DOVER, DE, April 01, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Dank Bank, the first NFT trading platform dedicated entirely to memes, viral videos, and other iconic moments in internet history, today announced the completion of its $4.2069M pre-seed round intended to back founders, Harry Jones and Prez Thomas, in their efforts to empower content creators to monetize their viral creations. The multi-million dollar round backed by Mechanism Capital, Samsung NEXT, and former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan as well as Morningstar Ventures, Vincent Van Dough’s Starry Night Capital, Kyros Ventures, and Cryptopathic, the creator of Feisty Doge, will equip Jones and Thomas with the necessary resources to allow communities to invest in their favorite creators and the content they produce. Their innovative vision blends NFTs and DeFi, and is designed to empower fans and followers to invest in the intellectual property of their favorite creators. Dank Bank is acting on the knowledge that the most valuable collectibles will always be those that are the most culturally significant, and that there is nothing more significant to modern society than memes and viral videos.
The Viral Depths: Dank Meme? or High Society’s Art?
In the centrally-controlled, content-creator-hellscape now known as “Web 2.0”, the thought of Internet creators expecting fair, reliable, and uncensorable ‘compensation’ or ‘monetization’ was little more than an echo from an unlikely utopian future.
“Memes and viral videos are the most universally recognized form of media ever created,” Dank Bank CEO, Harry Jones, explains passionately, ”Doge and Bad Luck Brian are more recognizable images and cultural sensations than any Picasso painting. Why were the creators never compensated for that? Meme creators in particular almost always go viral without permission and without getting paid. Viral internet content has been nearly impossible to monetize, until now.”
In the Dank Bank future, content creators get paid properly. Jones and Thomas are the tights-wearing crusaders and self-proclaimed degenerates driving this vision forward. Chief Meme Officer, Prez Thomas added “We send countless emails and DMs showing creators how much money their peers have made, and offer to do the same for them. It’s a popular proposition.”
Meme creators themselves have praised NFTs as a way to take ownership of a cultural phenomenon often outside of an individual’s control. Kyle Craven, the creator of Bad Luck Brian, describes NFTs as “the only thing that memes can do to take control.” Bad Luck Brian now trades on Dank Bank for a valuation in excess of $400,000.
Investing in Virality & Where Dank Bank is Going
- Dank Bank gives anyone the ability to invest in the future success of their favorite creators.
- It’s not just about legendary moments of the past; it’s about picking and investing in the legendary moments of the future, before everyone else.
- Users will get a stake in the intellectual property of their favorite content, receive a piece of future cash flows generated by the content, and have a say in how the content is used.
- Users will get community perks and benefits like merchandise, ticketing, access to live events, and anything else creators and communities can imagine.
For the Culturally Astute Seeking the Heart of the Zeitgeist: ‘Why Memes?’
Memes have revolutionized the way we communicate, and, as Rossanna Guadagno, a researcher at the Pace Innovation Lab at Stanford University argues, they are a “reflection of our culture.” Dank Bank goes so far as to say that they are the newest, and perhaps most controversial, form of art.
René Girard, the proverbial Christ to meme-didacts, is revered for his ‘Mimetic Theory of Desire’, which maintains that “human desire is not an autonomous process, but a collective one. We want things because other people want them.” In the modern age, that rule applies most poignantly to the way people spend and invest their money. Look no further than the phenomenon that is Wall Street Bets, Dogecoin, and the myriad of memecoins and stonks that have arisen as a result of the influencers and communities that rabidly support them.
The best memes create a sense of loyalty and allegiance from those who choose to engage with them, and that’s exactly what the team at Dank Bank has managed to bottle and monetize on a massive scale. The original Doge meme, minted by its original creators Itsuko Sato and Kabosu, has generated a market capitalization of a whopping $45 million dollars, and for a time, was the most valuable NFT ever created. Dank Bank is helping the creators of other legendary memes and viral videos get in on the action. Call it an element of the zeitgeist; a lighthearted emotional performance viewed through a cultural lens, or humorous childsplay blending a unique and generational form of artistic expression with performance art; regardless, The Meme Economy is taking over.
Join the meme economy by signing up at dankbank.co and follow @DankBankHQ on Twitter.
About Dank Bank
Dank Bank is the NFT trading platform dedicated exclusively to memes and viral videos. Dank Bank allows its users to trade and collect fractional ownership of iconic moments in internet history, from David After Dentist to Carole Baskin’s wedding photo. They envision a future where it is possible to invest in the success of your favorite content creator, thereby supporting them in exchange for a stake in their future success.