retailer like Amazon jumps on the meme coin bandwagon, it will become a major payment option for consumers. Indeed, you can already see innovation within the mobile meme-coin-led consumer space with DogeCola, a token designed to keep the price stable and avoid Whale speculation, while also offering its own soft drink cola later this year. It’s also not hard to see meme coins use in related sectors such as music and gaming, as a cross-proprietary platform currency to enable the vision of the ‘multiverse’. In a recent report, UK-based blockchain VC Outlier Ventures sees the need to have a crypto decentralized core, with its own payment system as key: “The defining characteristic of a true Metaverse is that it needs its own economy and currencies native to it, where value can be earnt, spent, lent, borrowed or invested interchangeably in both a physical or virtual sense and most importantly without the need for a government.” Whether it will be used seriously for business-to-business payments, apart from one-offs like SpaceX’s use for promotional purposes, remains to be seen. After all, stablecoins such as Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC) are also viable commercial options for digital payments that are fast and low cost and have been expanding rapidly in 2021. But one thing’s for sure about the meme coins, the sky’s the limit when it comes to future payment options for consumers keen to be able to use their favorite cryptocurrency. “Memecoins could be another driver in the new metaverse. Who knows?“ - Anndy Lian, Chairman, BigONE Exchange & Author of Blockchain Revolution 2030 Also published . here

Will We Ever Use Meme Coins for Payment in the Metaverse?

The Nintendo Wii wasn’t just a successful Nintendo console, it was one of the and most successful consoles of all time. Nintendo’s next console, the Nintendo Wii U, would never reach the height of its predecessor. best-selling It’s one of the company’s worst-selling consoles. However, the Wii U still had a ton of great games. Even though they weren’t played by tens of millions, plenty of people still enjoyed the console and the games it had to offer. So, here are the best Wii U games of all time ranked by sales. The Best Selling Wii U Games 10. Mario Party 10 9. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD 8. New Super Luigi U 7. Super Mario Maker 6. Splatoon 5. Nintendo Land 4. Super Smash Bros. for Wii U 3. New Super Mario Bros. U 2. Super Mario 3D World 1. Mario Kart 8 10. Mario Party 10 - 2.2 Million Copies Sold Mario Party is a staple for Nintendo consoles, the majority of their consoles have a Mario Party game to go along with it, and there’s a reason for that. The Mario Party games are a blast, and even though things can get quickly heated, that adds to the experience of the game. Mario Party 10 is no exception and is another fun installment in the series. Released in 2015, this Wii U game sees players competing on a board game to get as many stars as possible. You do this by traversing through the map and playing minigames to collect enough coins to buy stars. Some of the minigames include Cheep Cheep Leap, Bobsled Battle, and Paintball Battle. The Mario Party series is massively popular, and Mario Party 10 proved it once again. The game would go on to sell . 2.2 million copies 9. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD - 2.3 Million Copies Sold A remaster of the GameCube game, Wind Waker HD takes players back to the world of Zelda. In this adventure, Link must once again stop Ganon except this game puts a heavy emphasis on sailing, as Wind Waker takes place on the sea. To sail, Link must use the Wind Waker baton to control the wind. Equipped with this baton and being surrounded by his new friends, Link takes the fight to Ganon. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker sold well on the GameCube, and it’s able to say the same on the Wii U. The game managed to sell , outselling other Zelda games such as Hyrule Warriors and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD. It’s the best-selling Wii U game in the Zelda franchise. 2.3 million copies 8. New Super Luigi U - 3 Million Copies Sold The often-overlooked brother of Mario, Luigi would get his time to shine in 2013. Officially titled the “Year of Luigi” by Nintendo, numerous Luigi-centered titles were released by the company. One of these games was New Super Luigi U, an expansion to the New Super Mario Bros. U game. A big change in the game is the difficulty. New Super Luigi U is harder than the original game, with each level having a 100-second timer. Luigi fans everywhere jumped at the chance to play this challenging game, and it went on to sell . 3 million copies New Super Luigi U is one of the best-selling Wii U games of all time, and we think it’s an indication that Luigi deserves to star in more games. 7. Super Mario Maker - 4 Million Copies Sold For fans of platformer Mario games, Super Mario Maker is a must-have. This 2015 game allows players to not only create and upload their platform levels but also allows them to play levels from players all over the world. The levels can be inspired by games such as Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, and New Super Mario Bros. U. Super Mario Maker gave players an outlet to create the levels of their dreams. If they wanted to add 10 Bowsers, or if they wanted to make the hardest level possible they could. This creative game would go on to sell , and would eventually get a sequel on the Nintendo Switch. 4 million copies 6. Splatoon - 4.9 Million Copies Sold Another Wii U game with a heavy emphasis on online play is Splatoon. This 2015 game was the first entry in the new third-person shooter franchise from Nintendo. Shooter and Nintendo in the same sentence may seem off, but the game is kid-friendly and on-brand for the company. Opposing teams shoot colorful ink at each other in various game modes. Some of these modes include Turf War, Splat Zones, and Tower Control. Even though Splatoon is a newer series, it still sold well on the Wii U. It sold . Its success would lead to a sequel being made for the Nintendo Switch. 4.9 million copies Splatoon characters were included in the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe rosters. Splatoon 3 is set to release sometime in the future. 5. Nintendo Land - 5.2 Million Copies Sold Nintendo consoles are home to fun games to play with the whole family, and Nintendo Land was another game in that category. The game is packed with 13 minigames that are based on Nintendo franchises. Some of the franchises represented include The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Animal Crossing, and Super Mario Bros. The minigames can also be played by different-sized groups. It can be played by one person, or by a group of 5. Nintendo Land would go on to sell . Although no official sequel was released, another minigame title was released for the Nintendo Switch. 1-2-Switch was also a launch title for the console, similar to how Nintendo Land was the launch title for the Wii U. 5.2 million copies 4. Super Smash Bros. for Wii U - 5.3 Million Copies Sold The Super Smash Bros. franchise has been popular since its first installment in the Nintendo 64. Since then, it has grown exponentially, both in success and its gameplay. What started as a small roster of Nintendo characters fighting each other evolved to a roster of 58 that includes guest characters such as Mega Man and Ryu. Super Smash Bros. for the Wii U sold an incredible . A 3DS version of the game was released at the same time and sold . 5.3 million copies 9.6 million copies Super Smash Bros. is one of the best Wii U games not only in terms of sales but also because it’s one of the most fun games the console has to offer. 3. New Super Mario Bros. U - 5.8 Million Copies Sold Mario and his friends go back to their roots in this platforming game. Released in 2012, New Super Mario Bros. U is another installment in the New Super Mario Bros. The game can be played by one person, or they can be joined by three other friends. The plot is a simple but classic story, Princess Peach is captured by Bowser. It’s up to Mario and Luigi to rescue her and save the day. New Super Mario Bros. U was a success for the franchise and sold . The game’s success wasn’t just contained to the base game, New Super Luigi U also sold well. The game would eventually get ported over to the Nintendo Switch, and it would include the Luigi expansion. 5.8 million copies 2. Super Mario 3D World - 5.87 Million Copies Sold Another Mario platformer, Super Mario 3D World came out a year later after New Super Mario Bros. U. As the title states, this game is a 3D platformer as opposed to the usual 2D Mario platformer games. The game can be played by up to four people, and has a heavy emphasis on a new power-up. A cat upgrade transforms the player into a cat that can climb up walls, scratch enemies, and do an air dive. The second best-selling Wii U game of all time, Super Mario 3D World sold . The game’s success didn’t just end with the Wii U. Like other Wii U games, Super Mario 3D World made its way to the Nintendo Switch and was successful there too. 5.87 million copies 1. Mario Kart 8 - 8.4 Million Copies Sold To the surprise of nobody, Mario Kart 8 sits at the top of the best Wii U games of all time. Every Mario Kart is a fun game that can be played with a group of friends, and this game is no exception. The game has a mix of new and returning race tracks for a combined total of 48. Mario Kart 8 also features new items such as the boomerang item and the super horn. The latter item is used to destroy any incoming items such as the infamous blue shell. Besides the new items, the game also features new characters that include Link, Isabelle, and the Villager. Mario Kart 8 sold , almost 3 million more than second place. Although this is a massive number, it gets even higher. 8.4 million copies Nintendo released Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for the Nintendo Switch; it included the base game and all additional content. It would go on to sell , making it the best-selling Switch game of all time. 37 million copies Mario Kart 8 reigns supreme as the best-selling game on two Nintendo consoles. It’s definitively one of the best Wii U games of all time. However, the other games on this list are great as well, and there are other good games that didn’t make the top 10. Although the Nintendo Wii U didn’t sell well, the games were incredible nonetheless. More in Gaming: Gen-Z: The Generation of Gamers 5 Best GPUs for Crypto Mining and Gaming 10 Best Nintendo Wii Games of All Time Ranked by Sales For more Nintendo lists and articles make sure to down below! subscribe to our newsletter

