Key Takeaways
The rise of memecoins in the wake of celebrity deaths reflects a growing trend of monetizing grief rather than honoring a legacy. While some tokens claim to be tributes, most are launched without consent from families or estates. In an internet driven by speculation, sincerity feels increasingly rare.
Strange things happen when a rock legend dies in 2025. Not tributes, not tears… or maybe not just those. But token launches.
Ozzy Osbourne, legendary frontman of Black Sabbath, passed away earlier this week. Within hours, a wave of grief-themed memecoins flooded the crypto charts, each chasing momentum with tribute tickers.
In the chaos, David Schwartz, CTO, Ripple Labs, casually dropped a memory: he once ghostwrote messages on behalf of Black Sabbath on an IRC chat.
“To the public, it felt real and authentic.”
This isn’t a story about Ozzy, or even crypto exactly. It’s about how the internet went from building culture to profiting off its aftermath.
Let’s talk about that shift.
What lasts and what launches
The internet used to build culture. Now it profits off the aftermath.
Hours after Osbourne’s death, memecoins bearing his name flooded the blockchain. Not just memories or music. We now have speculative code presented as homage.
Source: Dextools.io
So what does it mean to preserve a legacy in the age of instant minting? Is it about telling the story, or owning it?
Are we aware of where to draw the line?
Rest in peace Web3 and memecoins
This isn’t the first time crypto has responded to tragedy with speculation.
When Queen Elizabeth II died, over 40 memecoins launched within hours – notably, Queen Elizabeth Inu pumped 28,506% despite just $17K in liquidity. OpenSea is filled with red-eyed pixel NFTs and generative tributes.
Most would call this kind of action distasteful, but to those who only know tickers and charts, this may be the highest honor yet… but it is still one that is created to give back to their wallets.
Source: X
When WWE’s Hulk Hogan died, a Solana token named HULK surged 379% in hours — from $0.0003259 to $0.001570.
Source: Dextools.io
In stark contrast, the HULK/SOL pair’s market cap on Raydium rose to a mammoth $7 million… only to flatline soon after.
Source: Dexscreener
In other instances, even well-meaning projects blur the line.
After Kobe Bryant’s tragic death in 2020, blockchain firm Cryptograph minted eight unreleased photographs from a 1999 shoot into NFTs, auctioning them to raise funds for charity.
The intent was noble – proceeds went to the Mamba & Mambacita Sports Foundation, a nonprofit honoring Kobe and his daughter Gianna, focused on supporting underserved young athletes, especially girls.
Noble in purpose, but still: it is grief turned into an asset.
The thin line between tributes and grifts
Most celebrity memecoins launch without estate consent. They skip permission and blur lines between fan-made memorials and opportunistic grifts.
David Schwartz’s old IRC gig now seems like a long-lost relic of a more earnest internet. It wasn’t permissionless, but it was personal.
“At the time, I felt really bad about the whole thing. It wasn’t the authentic interaction with celebrities that I wanted it to be and that I tried to make it. To me personally, it was a failure, but to everyone else it was a success.”
Maybe it wasn’t perfect. Maybe it wasn’t real.
But in a world of bots, scams, and celebrity memecoins, an unknowingly mediated call on a bad speakerphone sounds almost… sincere.
