Let me take you back to January 2021.

The world was still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdown measures gripped cities, The streets remained eerily quiet as people hunkered down in their homes, isolated from friends and family. There were widespread job losses and economic uncertainty was looming large. The mood was somber, and many struggled to find solace amid the chaos.

Adding to the tumultuous atmosphere, the distribution of COVID-19 stimulus checks injected a glimmer of hope into the dire situation. However, with limited avenues for entertainment and socialization, people found themselves with an abundance of free time and a pressing need for distraction.

Enter a long-haired Internet geek of a man named Roaring Kitty, aka Deep F******* Value on Reddit.

By now you’ve likely heard of the story of Wall Street Bets, and the man who took an Internet trading forum to international notoriety. Roaring Kitty would post on Reddit and YouTube about his long trade on GameStop (NYSE: GME), a stock that had been shorted to oblivion by Wall Street hedge funds. His posts started to pick up steam on the forum as the stock slowly rose despite the short pressure from Wall Street.

Wall Street Bets also began to highlight a few other heavily shorted stocks such as AMC Entertainment Holdings (NYSE: AME). These trades became memes, and they started going viral.

Individual investors, armed with stimulus money and an appetite for risk, began pouring into the stock market. GameStop, AMC, and other previously overlooked companies became overnight sensations, as amateur traders rallied together to challenge Wall Street’s status quo. The activity came to a boiling point in early 2021 when the prices of AMC and GameStop broke the stock market. In fact, they had to halt trading on both assets several times as their share prices skyrocketed.

I don’t want to go too in-depth on this story, because at this point there have been numerous shows, documentaries, and movies made about this situation. Those people can tell the story a bit better than I can, but I want to tie this into crypto. Indeed, the rise of Gamestop, AMC, and Wall Street Bets intrinsically ties to a current phenomenon in the crypto market.

Roaring Kitty became popular, and is still popular, because of his ability to turn the trading of GameStop and AMC into a meme. Just look at his account on X; it is filled with nothing but memes. Yes, that’s right, memes. The same kind of memes that are now one of the top three hottest sectors of the crypto market. Roaring Kitty invented the meme-ification of trades, and the crypto market is taking it to a whole other level.

Speaking of his X account, after going radio silent for about three years, Roaring Kitty began posting again on Sunday night, thus reigniting the GameStop flame and reinvigorating the David vs Goliath trading mentality. Both GameStop and AMC have had trading halted multiple times this week. It feels as if we’ve been transported back to January 2021.

If that’s the case, you want to be trading memes, right now. So far, the evidence proves my point. Just take a look at Pepe (PEPE), one of the hottest memecoins of the crypto market so far in 2024.

Pepe is up almost 20% to start the week, and just hit a fresh all-time high. Pepe is now the number 23 coin by market cap after this week’s run-up. Could Pepe be the Shiba Inu (SHIB) of this cycle and make a run into the top 10? Weeks like this one make that seem a possibility.

The rest of the crypto market hasn’t been moving much in the last couple of weeks. However, Pepe and a handful of other memecoins have made positive progress. This strength during a time of weakness for the rest of the crypto market highlights the rise of memecoins.

As silly as they might seem, don’t take memecoins as a joke. If you understand how to trade these assets you could make a ton of money, as many have so far this year.

Whether it’s Roaring Kitty and Wall Street Bets memestocks or crypto memecoins, the meme-ification of investing is happening. Just like a viral tweet or Reddit post, when these things catch fire they become hard to stop.

Editor’s Note: Crypto is making ordinary investors rich and it also serves as an inflation hedge. But you need to make your move now, before the next leg-up in the crypto bull market of 2024. Every day you wait is literally costing you thousands in profits.

If you’re worried you can’t figure out crypto…don’t be. Our in-house crypto expert, Alex Benfield, will walk you through everything you need to know about crypto, step by step.

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This article previously appeared on Investing Daily.