The 10 Best Wii U Games of All Time Ranked by Sales

Is the joke on me for even attempting an analysis? But I’m supposed to be a non-lefty intellectual, so this certainly should be right up my alley. But I’m also oft with the unpopular fringe, naturally repelled by almost anything that becomes popular. Bitcoin (BTC) is different, however, as it truly will always be unpopular and fringe, as I shall explain in a bit. But could I be missing something here about doge? Are there more similarities between bitcoin and dogecoin only in some kind of reverse? Is dogecoin the cryptocurrency, which is actually most like bitcoin? Both grew in use and popularity unexpectedly and quietly—until the mainstream, of course, started taking notice—but still remaining within the universe of the fringe. They’re both still enemies and threats to the institutionalized mainstream. Difference is, BTC was created as money and DOGE was but a joke. Satoshi Nakamoto seemed bent on making sure the world knew the true purpose of bitcoin, when he embedded these words in the BTC Genesis Block, “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks”. It was in reference to the Times headline at that time and it seemed Satoshi created BTC as an alternative to the financial system, which he believed problematic with the choice of ‘brink’ (identifying key players), with the word choices ‘Chancellor’ and ‘banks’ (alluding to the cozy relationship between government and the financial industry), and the system they created, enabling a ‘bailout’ (which happens often enough as it is on the ‘brink’ of a ‘second'). On January 9, 2009, the open source bitcoin client was released, hosted at SourceForge. One of its first supporters, Hal Finney downloaded the software and was the recipient of the first ever bitcoin transaction--10 bitcoins from Satoshi Nakamoto. Meanwhile, we have the less serious and more fun narrative of dogecoin. Jackson Palmer, average geek Australian marketer for one of the world’s largest tech companies, took aim at bitcoin and the world of cryptos, by tweeting, “Investing in dogecoin, pretty sure it’s the next big thing.” To his surprise, the tweet generated so much attention. Palmer decided he wanted to continue having fun and went on with the joke. He bought the dogecoin.com domain and uploaded a Shibe on a coin with a note on the site: “If you want to make dogecoin a reality, get in touch.” Meanwhile, somewhere in the UK, a video-game obsessed software engineer at IBM, took his own aim at the crypto world. Like Palmer, he too wanted to have some fun. He created his own cryptocurrency called “Bells”, named after currency in Nintendo’s Animal Crossing. But unlike BTC’s proof-of-work consistent rewards system, “Bells” was random. You never knew if you would get any or if it would be one bell or 500 bells. But unlike Palmer’s coin proposal, the cryptocurrency community didn’t get the joke and didn’t like bells. Markus found Palmer’s message, contacted him, and together they worked on dogecoin with the primary purpose of having fun. Markus admits to finding chunks of bitcoin's source code incomprehensible, but knew enough to change a few core elements. He created 100 billion dogecoins (as opposed to bitcoin's 21 million), made them easier to mine, changed the font to Comic Sans, and changed every mention of the word 'mine' to 'dig' (because dogs don't mine, they dig). Reddit users loved it and started sharing dogecoin back and forth constantly, expanding its user base and increasing its value. In 2014, Palmer and Markus attached a more ‘humanitarian’ aspect to Doge, when they successfully raised funds for Jamaica’s bobsled team to compete in the Winter Olympics. They also raised enough funds to build water wells in Kenya as well as funds to help train assistance dogs for autistic children. But as the community grew, Palmer and Markus began clashing with members of the community, who were beginning to look at Doge as wealth opportunity and hedge. In their view, dogecoin was a silly thing that should remain silly. Eventually, both founders bailed out on the coin and today remain crypto skeptics. But there may be more to this than meets the eye. This seemingly large disparity in seriousness (practical opposites) may shed more light into some sort of congruence or kinship between the coins. For starters, both are products of human design with a collaborative element that brought each into fruition—Satoshi and Finney, unassumingly in the specialized, technical, fringe realm of cryptography; Palmer and Markus, in the rebellious-fringe world of Reddit. Both coins were given as tips and rewards within their worlds and groups. And while both were products of human design, they were also a natural and organic consequence to an environment of human created parameters and controls. Thus, one can argue, at the core, both coins were natural creations, which organically grew. BTC was created by its founder, Satoshi Nakamoto as “a purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash” without going through a financial institution. Dogecoin.com defines Doge as, “an open-source peer-to-peer digital currency.” One is “cash” and the other, “currency”. And here, once again, we see a slight (but possibly) significant deviation, where the former is ‘cash’ (defined by an online dictionary as ‘money’) and the latter, ‘currency’ (‘a system of money in general use in a particular country’ or ‘the fact or quality of being generally accepted or in use’). One can argue it’s mere semantics but there might be more to this random and accidental semantic difference that could’ve extended from the intended purpose of each—a serious proposition for an alternative financial system and a joke—but both reactions to and consequences of the contrived and controlled money system. Contrary to popular belief, BTC hints at an intrinsic value; while Doge, like all other altcoins doesn’t—for the simple reason only Bitcoin truly has the fourth characteristic of money—noncounterfeitability. BTC is unique as it has one characteristic that no other coin has—immutability. This unique characteristic, precisely because it is unique, gives BTC an intrinsic value. Unlike bitcoin, all non-bitcoin blockchains are merely tamper-evident, meaning-- you can’t change something without anyone noticing. But there is a higher security standard, which only bitcoin is--tamper-proof because of its proof-of-work mining algorithm, which in turn makes it immutable. Anyone with decent enough coding skills can change code; but Satoshi was smart enough to ensure the near impossibility of successfully carrying this out by grounding the BTC system in sound economics—specifically, in the difficulty of getting every member of the network to adopt the same changes to the software. By ensuring that finding the solution to the mathematical problem consumes large quantities of processing power and electricity, the incentive to not include any invalid transactions in the blocks to receive the block reward, makes the cost of writing a block extremely high and the cost of verifying its validity extremely low. Thus, we can argue, bitcoin might have some intrinsic value as it actually uses something of value (energy) when it converts electricity to truthful records through the expenditure of processing power; and it is the only one that can make this claim. Moreover, it is the only crypto and blockchain that ever will be (as it is--immutable) because