Gen Z, aka people born between 1997 and 2012 are just now starting to step into the real world after university or high school. Many already have full-time jobs, with disposable income they don’t quite know what to do with besides the occasional fun purchase, subscriptions, games and etc.

The keyword here is games, as many Gen Z’ers are quite involved with the video game industry, especially when it comes to eSports and other competitive sectors. According to a study done by Newzoo, almost 80% of all Gen Z and Millennials have some connection to video games, be it the majority of the day spent, or some of the day spent.

This exposure to video games, then opens doors to other communities, especially the meme community, or just Reddit. And once you’re on Reddit, who knows where you’ll end up on. So, a large chunk of these people ends up on subreddits of different crypto coins parading as memes within themselves or directly partnering with large game developers to directly interact with their consumers.

The trend started pretty slowly when Riot Games, the developer of League of Legends, one of the largest games in the world was considering creating its very own cryptocurrency for in-game purchases. That didn’t quite go according to plan but was enough of a push for Gen Z and Millenials to start researching cryptocurrencies even further.

Biggest Contributing Factors of Conversion

One of the biggest reasons why people were so easily be converted to the crypto world was the ease of use, a sense of community, and an opportunity to have their own source of income. Some projects were much more influential than others in this regard. Actually, there are 3 that come to mind directly. These are Dogecoin, Shiba Coin, and Stadium.Finance. Each of these projects represents different phases of interest from Gen Z for crypto and fintech. Let’s discuss why.

Stadium.Finance and Their Apes vs Pepes - The Current

The Apes vs Pepes crypto project by Stadium.Finance is a representation of how much Gen Z and Millennial interest has accumulated for this type of approach to cryptocurrencies. It is pretty much a combination of the hype and community engagement that its predecessors had garnered, but directing it to a more valuable experience, “fun”.

After the meme controversy of Pepe, making it the face of the internet, following the emergence of the “Ape meme” from the whole Gamestop ordeal, we get an epic battle of pretty much-tokenized memes.

The way it works pits two communities against each other, which encourages them to support their chosen token. These tokens then battle it out on smart contracts, and the token with the highest number of additional underlying assets from the previous battle wins. The winners reap the rewards, and the losers lick their wounds.

But from what I’ve seen, the project is trustworthy. It disallowed pre-mining and distribution and even burned the majority of the coins on release day.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. The idea is that the innovation of combining the memes, sense of community, and a financial environment, this project is the continuation of blockchain using the younger generations.

SHIBA Token - The Successor

SHIBA was like a slap across the face for many people that doubted it. Nobody could imagine a meme coin growing so much and dominating the crypto community for so long. It came along right during the Gamestop craze. It did exist before it, but its prominence increased greatly when Gamestop happened.

The devs managed to quickly jump on the “Ape trade” train while it was still hot and drove massive numbers of participants just from a common goal of pumping this pretty much new version of Dogecoin.

Yes, that’s right, Dogecoin started the hype train from the beginning, but it slowly whittled down even after Elong Musk’s direct endorsement didn’t cut it for the price. Then came along SHIBA, which promised to be the next Dogecoin, so naturally, Gen Z who didn’t really have their own money when it was the best time to buy Dogecoin, immediately pounced on this new meme coin.

Essentially, there was no value or interactivity brought in by SHIBA, the main idea was to steal the hype of Dogecoin and apply a new face to it with the newly found ape trade meme from Gamestop. And it worked, many Gen Z’ers invested.

Dogecoin - Where It All Started

DOGE was supposed to be a funny joke depicting the then-popular Shiba Inu meme as a form of currency you could buy, hold and sell. But soon enough, due to the already existing strong meme community with disposable income, it quickly started to gain some traction.

Pair this up with the endorsement of Elon Musk, Reddit’s favorite superhero, and you suddenly get the whole world’s Gen Z and Millenials flinging to DOGE.

And many of them actually benefited from this investment. Some managed to 100x while those who got in early pretty much don’t have to worry about money anytime soon.

It started the hype train but left a legacy that is now being picked up by pretty much every single new crypto project.