Author: Cookie
On August 22, Iryna Zarutska was murdered on a light rail train. On September 10, Charlie Kirk was shot and killed during a speech. Within a month, these two tragedies in the United States shocked the nation and captured the attention of the world.
There's no direct causal relationship between the two cases. However, as they escalated from a "violent homicide" that captured national attention to a "politicized incident," it's difficult to separate the two cases for discussion.
In the cryptocurrency world, the two meme coins, $IRYNA and $CHARLIE, sparked a wave of hype surrounding these two cases. From the perspective of Chinese-speaking cryptocurrencies, understanding of these two tokens differs significantly from that of English-speaking cryptocurrencies (especially those in the US), leading to confusion. For example:
Is the Charlie Kirk case less influential than the Iryna Zarutska case? Why is $CHARLIE's peak market capitalization lower than $IRYNA's?
The incident in which both Musk and Trump spoke out, is it because the on-chain market is not good, so there is no way to reach the height of $PNUT?
By reviewing the development process of the incident and observing the huge controversy on Twitter, perhaps we can answer these questions from a more comprehensive perspective.
Iryna Zarutska was murdered on the subway on August 22, but the $IRYNA token was not deployed until September 6. Moreover, on September 6 and 7, the peak market capitalization of $IRYNA did not even exceed $1 million.
If we search Twitter for discussions after the incident, we find that the case has already attracted huge attention since the incident. On August 26, Musk responded to a related tweet, "Why isn't the murderer in jail?"
Musk's main tweet has received more than 37,000 retweets and 144,000 likes.
However, at this time, the surveillance footage of Iryna Zarutska's murder had not yet been released, which explains the "vacuum" between the incident and the token deployment. The surveillance footage of the crime scene was released on September 6th (Beijing time), and we subsequently saw related discussions on Twitter.
The above tweet was published at 5:00 AM Beijing time on September 6th, but at that time, there were still more than 10 hours before the token was deployed. During this small "vacuum period", the surveillance video of the crime scene was transferred to Twitter and quickly fermented.
When asked about the case by reporters on September 7, Trump called it "appalling" and promised to get to the bottom of it. On September 8, during a speech at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., Trump linked the case to his plan to send federal agents and National Guard troops to Chicago and other Democratic-controlled cities. Besides offering condolences to the victims' families, he stated, "The evil ones are out there, and if we don't deal with them, our country will cease to exist."
Trump also posted on Truth Social: "The blood of this innocent woman dripped from the knife of a murderer, and now her blood is on the hands of the Democrats who refuse to put the bad guy in jail."
In this post, he also took aim at Roy Cooper, calling him a "former out-of-power governor" and a "wannabe senator." Of course, Trump's insults aren't in vain, and the post ends with a plea for Republican Michael Whatley.
At this point, the incident has transformed from an independent violent homicide into a politicized event.
What’s counterintuitive about $IRYNA is that Trump may not have as much influence on its price performance as Musk.
From the K-line chart, we can see that the 1-hour line with the largest trading volume appeared at 3 pm on September 10, with a trading volume of nearly 17 million US dollars. The token market value also soared from 9.5 million to nearly 34 million US dollars.
At exactly 3 p.m. on September 10, Musk announced on Twitter that he would donate $1 million to support initiatives to create Iryna Zarutska murals in major U.S. cities.
On the evening of September 10, when the White House official Twitter account also released a tweet from Trump stating that the killer in the Iryna case should be sentenced to death, $IRYNA's market showed no reaction.
About three hours after the White House tweet, Charlie Kirk was shot, and about two hours later, Trump announced Charlie Kirk's death.
While the Iryna case evolved from an isolated violent homicide into a political one, the murder of Charlie Kirk was destined to be a "political homicide" from the moment it occurred. This is because Charlie Kirk himself is a right-wing American politician. There's no need to elaborate on Charlie Kirk's political influence; the reactions to the case alone provide a glimpse into the situation. Utah Governor Spencer Fox characterized the case as a "political assassination," Trump ordered flags to be flown at half-staff for four days in mourning and awarded Charlie Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The British and Israeli Prime Ministers, the Argentine President, and other dignitaries expressed their condolences on social media...
After news of Charlie's case broke, $IRYNA's market capitalization plummeted 50% in half an hour, dropping from nearly $18 million to around $9 million. Since then, $IRYNA has never regained its momentum and currently has a market capitalization of approximately $900,000.
However, the funds chasing $CHARLIE have not been able to replicate the market capitalization of $IRYNA. $CHARLIE's highest market capitalization has never exceeded $20 million, and its current market capitalization is only about $260,000.
After clarifying the whole story, we will try to start answering the question mentioned at the beginning of the article - why did such a big "hotspot" fail to come out?