it has done it already and it was able to do it at a time, when nobody cared to see, look, notice, or even care because in its early days, the network had little economic value. The value of BTC is entirely dependent on the integrity of the network, which is in the best interest of its miners to maintain. It is their life blood. And after a decade, any attempt to compromise or attack has simply become too expensive. To add, the effort to carry out an attack, change, or compromise the system renders the attacker’s loot worthless. Satoshi ensured BTC’s failure would benefit neither the attacker nor the groups and individuals maintaining the bitcoin ecosystem. I stress, it is the only one of its kind and it will always be the only one for the simple reason it already happened. The very context of its creation and the manner in which it proceeded, ensured its immutability and it is the only one that ever will be. It thus, makes sense to refer to bitcoin as ‘money’ and Doge (as well as all other alts) as ‘currency’—‘a system of money in general use in a particular country’ (community, system, or group) or ‘the fact or quality of being generally accepted or in use’. While BTC is also a consequence of ‘general acceptance’, its achievement of immutability and the uniqueness of this quality, has given it an intrinsic value, which cements this ‘general acceptance’ into permanence. According to Nassim Taleb, bitcoin is antifragile. According to Andreas Antonopalous bitcoin is nimble and robust with the immune system of a sewer rat. And so bitcoin dodged (‘avoided by a sudden quick movement’) the dodge (‘a sudden quick movement to avoid’) in Doge (the popular meme coin). As Palmer and Markus took aim at bitcoin in order to, in a sense, avoid the seriousness of its cause and purpose, BTC was simply too quick and done, it had dodged even before the aim. Perhaps what Palmer and Markus really wanted to hit was the phenomenon of bubble creation (prevalent in the crypto world) and not the seriousness, which, upon a closer look, is actually an endearing quality of BTC in synch with the original concerns of Doge’s founders. They didn’t need to poke fun at BTC (and even the alts), if they understood the underlying effect of the phenomenon of the money-creation enterprise, which bitcoin launched—a kind of perpetual real-time demonstration and experience of the silliness of the almost century-old financial system. But altcoins don’t fret. As Andreas Antonopoulos says, “money is language human beings created to express value to each other.” It isn’t value but an expression of value. So there definitely can be and certainly is space for the development of various expressions. BTC merely beat all to immutability; and there can never be one like it for the simple reason it already happened in all its unassumingness, when no one bothered or cared to look. Yes, it is true, altcoins are companies and thus, aren’t truly decentralized. Saifedean Ammous believes the concentration of currency holding, processing power, and programming skills in the hands of one group of people who are effectively partners in a venture defeats the entire purpose of employing a blockchain structure; and should the currencies appreciate significantly, a small team of creators become extremely rich, gaining power and roles reserved for nation-states. In addition, it would be relatively easy for central banks to get any of the teams behind this currency to destroy it, or alter its operation. Unlike bitcoin, altcoins aren’t immutable nor are they tamper-proof. And while efforts such as the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) are attempting to precisely bring ‘decentralization’ to the fore, without active management by a team of developers and marketers, no digital currency will attract any attention or capital in a sea of thousands of currencies (and still growing). The need for management is inevitable; but as Ammous says, “the re-injection of subjective human management is at odds with the objective of making code into law, and questions the entire rationale of smart contracts”, of which these DAOs are based. Unlike bitcoin, which quietly and unassumingly grew in the wild, without any authority controlling it, altcoins have had the unfortunate reality of BTC’s immutability as past and achieved (growing even more with time), which is anathema to a project that wants to demonstrate credible commitment to a fixed monetary policy. Reality is, bitcoin is the only truly market-based security model that is immutable and tamper-proof. While it was originally a product of rational human design (Satoshi), its growth and development was and has been organic and spontaneous—a product of human action vs. human design, having no office, board, owners, or any centralized authority except the collective economic incentive locked onto the goal of maintaining the network’s integrity. Nonetheless, I say, altcoins, do not fret. All this merely means, bitcoin is the only one—the unique standard, which poses as a reminder to all of calling a spade a spade, and to remember why any altcoin came to be in the first place—as this can be easily lost in the space. Even if only BTC is immutable, its immutability has given all altcoins and future altcoins a standard by which to premise their potential solutions. The bitcoin standard allows anyone access to a moral compass without actually moralizing. Bitcoin captured natural law into a tangible system, token, and store of value, fueling disruption in reverse into communication. Bitcoin already secured immutability and it would be pointless and even a waste of time and resources for others to do the same. As Andreas Antonopoulos says, for other blockchains, DAOs, and Dapps, governance (how you take funds and manage them, how you take the energy of a community and manage it, how you reinvent the corporation) is the killer app. Bitcoin already killed unsound money. It’s time to find other things to kill. To be fair though, altcoins such as etherium (the number two) aren’t competing with bitcoin. We return to Doge. It seems Satoshi was well informed and might have predicted the coming blockchain world, which certainly easily enables and creates 1984, further entrenching surveillance and the continued creation and inflation of bubbles. Satoshi seems to have leveraged the blockchain with bitcoin, serving as the single one that cannot be touched; in addition, the hedge against bubbles posed by the alts. And Doge might just be this leverage and hedge in reverse of BTC’s seriousness. Indeed, it reminds us we can also have fun in the plight of the fight against the conflation of money with currency, blockchain with database, and human action with human design. The meme typically consists of a picture of a Shiba Inu dog accompanied by multicolored text in Comic Sans font in the foreground. The text, representing a kind of internal monologue, is deliberately written in a form of broken English. Dogecoin might actually have a case for immutability without actually being immutable. It seems bitcoin is dodging Doge as Doge might be dodging the alts and BTC bit by bit. If Doge does become a popular currency, it would merely be getting on with the same joke as fiat—only this time, it would have a standard (BTC) to keep the fun clean, reminding us of the constant danger of the financial system possibly going to the dogs, as we human beings tend to be quite forgetful.

