Legal Nature of Memecoins
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35319/lawreview.202618136Keywords:
Meme coins, Crypto-assets, Memetics, Securities law, Investment contract, DecentralizationAbstract
Analogous to what a gene represents in biology, a meme constitutes a unit of cultural transmission that replicates, mutates, and competes for attention within the collective imagination, further extended into the financial domain as a subcategory of crypto-as- set operating within pseudo-ludic collective speculative dynamics. In the absence of regulatory certainty regarding their treatment, this article determines the legal nature of memecoins (MC), setting forth risk typologies present in the market and analyzing the declaration issued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) with respect to the characterization of MCs as a negotiable security and their transaction for offer and sale in connection with an investment contract — a qualification verified through an Anglo-Saxon jurisprudential test. When the application of said exam is sought within the virtual asset ecosystem and read in conjunction with Ibero-American law, methodological deficiencies emerge; accordingly, this article proposes a novel test responsive to the emerging architecture of financial technologies.
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