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Birth of digitally rare art
Rare Pepe and the Bitcoin Blockchain
Starting in October 2014, users on the /r9k/ (robot9000) board on 4chan began referring to original illustrations and photoshops of Pepe the Frog as "Rare Pepes"; sharing the "rare" images of Pepe as if they were trading cards
History
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thumb title caption caption_url
RarePepe-Cards-696x348.png
RarePepe-Cards-696x348.png
Rare Pepe Gets Blockchained, Made Into Tradable Counterparty Tokens
2020-03-02 11:22:33 -2300
/history/rare-pepe-counterparty/
2019-05-28-rare-pepe.md

In The Beginning

In 2005, artist Matt Furie created the comic series Boy's Club, which stars the teenage monster characters Pepe, Brett, Andy and Landwolf. pepe-the-frog

Feels Good Man

  • knowyourmeme.com/memes/feels-good-man

    Feels Good Man is a catchphrase and exploitable from a comic strip authored by artist Matt Furie. The phrase is in reference to the emotions one of the characters in the strip feels when he goes to the bathroom standing up, with his pants all the way down.

    • knowyourmeme.com/memes/exploitables

      Exploitables are image templates that are missing a defining characteristic and easy to edit, dying to be filled with your wit & candor. They are used very frequently on image-boards like 4chan.

    Early 2008, a user on 4Chan's /b/ board decided to upload a scan of one page from the comic, involving Pepe pulling his pants all the way down to his ankles to pee, leaving his bare ass exposed.

The Birth of Rare Pepe

Starting in October 2014, users on the /r9k/ (robot9000) board on 4chan began referring to original illustrations and photoshops of Pepe the Frog as "Rare Pepes"; sharing the "rare" images of Pepe as if they were trading cards, some of which were posted with watermarks to retain their value (shown below).

Biggest Meme of 2015

Alt-Right Drives Away Normies

  • How Pepe the Frog Became a Nazi Trump Supporter and Alt-Right Symbol

    “Most memes are ephemeral by nature, but Pepe is not,” @JaredTSwift told me. “He’s a reflection of our souls, to most of us. It’s disgusting to see people (‘normies,’ if you will) use him so trivially. He belongs to us. And we’ll make him toxic if we have to.”

    @JaredTSwift said some of the support for Trump was in jest, but for most of his cohorts, it’s sincere. He even claimed to have voted for Trump in the primary himself, wherever it is he lives, and said he’d vote for him in the general, too.

    “In a sense, we’ve managed to push white nationalism into a very mainstream position,” he said. “Trump’s online support has been crucial to his success, I believe, and the fact is that his biggest and most devoted online supporters are white nationalists.

  • Is Pepe the Frog just a racist meme? - Pepe is about love, not hate.

    In fact, the very same Anti-Defamation League that added Pepe to its list of hate symbols stated on its own website:

    “However, because so many Pepe the Frog memes are not bigoted in nature, it is important to examine use of the meme only in context. The mere fact of posting a Pepe meme does not mean that someone is racist or white supremacist.”5

    This, however, does not take away from specific use cases, but it does imply that as a meme is used, so it evolves.

Enter Bitcoin

For years people have been trying to preserve the rarest of pepes from being stolen.

Thanks to Bitcoin and Counterparty we can associate these Rare Pepes with tokens to make them truly rare. Now Pepe’s can preserve their rareness and actually be traded on the market.

  • counterparty.io

    Counterparty extends Bitcoin’s functionality by “writing in the margins” of regular Bitcoin transactions, opening the door for innovation and advanced features not possible with ordinary Bitcoin software.

First Live Auction

Should Pepe Live on Bitcoin?

  • Counterparty Wants to Stay on Bitcoin but Fees Remain a Contentious Issue - December 27, 2017

    “Earlier in 2017, when the Counterparty community was still largely intact, I created two proposals that would have led to Counterparty moving off of Bitcoin Core. I thought Counterparty should either embrace Bitcoin Cash (at the time it was Bitcoin Classic) for the block space Counterparty needs or move to Litecoin where a metaprotocol like Counterparty would be welcome.”

I've also heard some vague accusations that counterparty\rare-pepe are not good for bitcoin... although I've not seen any detailed discussion of the topic. Pls reach out if you have more information on pepe and Bitcoin.

I know there are a lot of newer projects, like memes, memecoins get copied. That doesn't interest me as much as the other digital art projects, and mostly the history.

There are many other aspects of digital art that interest me, and I'll be diving in, beyond pepe, coming soon. You can have a sneek peek of my new Rare Digital Art page now, although it's not ready for production, and this resource belongs over here, anyway. {: .notice--warning}

Resources

{% include _improve_history.html %}

Related Content

{% include list-posts entries='5' category='History' %}