Bitcoin Dodging Doge as Doge Dodges Bit by Bit

The Dogecoin Salut on The HackerNoon Podcast

Google’s closed search index makes their control indomitable in the space and shields them from scrutiny. OIP wants to change that. In one of the most memorable presentations from Consensus 2021 in late May, “You Are Getting Manipulated Online! Here's How Crypto Could Help”, Amy James, Co-Inventor of Open Index Protocol (OIP) helped explain another aspect of Google’s questionable practices and, better yet, a potential solution. James and co-presenters Dr. Robert Epstein and Devon Read presented a case for the ill effects of Google’s monopoly on search -- citing an unregulated ability to influence people with search results and a crushing state of monopoly coming from the size of their index. James explained that Google’s index is too large and not open-source -- so anyone entering the search space, or anything that uses indexing and searching such as a video platform or social media platform, either has to deal with Google to use their backend or will be hopelessly outmatched by the data that Google has already amassed and now hordes. OIP and PIN Network are working on test cases to create expand their open-source blockchain layer with a comprehensive record of metadata -- something that would allow Web 3 users to track the actions of entities like Google and all the same time provides an index new tech players can use to power new search and social-based platforms. Effectively, OIP’s goal is to level the playing field, allow new tech companies to compete, and create accountability from everyone including tech giants like Google. We interviewed James after Consensus 2021. Her responses are below. Amy James How will an open metadata layer level the playing field with tech companies? How will it serve the user? An open metadata layer allows anyone to resell a publishers content according to their terms, either as a platform or as an individual influencer, and it allows anyone to audit the terms of a given record - as a result, there will be real competition between platforms to put compelling and interesting content in front of audiences interested in paying for it, without the incompatibility problems and inefficiency waste that stem from the walled-gardens model. Right now, platforms compete with each other based on the content of their index which means that the user has to chase the content they want from platform-to-platform and they have a terrible user experience. With an open metadata layer, platforms will have to compete based on how well they serve users, not based on their content since they will all have the same access to the content. Users gain trust because the system is transparent -- they can avoid the headaches of the walled garden model and instead can support the creators and platforms they like and have confidence in where their money is going. How long do you expect the adoption cycle to be? Is an open metadata layer on blockchain a logical continuation of Web 3? Web 3 will mean users' data and anonymity is protected by default, processes usually done by centralized data centers are instead done by open networks, deep fakes are the source of funny gags but not real threats to information dissemination, and creative content producers can earn a real and reliable living. And yes, to achieve these goals absolutely require a unified and open metadata layer. Because of the way these web 3 networks are designed, as they grow, they’ll become more consistent and more rewarding to their users -- leading ultimately to a growing pile on effect until it's just the default way to run a business online. Sir Tim, when describing the early days of building the World Wide Web used the analogy of a bobsled team that has to work really hard to push their sled for quite a while, exerting enormous energy to get it up to speed, but eventually, its own momentum starts to take over and they start jumping in and the ride takes off. Are there any near-term use cases you can discuss for the network? What do you see PIN as being ideal for, using its meta data layer? The most near-term use case that we’re helping to build is a news platform for Al Bawaba, MENA's largest independent news platform. By using OIP on the PIN blockchain, they get both censorship resistance and micropayments so that they can be self-sustainable without depending on the tech giants' good grace. PIN's metadata layer is ideal for any kind of public data - scientific and academic data, property records & public records in general, all types of digital content like videos and music. If it's on the internet and should be public, it is ideal to use OIP on PIN Network. In terms of collecting data -- will you work directly with publishers for more input? What are the advantages to the publisher? Yes absolutely -- we have already been getting input from publishers as we've built OIP, and will continue doing so. Creators and publishers will also have a significant stake in the ongoing governance and future development of the OIP spec. ### OIP is a figurative David taking on Goliath tech. It’s hard to argue with the clear crushing monopoly big tech like Google currently has. Clearly, U.S. regulators don’t know how to deal with the changing influence of platforms like Facebook and the dance of Big Tech Companies looking to preserve their power and regulators who are facing possible threats to free speech and an orderly, truly representative system of democratic government. What OIP is addressing is an existential threat to our society -- what happens when private companies know too much and therefore get too much power. The question remains -- what publications, states, and organizations will get involved next to help OIP build from the ground up an index that can challenge the index Google has been building since 1998. Amy James is the co-inventor of Open Index Protocol, an open-source specification for a persistent worldwide index, and CEO of Alexandria Labs, a company building Web 3 products and services. The spec is currently in use by Caltech, Overstock subsidiary Medici Land Governance, the State of Wyoming, MENA's largest independent news platform & many others. Open Index Protocol’s mission is to be “the technical solution to the problem of walled garden platforms monopolizing the web.” Cover modified from image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

OIP: The Protocol that’s Taking on the Google Search Index Monopoly

Ask yourself this question: what is the most powerful, yet relatively untapped force on earth at this moment? You might think of the ability of sustainable energy to replace fossil fuels, the strength of youth voices as they attempt to take power back from the boomer powers that be, or as it's been hammered through the heads of technologists over the past 5 years, decentralization. The promise of decentralization is as follows: instead of the corporations owning all the services you pay for, the services run themselves and act in a truly fair way towards all users. This means no more price gouging of Epipens, no more ridiculously high medical bills, no more violations of net neutrality, and so on. To get to this idealized form of world decentralization, however, we need to think about the . Think about the one omnipresent force that is on every single person's mind right now: virality. how Going viral online can create a force as unstoppable as the pandemic that currently permeates the world's population. The medium at which anything goes viral, memes, can potentially take something insignificant and valueless and infuse it with one of the most valuable things in the world: attention. According to viral marketing expert, Andrew Taraba of Bizurk Software, "memes are the lowest common denominator" of information, with the potential to "transmit the same ideas as paragraphs of work with only a few lines of text combined with familiar imagery." Taraba declares that "memes have the ability to cross borders, cultures, and spread ideas across the world in a way no other form of media can." As today's modern economy , we need to consider the ability of memes to drive the world's focus. shifts from a material-based economy to an attention-based one Take Dogecoin, for instance. As an open-source peer-to-peer digital currency, Dogecoin sits at a $440 million market capitalization. As the brainchild of programmer Billy Markus and marketer Jackson Palmer, Dogecoin . The founders wanted to create a version of Bitcoin without all the Silk Road baggage that cast a stain on the cryptocurrency community. After years of up and down growth, Dogecoin reached a 2 billion market capitalization during the early 2018 cryptocurrency bubble. started as a joke Dogecoin's impact extends beyond monetary growth. To evaluate true impact we should look at Dogecoin from the lens of social impact. Social impact is defined as "significant, positive change that addresses a pressing social challenge." In 2014, a fundraiser was established by the Dogecoin community to to compete at the Sochi Winter Olympics. The team had qualified but could not afford to send their athletes to Sochi. In only two days, the Dogecoin community raised $50,000 to send the Jamaican team to Sochi. The Dogecoin community also raised money to fund clean water in Africa and to support dog rescues. The strength of Dogecoin lies in the fact that its community places a large emphasis on doing good for the world. This type of community can only exist when the desire for profit is set aside. raise money for the Jamaican Bobsled Team As stated earlier, Dogecoin started and operated as a "joke" for a long period. The creators of Dogecoin did not seriously consider how far they could take Dogecoin until it blew up. What would happen if the creators of Dogecoin truly understood the power of virality and memetic mutation? At this point in time, it might be too late for Dogecoin. However, a recently released decentralized finance project named Tendies (named for chicken tenders) may have picked up the baton passed by Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer. accidentally Tendies follows a deflationary token model where token supply is regularly drained, increasing the price of remaining TEND tokens over time. Immediately after release, the Tendies drew over two days. It surpassed the volume of heavyweights such as USDT and DAI. In turn, the crypto world was stormed with an onslaught of chicken tender related memes. This culminated in TRON founder and living meme, Justin Sun, tweeting about Tendies being listed on his Poloniex exchange. As of now, the volume for Tendies has cooled off and the Tendies team has been quietly, yet diligently, working on developing their project while continuing to engage the Tendies community with regular contests and giveaways. $10 million of daily trading volume As with Dogecoin, we must discuss the layer beyond monetary gain: social impact. What kind of potential does an imaginary token about chicken tenders have with regards to social good? Quite a bit, actually. Tendies was designed, at its conception, to become viral. Dogecoin was a joke, while Tendies is a concerted effort to drive adoption through memes. If Tendies succeeds to become a ubiquitous cryptocurrency that permeates all aspects of our lives, it will be through memes. Imagine cutting out corporations from profiting off of people, well, existing. Imagine anyone being able to donate to any charity they want due to ease of use and ubiquity of decentralized currencies. With the debut of Tendies, many other coins focusing on memetic mutation have emerged. If Tendies or a similarly meme-minded coin succeeds at the highest level, that could happen. And it will be through virality. The developers of Tendies understand that in today's attention driven world, significance only exists when people talk about something. This mantra applies not only to Tendies, but the overall crypto world. Outside of the crypto "bubble," does anyone really care about digital currency? Why would a random Redditor be interested in decentralized money? Why would a random Tiktoker care about Ethereum's 2.0 mainnet? The answer lies in memes. In the modern era, memes in the form of funny images and video clips drive information faster than any other form of communication. Coins like Dogecoin, Tendies, and other memetically driven projects represent not only a funny image but the promise of a world build for the people. We can't rely on venture capital-funded startups or coins controlled by giant mining pools to dictate the terms of a decentralized world. We need to listen to the voice of the people. The megaphone they use is a simple one: memes.