A political meme with no analogy
Some players compare $CHARLIE to $PNUT because both are politically relevant and involve political discussions. However, this analogy is inappropriate in several ways.
First, there's the difference in the subject of death. While the tragedy of animal death evokes sympathy and even touches upon dissatisfaction with the political status quo, it ultimately fails to address the "sanctity" of human life. Even the manner of death has an impact: $PUNT's squirrel was euthanized, while the image of Charlie Kirk being shot struck everyone with horrific intensity—the bullet lodged in Charlie's neck, sending a profuse gush of blood.
The debate about "human blood steamed buns" has actually happened before in the Chinese-speaking world. At that time, it revolved around the meme coin $AI171 related to the crash of Air India Flight 171.
Secondly, the Charlie case happened at a time when the heat of the Iryna case had not yet subsided and the divisive and conflicting emotions in American society were at a relatively high point. This is a kind of "national trauma" that Chinese-speaking players far across the ocean find difficult to understand.
Just how intense is the divisive and conflicting sentiment in American society? This resonates with the point made at the beginning of this article: the Iryna and Charlie cases aren't directly causally related, with the former leading to the latter. Yet, it's difficult to separate the two cases for discussion.
Charlie Krik has a very distinct opinion on the Iryna case, believing it is related to racial issues. Not only has he posted a large number of tweets related to the Iryna case frequently on Twitter, he has also argued with CNN political commentator Van Jones.
Charlie Krik cites surveillance footage from the Iryna murder case, in which the killer says, "I got that white girl," after committing the crime. This phrase has also sparked intense anti-Black sentiment on Twitter. Searching for "TND" reveals numerous related tweets, some of which are quite popular.
"We might see TND happen before GTA 6 launches"
The original meaning of "TND" is highly racist, meaning "Total N***** Death." After the Iryna case, radical American Twitter users used "TND," or "Totally Nice Day," to post racist comments to avoid being banned by Twitter.
In this environment, any arguments defending meme coins seem weak and feeble. When $IRYNA was rising, some voices could be heard saying, "$IRYNA provided donations to the victims' families." But when it came to $CHARLIE, the English-speaking community was almost entirely accusing $CHARLIE of profiting from the loss of their lives. The only rebuttal left was, "This is the meme coin market. You can choose not to speculate, but that's just how it is." This hardly counts as a rebuttal.
"If you promote, issue currency, or try to profit from the murder of Iryna and Charlie by hyping it up, then you are a very shameful and hateful person." This tweet received more than 2,200 likes, and there are many similar tweets.
Even some English-speaking influencers (KOLs) have been criticized for their witty comments related to the two cases. The most notable example is Rasmr, whose $rasmr token plummeted by approximately 30% following the tweet below.
"There should be a live broadcast where Iryna's killer kills Charlie's killer." Rasmr has deleted the tweet.
Lexapro was also criticized for tweeting, "I am a profiteer of racial strife and violence." Lexapro has also deleted this tweet. As can be seen in the screenshot below, Lexapro previously displayed an affiliate badge for the meme coin trading app Padre. Padre has since removed Lexapro from the account.
Therefore, in the English-speaking world, $IRYNA and $CHARLIE are generally boycotted on a moral level, which has far exceeded the scope of "hot topic hype".
Finally, $CHARLIE was deployed immediately after news of Charlie Kirk's murder broke. Unlike $PNUT, which had some time to cool down and make hype about related meme coins acceptable, this made $CHARLIE similar to the merchants who speculated on the price of masks at the beginning of the epidemic and were criticized by the public. No one considered whether this was "reasonable speculation" at that point in time, and everyone just felt that it was "cold and ruthless."
As for the poor on-chain market and the fact that major exchanges like Binance and OKX are no longer listing Solana meme coins, these are likely secondary reasons. In particular, the fact that CEXs are not listing Solana meme coins is particularly difficult for major exchanges to list both $IRYNA and $CHARLIE given the reaction in the English-speaking world and the involvement of such a serious political event.
It can be said that $IRYNA has evolved from a "hot commodity" to a "political commodity." Following the Charlie Kirk case, $IRYNA, along with $CHARLIE, has become embroiled in a degree of political correctness. The situation facing these two tokens is unprecedented since last year's meme coin bull run. This, coupled with significant divergences in perspective between Chinese-speaking and English-speaking communities (particularly in the United States), has led to significant divergences in understanding and price performance.
Even if it is said that this is "humanistic care" caused by "political correctness", I also hope that "humanistic care" can become the criterion of the meme coin market from now on.
So many things happen in this world every day, both fortunate and tragic. The murders of Iryna and Charlie, political aside, remind us that life and death are merciless, and we never know when death will strike.
When tragedy strikes, we are human beings first and cryptocurrency traders second. There are so many things to speculate about, so why dwell on life and death?
