Joe Rogan raised concerns about the growing meme coin market during a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience featuring comedian Colum Tyrrell.
During the conversation, Rogan stated, “I don’t know what that is. How much of it is stuff that I would disagree with. Right. So, the memecoin’s crazy. The memecoin…”
Tyrrell asked, “It was like a pump and dump essentially, wasn’t it?”
Rogan brought up Hunter Biden, suggesting that he had launched a similar project. He said, “Yeah. They all are. Hunter Biden just did one of those.”
This prompted Rogan to argue that such practices were widespread across the industry, with investors often buying into a coin in the hope of driving up its value before cashing out.
“They all do it. I mean, if you’re going to put out a meme coin that I mean, they’re almost all pump and dumps. And even if they’re not like whoever’s putting money into it, they’re pumping it up and with the idea that it’s going to hit a peak and they got to know when to bail,” Rogan explained.
He then offered a particularly blunt assessment of the market, adding, “It’s like everyone’s doing that. It’s a Ponzi scheme.”
However, Rogan’s concerns went beyond the speculative nature of these digital currencies. He suggested that meme coins could also serve as a convenient way to transfer money between individuals while making the transaction appear legitimate.
“And it’s also I think it’s a way to launder money,” he said.
To explain his reasoning, Rogan drew a comparison with Hunter Biden’s controversial artwork sales, suggesting that art could be used as an intermediary to disguise payments.
He said,“If you wanted to give someone money, but you couldn’t just legally give them money. What you could do was say, ‘Why don’t you draw a picture?’ And that’s all you have to do. And that’s the same thing like with a memecoin.”
The conversation then returned to cryptocurrency, with Rogan using a hypothetical meme coin named after Tyrrell to illustrate how such a transaction could work.
“So, let’s say we’re going to do a Colum coin, right?” he proposed.
Rogan then outlined a scenario in which a powerful individual could effectively enrich someone through coordinated investments in a cryptocurrency.
“If I wanted to bribe you, right? And I said, listen, what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna start this memecoin, and my country is gonna put in $300 million into this memecoin, and this country is going to put in X, that’s going to put, and then, you know, once it gets to a certain level, we’ll pull out, you’re going to be worth billions.”
According to Rogan’s hypothetical, the initial investment would drive up the coin’s value, allowing the recipient to cash out after its price had been artificially inflated. He argued that the transaction could appear entirely legitimate despite the questionable intentions behind it.
“But the point is you could put a bunch of money into a meme coin. That person gets the meme coins and then pulls that money out and then that’s legal.”
Rogan ultimately described the alleged loophole in the system in just three words: “It’s a loophole.”