The Power of Memes: Tendies, Dogecoin, and the Potential for Social Impact

This year has been an exciting one for the North American sports market, which is set to reach $73.5 billion in 2019, according to the PWC 2018 Sports Outlook. The ripple effects of legalized sports betting in the United States have been felt throughout the sports ecosystem, bringing an even sharper focus to the competition for sports media rights and accurate sports data for bettors and oddsmakers. The convergence of sports and technology is driving the next-generation of viewing and the stadium experience, empowering a data-driven sports culture with fan-centric offerings. Let’s explore a few of today’s existing technologies that will shape the future of sports. Performance tracking, wearables and more Smart wearables, tracking sensors and other connected devices have been gaining momentum in the sports industry for a few years. Today, Catapult’s chest-strap is used by over 400 sports organizations across the globe and every uniformed NFL player wears shoulder pads with Zebra sensors. The reason for such sweeping adoption is the immense volume of performance and health data these devices supply to athletes, coaches, and sports professionals. The speed of adoption shows no signs of slowing, and the technology is evolving beyond tracking chips that are integrated into sports equipment or traditional wearables such as smart watches and activity trackers. As sensors become smaller and all but invisible, they can be woven into the very fabric of equipment or clothing. is now expanding in the direction of smart clothing and electronic textiles, such as the self-heating jackets that , or Nike’s with self-tying laces. Tech giants such as Microsoft, Google, and even are all developing smart fabric and interactive garments, which means we will likely see new products on the market soon. Wearable technology the U.S. team wore at the Winter Olympics in South Korea HyperAdapt shoes Apple The chips themselves are also becoming more intelligent. Combined with AI and virtual assistants, they can potentially analyze the data they track in real-time and give contextual tips to athletes about their health and training routines. For instance, the world’s first are capable of “offering real-time voice coaching to guide the user through their running program.” Imagine a smart baseball bat or a smart golf club that can measure your performance and advise on how to improve your skills! AI earphones with Gait Analysis In the future, wearable tech companies will focus not only on hardware but on software and usability components, such as data visualization, predictive analytics, and user experience. AI-powered sports analytics The sports industry has entered a period of rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in the analytical sector. As I discussed in , is one of the most prolific areas in sports technology, forecast to grow at a CAGR of 56.66% between 2017–2021. Maturing developments in AI technology are one of the factors driving this growth, as there is simply no way for human analysts to process the current volume of data and find patterns as quickly or as accurately as machines. Additionally, the interaction between humans and AI is finally reaching the point where sports professionals understand how to ask the machine the right questions. my recent article sports analytics helps athletes, teams and coaches navigate through complex performance and game analysis and provides them with actionable insights that are backed by factual and contextual data. Today, AI-based sports analytics are already used in scouting new talent, developing strategies for specific opponents, reducing injuries, and boosting individual performance. Assistive AI For example, Sportlogiq, a Montreal-based AI startup that is working with 24 NHL teams, was one of the first to spot Sean Durzi, a 19-year-old defense player in the Ontario Hockey Leagues. Durzi is, , at “the top of the list of players expected to be chosen this year” in the NHL draft. according to experts In the world of soccer, a new assistive AI platform, , landed a big win when the Croatian national team reached the World Cup final for the first time in its history. Croatia was the first national team to use the STATS match preparation tool. STATS Edge Computer vision As the sports ecosystem is putting increasingly more focus on the fan experience, AI plays an essential role in shaping a relevant and impactful customer journey for sports viewers at home and in arenas. , the ability of a machine to recognize, analyze and contextualize visual data, is one of the most influential and compelling types of AI for sports. The market for computer vision systems is projected to reach $25.32 billion by 2023, at a CAGR of 47.54% between 2018 and 2023, according to ReportBuyer. Many professional venues today are already equipped with high-resolution and motion tracking cameras that track hundreds of movements and data points during games and produce automated video highlights, but the full potential of this technology is yet to be explored. Computer vision A brilliant example of what computer vision can do for sports came from a California-based company called , which applied its patented technology to sponsorship valuation by tracking and analyzing branding across sports footage and social media mentions. By providing almost instantaneous ROI metrics, GumGum’s computer vision empowers rights holders and brands to reevaluate their sponsorship spending in the digital economy. GumGum Advancements in deep learning and computer vision account for the rise of technology. Sports and entertainment venues are becoming increasingly more invested in utilizing this technology to improve security, combat ticket fraud, and create new tools for advertising and marketing. facial recognition and reportedly tested facial recognition capabilities. It has already been confirmed that facial recognition systems will be used across venues during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. However, there remain significant privacy concerns associated with the use of this particular technology. If face recognition is to gain a firm foothold in the sports world, the sports ecosystem should begin planning how to address security concerns and create a safe and captivating fan experience. Live Nation Madison Square Garden Augmented and virtual reality Computer vision is also vital for augmented reality (AR) development, and together these two technologies have a bright future in sports. , the latest initiative by the L.A. Clippers and sports data analytics firm Second Spectrum, pursues the ultimate goal of creating personalized viewing that puts fans in control of their experience. The combination of computer vision, real-time AI analytics, and augmented reality features allow users to switch between modes that provide different on-screen annotations and animations. is also testing similar statistical widgets and other interactive features on Twitch during its Thursday Night Football live streams. Most recently, ESPN’s iconic show, will be reinvented with a new AR look. Will the ESPN+ streaming service be next to follow the trend? Clippers CourtVision Amazon Around the Horn, Beyond sports broadcasting, stands to enhance the live experience and will be a motivating factor to get fans back to the stadiums. For instance, the San Francisco 49ers, emboldened by the success of their experiments with special AR trading cards and collectibles, recently partnered with MYXR to further expand AR options for their fans at Levi’s Stadium. Minnesota Vikings fans who use the team AR app to unlock special content on the day of the game can even take a VR tour of the Vikings museum at U.S. Bank Stadium to compete with their favorite athletes. This is just the tip of the iceberg. As proves by analyzing Panasonic’s futuristic outlook for smart stadiums showcased during CES 2018, the future is closer than we might think. augmented (and virtual) reality SportTechie Blockchain and cryptocurrencies The sports industry has not been immune to the hype around crypto. The first real success story of cryptocurrency in sports occurred in 2013, when the Jamaican bobsled team launched its own token, Dogecoin, and raised over USD $30,000 to finance their trip to the Sochi Winter Olympics. However, even as the sports world started exploring cryptocurrency and its underlying technology blockchain, we haven’t seen anything major so far. Between the volatility of cryptocurrencies and the abundance of fraudulent ICO schemes, sports companies have mostly stayed away from the crypto market. However, the tide now seems to be changing. This summer, two major leagues announced . The NHL announced a partnership with , a decentralized live video streaming platform that rewards users for producing and hosting unique content, such as fan commentary in sync with live games. SportsCastr even has its own currency, FanChain, which is backed by former NBA commissioner David Stern among other investors. At about the same time, Major League Baseball announced the launch of , a decentralized game that is similar to the popular game of . MLB users can buy digital avatars, trade digital baseball collectibles, earn rewards, and more. Both initiatives aim at reaching new demographics while increasingly engaging new and existing fans. An interesting side effect of such projects is that they could potentially have a tremendous impact on fantasy sports and sports betting. crypto initiatives SportsCastr MLB Crypto Baseball CryptoKitties Unsurprisingly, were one of the first to jump on the crypto train. Collaboration in the gambling sector ranges from offshore sites that accept cryptocurrency as payment to fully blockchain-based platforms such as Edgeless or Wagerr. Now that the federal ban on sports betting has been lifted in the United Sates, gambling operators and sports leagues are exploring new opportunities. If the idea of an integrity fee falls through, will the leagues try to go into the betting business themselves? For example, the MLB could potentially use their existing MLB Crypto token to launch their own blockchain-based sportsbook. gambling companies Despite their current risks, cryptocurrencies present interesting opportunities for both fans and sports professionals. Crypto games, digital collectibles, micro-funding for athletes from their fans — the sports world will definitely be exploring these and other applications in the years to come. Democratization of technology In the coming year, we will see a wider adoption of many technologies in minor leagues and sports. For example, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has approved the use of embedded bat sensors for this spring’s college softball season, just as Major League Baseball accepted the in-game use of bat sensors throughout its minor leagues for the 2018 season. The U.S. Soccer Federation announced a $1.5 billion deal with STATSports to bring professional performance technology to youth and amateur soccer players. The democratization of technology also means exploring new applications. For instance, we could see applications overlaying real-time athlete data and game action with a video feed to boost viewer engagement, providing additional details to sports commentators, or even adjusting your fantasy sports team based on the most accurate data available. A great example is Catapult Sports’ new video analysis tool, , which not only synchronizes tracking data received from the company’s wearables with a video feed, but also adds interactive features such as the ability to draw on the video, automated tagging, and sharing. Vision The future of sports is the fans! It is time for the sports industry to put fans first, giving them freedom to choose what, how and when they want to watch. As the sports world adapts to the user-centric philosophy, it is becoming increasingly intertwined with technology. Many transformative technologies are already available for professional sports ecosystem to help rights holders realize the true value of their content, to enable venues to enhance stadium experience, and to empower athletes and brands to make meaningful connections to fans. I have no doubt that we will see more exciting developments in the next year as the future of sports takes shapes. By Russell Karp, VP Media & Entertainment at DataArt

