OpenAI released ChatGPT4o, with added capabilities to generate images, leading to a trend online, with people creating memes in the style of studio Ghibli, which was famous for films like Spirited Away and My Neighbour Totoro. The memes were shared on social media platforms like X and then spread to memecoin platforms on Ethereum and Solana. The Ghibli-inspired memecoins have added much-needed hype to an otherwise lethargic market.
Elon Musk, entrepreneur and crypto promoter, posted Ghibli portraits of himself generated by the model using his X platform, which has 219 million followers. Musk has a history of promoting coins such as Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB). Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, also posted images of himself in Ghibli’s style.
Dogecoin has shown considerable resilience despite facing a crypto market on the downside, rising 14% on the weekly chart. If it breaks the $0.21 resistance line, it could go up 10x to $2. Musk celebrated the meme coins’ success by posting a Ghibli-generated meme of The Lion King, with a Shiba Inu in the place of the young lion, holding up the dog so that the sun could shine on its face, symbolising the success of meme coins in general.
The meme coin GHIBLI has since received much attention, thanks to the ChatGPT-generated art being promoted on social media and under the direction of Hayao Miyazaki, Studio Ghibli created many animated films that have been very popular worldwide. Their unique style is distinguishable at first sight. Many celebrities have been getting on the bandwagon and posting ChatGPT-generated Ghibli art.
GHIBLI has become the most prominent memecoin promoting the Ghibli-generated AI art, despite many Ghibli-inspired memecoins appearing on Solana and Ethereum blockchains. A successful memecoin often coincides with a trend on social media, something we can see with the current Ghibli trend. A memecoin can accumulate value very quickly because it doesn’t take much effort to generate the coin, and the prices can quickly change from positive to negative depending on how popular the trend is.
The memecoin market has been temporarily revived, with at least 20 Ghibli-inspired memecoins created. The memecoin market has dropped around 57% since December 8, when Bitcoin reached $100k. Thus, the memecoin drop represents a broader correction in the Bitcoin market. A spike in interest from memecoin trends may feed into the crypto market, giving traders another reason to invest in digital assets. The SEC recently described memecoins as akin to trading cards, not financial securities.
Pump.fun reported that many meme coins appeared, including coins like Ghibli Sigma (GIGMA), Ghibli Mona Lisa (GLisa), and Ghibli Rizzler (GRIZLLER). The volatility of meme coins is very frantic. They can enjoy incredible highs, only to suffer just as dramatic lows. The value of meme coins is entirely symbolic, with very little planning or long-term commitments put into the projects.
Anime has become very popular in America, with one poll from World Population Review finding that 72% of participants had watched anime on a regular basis. The Ghibli trend thus represents a combination of three trends: crypto, AI, and anime.
Pump.fun, however, has gained a reputation for hosting many pump-and-dump meme coins, with many of the low overhead coins spiking quickly and then dumping to new lows. Pump.fun has created a frictionless market, which makes the meme coin market more prevalent. Although there have been some successful cases, there are also a lot of rug-pulls on the blockchain.