Technologies of Today That Will Make a Bigger Impact on Sports Tomorrow

By Noah Jessop Investment in the crypto economy of the , as measured by total capital deployment. The pace doesn’t seem to be slowing and as crypto becomes a more common startup financing tool, investors — both institutional and individual — are seeing an unprecedented flow of opportunities. The waves of whitepapers can be overwhelming, but here are thoughts on how to classify new projects in one of four ways. is now roughly equivalent to 5% entire VC industry “Organic” ICOs These are the “original” ICOs — new projects that wouldn’t have been possible without their use of blockchain and crypto technology. The most basic litmus test for this type of ICO is to ask, “is this project completely impossible using a traditional web tech stack?” Definition: The more uncomfortable an idea is relative to the conventional wisdom, the better fit it may well be for the crypto economy. The first major success here was the funding of the Ethereum protocol — tokens that can be used for compute time (and smart contract execution) on a new world computer. Example Company: We’re seeing the establishment of protocols that could ultimately be as transformative in the world as SMTP and HTTP. Pros: When Apple got started, it positioned itself against IBM. Microsoft started as an adjunct to the Altair. Crypto’s breadth is a challenge. Is it a new global reserve currency? An enabler of a specific sort of technological process? A fluid financing mechanism for all sorts of businesses? The fact that the answer to all of these questions is “yes” illustrates crypto’s power and peril. The line between the next big thing and the next big fraud is not immediately clear. Cons: Evaluating crypto projects requires understanding the tech, considering the complex incentives and “monetary policy” within each ecosystem — as well as imagining how hundreds of similar projects will evolve and fit together. That doesn’t include considering how regulators and nations will alter the landscape. This market confusion paves the way for fraud, abuse, and artificial ICOs. “Artificial” ICOs A crypto project’s “Artificial” ICO is often a traditional equity round in disguise, with a white paper in place of a financing deck. It’s only natural for companies — particularly those struggling to find capital through established channels — to seek novel ways to finance their businesses. But these are weeds growing the in crypto garden, a nuisance that will eventually be eliminated out of the market as buyers become more professionalized and savvier. Definition: has the benefit of an endorsement from Paris Hilton, but the drawback of being a utility token that seems ostensibly only useful to buy digital marketing services from one specific adtech company. Example Company: LydiaCoin Many artificial ICOs are designed to look like Organic ICOs, but here are a few tell-tale signs to look for: Does success of the network require one entity to make significant sales, marketing, or integration for the platform to work? If the issuing company completely controls all possible use of a token — why tokenize at all? Is there a requirement for a trusted intermediary for every transaction? It so, what real value does the crypto technology add? Are incentives clear for all market participants — on every side of the network? Is the only reason is to ease capital flows to the company’s ecosystem — and raise capital? (Savvy investors best avoid.) It’s important to note, that a centralized digital asset model can work outside of tokenization. has a robust virtual economy (and secondary marketplace) — but doesn’t require any of the decentralization that crypto promises. Blizzard could no doubt make a small fortune by creating an Ice Crown ICO, but has no need to. World of Warcraft None. This kind of ICO undercuts the credibility of legitimate players in the ecosystem. Pros: Low quality artificial ICOs reinforce the notion that crypto is a haven for fraud, at best, and crime, at worst. Cons: “Synthetic” ICOs A “Synthetic” ICO is when an established, traditionally funded company that has built a sizeable audience plans to make the leap to the crypto economy. In the “ ” of the web, an ICO can be a way to escape the shadows of Amazon and Facebook. For companies that are #2 or #3 (or #10) in a space, shaking up the category can be a smart strategy. Why fight a losing battle when you can change the terms and own the protocol layer? Definition: CPG-ization Kik’s is the best example. Brave’s is another. Example Company: Kin Coin Basic Attention Token Crypto projects often require buy-in from a highly privileged group as a trust component to galvanize a user base in the early days. Companies with a pre-existing audience can short-circuit this step and build critical mass more quickly. For instance, the Kin coin from Kik has much more real-world progression in terms of user base than any of the Artificial ICOs, and many of the wildly successful pure protocols. Pros: It’s not yet clear how these ICOs will mesh with traditional equity financing. Many LP agreements prevent VCs from holding coins. The value of these coins often far surpasses the equity value of the parent company, making valuation tricky. Even for funds who are comfortable handling coins, smoothly exiting a currency without distorting the market price is a completely uncharted territory. If this path is successful for many companies, traditional investors may find themselves wondering what value they really own. Cons: Another con is founders chasing what looks like easy money. When founders see peers raising tens of millions of dollars and ask, “ It can really be a rationalization for Am I wrong to believe my business could make much more sense in this new crypto economy?” “Wow, running an ICO looks so much easier than pitching up and down Sand Hill Road.” “LOL” ICOs If an ICO doesn’t fit any of the above, it’s often a “LOL ICO” — a project designed to make an artistic statement or elicit a laugh. Think of these as the benign cousin of the “Artificial” ICO. Definition: Dogecoin started as a lark — and now has a market cap of over and the project behind it has used proceeds for humanitarian ends, like digging wells in Africa, and hilarious ones, like sponsoring the Jamaican Bobsled Team. Example Company: $125M The early days of the internet were marked by weirdos creating strange things, many of which became, or inspired, the services that power our economy today. Creatives having fun with a new platform is a sign of its importance, not a sign of irrelevance. Pros: None. Don’t be a spoil sport and remember that one should never invest more than they can afford to lose, especially on something with a name like “ ” Cons: CoinyeWest. — Disclosure: this author invests (both personally and through Founder Collective) in crypto assets and startups. Are you an existing business mulling an ICO? We would be happy to hear from you and share what we see in the marketplace.

An Investor’s Guide To The Four Kinds of ICOs

Junior by Robert Abernathy is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . JUNIOR JUNIOR All younger generations have been going to the dogs ... but this one was genuinely sunk! "Junior!" bellowed Pater. "Junior!" squeaked Mater, a quavering echo. "Strayed off again—the young idiot! If he's playing in the shallows, with this tide going out...." Pater let the sentence hang blackly. He leaned upslope as far as he could stretch, angrily scanning the shoreward reaches where light filtered more brightly down through the murky water, where the sea-surface glinted like bits of broken mirror. No sign of Junior. Mater was peering fearfully in the other direction, toward where, as daylight faded, the slope of the coastal shelf was fast losing itself in green profundity. Out there, out of sight at this hour, the reef that loomed sheltering above them fell away in an abrupt cliffhead, and the abyss began. "Oh, oh," sobbed Mater. "He's lost. He's swum into the abyss and been eaten by a sea monster." Her slender stem rippled and swayed on its base and her delicate crown of pinkish tentacles trailed disheveled in the pull of the ebbtide. "Pish, my dear!" said Pater. "There are no sea monsters. At worst," he consoled her stoutly, "Junior may have been trapped in a tidepool." "Oh, oh," gulped Mater. "He'll be eaten by a land monster." "There ARE no land monsters!" snorted Pater. He straightened his stalk so abruptly that the stone to which he and Mater were conjugally attached creaked under them. "How often must I assure you, my dear, that WE are the highest form of life?" (And, as for his world and geologic epoch, he was quite right.) "Oh, oh," gasped Mater. Her spouse gave her up. "JUNIOR!" he roared in a voice that loosened the coral along the reef. Round about, the couple's bereavement had begun attracting attention. In the thickening dusk, tentacles paused from winnowing the sea for their owners' suppers, stalked heads turned curiously here and there in the colony. Not far away, a threesome of maiden aunts, rooted en brosse to a single substantial boulder, twittered condolences and watched Mater avidly. "Discipline!" growled Pater. "That's what he needs! Just wait till I—" "Now, dear—" began Mater shakily. "Hi, folks!" piped Junior from overhead. His parents swiveled as if on a single stalk. Their offspring was floating a few fathoms above them, paddling lazily against the ebb; plainly he had just swum from some crevice in the reef nearby. In one pair of dangling tentacles he absently hugged a roundish stone, worn sensuously smooth by pounding surf. "WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?" "Nowhere," said Junior innocently. "Just playing hide-and-go-sink with the squids." "With the other polyps," Mater corrected him primly. She detested slang. Pater was eyeing Junior with ominous calm. "And where," he asked, "did you get that stone?" Junior contracted guiltily. The surfstone slipped from his tentacles and plumped to the sea-floor in a flurry of sand. He edged away, stammering, "Well, I guess maybe ... I might have gone a little ways toward the beach...." "You guess! When I was a polyp," said Pater, "the small fry obeyed their elders, and no guess about it!" "Now, dear—" said Mater. "And no spawn of mine," Pater warmed to his lecture, "is going to flout my words! Junior—COME HERE!" Junior paddled cautiously around the homesite, just out of tentacle-reach. He said in a small voice, "I won't." "DID YOU HEAR ME?" "Yes," admitted Junior. The neighbors stared. The three maiden aunts clutched one another with muted shrieks, savoring beforehand the language Pater would now use. But Pater said "Ulp!"—no more. "Now, dear," put in Mater quickly. "We must be patient. You know all children go through larval stages." "When I was a polyp ..." Pater began rustily. He coughed out an accidentally inhaled crustacean, and started over: "No spawn of mine...." Trailing off, he only glared, then roared abruptly, "SPRAT!" "I won't!" said Junior reflexively and backpaddled into the coral shadows of the reef. "That wallop," seethed Pater, "wants a good polyping. I mean...." He glowered suspiciously at Mater and the neighbors. "Dear," soothed Mater, "didn't you notice?" "Of course, I.... Notice what?" "What Junior was doing ... carrying a stone. I don't suppose he understands why, just yet, but...." "A stone? Ah, uh, to be sure, a stone. Why, my dear, do you realize what this means?" Pater was once more occupied with improving Mater's mind. It was a long job, without foreseeable end—especially since he and his helpmeet were both firmly rooted for life to the same tastefully decorated homesite (garnished by Pater himself with colored pebbles, shells, urchins and bits of coral in the rather rococo style which had prevailed during Pater's courting days as a free-swimming polyp). "Intelligence, my dear," pronounced Pater, "is quite incompatible with motility. Just think—how could ideas congeal in a brain shuttled hither and yon, bombarded with ever-changing sense-impressions? Look at the lower species, which swim about all their lives, incapable of taking root or thought! True Intelligence, my dear—as distinguished from Instinct, of course—pre-supposes the fixed viewpoint!" He paused. Mater murmured, "Yes, dear," as she always did obediently at this point. Junior undulated past, swimming toward the abyss. He moved a bit heavily now; it was growing hard for him to keep his maturely thickening afterbody in a horizontal posture. "Just look at the young of our own kind," said Pater. "Scatter-brained larvae, wandering greedily about in search of new stimuli. But, praise be, they mature at last into sensible sessile adults. While yet the unformed intellect rebels against the ending of care-free polyphood, Instinct, the wisdom of Nature, instructs them to prepare for the great change!" He nodded wisely as Junior came gliding back out of the gloom of deep water. Junior's tentacles clutched an irregular basalt fragment which he must have picked up down the rubble-strewn slope. As he paddled slowly along the rim of the reef, the adult anthozoans located directly below looked up and hissed irritable warnings. He was swimming a bit more easily now and, if Pater had not been a firm believer in Instinct, he might have been reminded of the grossly materialistic theory, propounded by some iconoclast, according to which a maturing polyp's tendency to grapple objects was merely a matter of taking on ballast. "See!" declared Pater triumphantly. "I don't suppose he understands why, just yet ... but Instinct urges him infallibly to assemble the materials for his future homesite." Junior let the rock fragment fall, and began plucking restlessly at a coral outcropping. "Dear," said Mater, "don't you think you ought to tell him...?" "Ahem!" said Pater. "The wisdom of Instinct—" "As you've always said, a polyp needs a parent's guidance," remarked Mater. "Ahem!" repeated Pater. He straightened his stalk, and bellowed authoritatively, "JUNIOR! Come here!" The prodigal polyp swam warily close. "Yes, Pater?" "Junior," said his parent solemnly, "now that you are about to grow down, it behooves you to know certain facts." Mater blushed a delicate lavender and turned away on her side of the rock. "Very soon now," said Pater, "you will begin feeling an irresistible urge ... to sink to the bottom, to take root there in some sheltered location which will be your lifetime site. Perhaps you even have an understanding already with some ... ah ... charming young polyp of the opposite gender, whom you would invite to share your homesite. Or, if not, you should take all the more pains to make that site as attractive as possible, in order that such a one may decide to grace it with—" "Uh-huh," said Junior understandingly. "That's what the fellows mean when they say any of 'em'll fall for a few high-class rocks." Pater marshaled his thoughts again. "Well, quite apart from such material considerations as selecting the right rocks, there are certain ... ah ... matters we do not ordinarily discuss." Mater blushed a more pronounced lavender. The three maiden aunts, rooted to their boulder within easy earshot of Pater's carrying voice, put up a respectable pretense of searching one another for nonexistent water-fleas. "No doubt," said Pater, "in the course of your harum-scarum adventurings as a normal polyp among polyps, you've noticed the ways in which the lower orders reproduce themselves; the activities of the fishes, the crustacea, the marine worms will not have escaped your attention." "Uh-huh," said Junior, treading water. "You will have observed that among these there takes place a good deal of ... ah ... maneuvering for position. But among intelligent, firmly rooted beings like ourselves, matters are, of course, on a less crude and direct plane. What among lesser creatures is a question of tactics belongs, for us, to the realm of strategy." Pater's tone grew confiding. "Now, Junior, once you're settled you'll realize the importance of being easy in your mind about your offspring's parentage. Remember, a niche in brine saves trying. Nothing like choosing your location well in the first place. Study the currents around your prospective site—particularly their direction and force at such crucial times as flood-tide. Try to make sure you and your future mate won't be too close down-current from anybody else's site, since in a case like that accidents can happen. You understand, Junior?" "Uh-huh," acknowledged Junior. "That's what the fellows mean when they say don't let anybody get the drop on you." "Well!" said Pater in flat disapproval. "But it all seems sort of silly," said Junior stubbornly. "I'd rather just keep moving around, and not have to do all that figuring. And the ocean's full of things I haven't seen yet. I don't want to grow down!" Mater paled with shock. Pater gave his spawn a scalding, scandalized look. "You'll learn! You can't beat Biology," he said thickly, creditably keeping his voice down. "Junior, you may go!" Junior bobbled off, and Pater admonished Mater sternly, "We must have patience, my dear! All children pass through these larval stages...." "Yes, dear," sighed Mater. At long last, Junior seemed to have resigned himself to making the best of it. With considerable exertions, hampered by his increasing bottom-heaviness, he was fetching loads of stones, seaweed and other debris to a spot downslope, and there laboring over what promised to be a fairly ambitious cairn. Judging by what they could see of it, his homesite might even prove a credit to the colony (so went Pater's thoughts) and attract a mate who would be a good catch (thus Mater mused). Junior was still to be seen at times along the reef in company with his free-swimming friends among the other polyps, at some of whom his parents had always looked askance, fearing they were by no means well-bred. In fact, there was strong suspicion that some of them—waifs from the disreputable Shallows district in the hazardous reaches just below the tide-mark—had never been bred at all, but were products of budding, a practice frowned on in polite society. However, Junior's appearance and rate of locomotion made it clear he would soon be done with juvenile follies. As Pater repeated with satisfaction—you can't beat Biology; as one becomes more and more bottle-shaped, the romantic illusions of youth must inevitably perish. "I always knew there was sound stuff in the youngster," declared Pater expansively. "At least he won't be able to go around with those ragamuffins much longer," breathed Mater thankfully. "What does the young fool think he's doing, fiddling round with soapstone?" grumbled Pater, peering critically through the green to try to make out the details of Junior's building. "Doesn't he know it's apt to slip its place in a year or two?" "Look, dear," hissed Mater acidly, "isn't that the little polyp who was so rude once?... I wish she wouldn't keep watching Junior like that. Our northwest neighbor heard positively that she's the child of an only parent!" "Never mind." Pater turned to reassure her. "Once Junior is properly rooted, his self-respect will cause him to keep riffraff at a distance. It's a matter of Psychology, my dear; the vertical position makes all the difference in one's thinking." The great day arrived. Laboriously Junior put a few finishing touches to his construction—which, so far as could be seen from a distance, had turned out decent-looking enough, though it was rather questionably original in design: lower and flatter than was customary. With one more look at his handiwork, Junior turned bottom-end-down and sank wearily onto the finished site. After a minute, he paddled experimentally, but flailing tentacles failed to lift him. He was already rooted, and growing more solidly so by the moment. "Congratulations!" cried the neighbors. Pater and Mater bowed this way and that in acknowledgment. Mater waved a condescending tentacle to the three maiden aunts. "I told you so!" said Pater triumphantly. "Yes, dear...." said Mater meekly. Suddenly there were outcries of alarm from the dwellers down-reef. A wave of dismay swept audibly through all the nearer part of the colony. Pater and Mater looked around, and froze. Junior had begun paddling again, but this time in a most peculiar manner—with a rotary twist and sidewise scoop which looked awkward, but which he performed so deftly that he must have practiced it. Fixed upright as he was now on the platform he had built, he looked for all the world as if he were trying to swim sidewise. "He's gone mad!" squeaked Mater. "I ..." gulped Pater, "I'm afraid not." At least, they saw, there was method in Junior's actions. He went on paddling in the same fashion and now he, and his platform with him, were farther away than they had been, and growing more remote as they stared. Parts of the homesite that was not a homesite revolved in some way incomprehensible to eyes that had never seen the like. And the whole affair trundled along, rocking at bumps in the sandy bottom, and squeaking painfully; nevertheless, it moved. The polyps watching from the reef swam out and frolicked after Junior, watching his contrivance go and chattering eager questions, while their parents bawled at them to keep away from that. The three maiden aunts shrieked faintly and swooned in one another's tentacles. The colony was shaken as it had not been since the tidal wave. "COME BACK!" thundered Pater. "You CAN'T do that!" "Come back!" shrilled Mater. "You can't do that!" "Come back!" gabbled the neighbors. "You can't do that!" But Junior was past listening to reason. Junior was on wheels. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Robert Abernathy (2015). Junior. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/49809/pg49809-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

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