$COOP coin’s sudden explosion within the Algorand Ecosystem is shaping up to be the perfect storm of hype, community, and absurdity. As of early June, $COOP has become Algorand’s sixth largest token, surpassing the once formidable Yieldly. $COOP originated as part of a series of hilarious and ridiculous twitter videos created by Algorand content creator Cooper Daniels. They follow Cooper’s alter ego “DEV’N” (depicted by extremely close-camera and personal twitter videos) and his quest to travel to Bitcoin Beach and covert it to CoopCoin beach. The story quickly devolves into absurdity as our protagonist is hunted by cartel members and falls in love with Esmerelda, a guatemalan who saves Dev’n’s life and convinces him to abandon his dream, resulting in all $COOP coin being airdropped to every person who had opted in.
If this sounds absolutely ridiculous and absurd, it is because it is. Every time I opened twitter and watched one of Cooper’s videos I had to wonder if the bear market had finally gotten to everyone’s favorite Algorand influencer. Some of the community look back on the videos as a brilliant parody of the nonsensical actions of greedy crypto influencers and how absurd the promises they make are. Others wondered what exactly possessed Cooper to make these hilariously insane videos with close-ups like the image below.
Regardless of what anyone thought of the series, nobody could expect that airdrop would begin to blow up in the way it did. At the culmination of the series, Cooper airdropped all the $COOP he had equally to every holder that was simply opted into the ASA ID for Coop Coin (796425061). He jokingly proclaimed that he had granted everyone generational wealth and that he did not want to see any “whole coiners.”
In an insane twist of events, that airdrop of ~59,000 $COOP tokens has exploded in value. Every time I check the chart it has only gone higher. That initial airdrop is now worth over 13,000 $ALGO, more than $2,000 USD. $COOP is rocketing in Algorand community-driven hilarity.
Part of what is driving this is the fact that Cooper kept zero tokens for himself— a move that made it explicitly clear that it was not some get rich-scheme from him. Though anyone who had watched any of his videos could clearly tell that.
Since then, in typical Algorand style, the community has banded together to create tons of content and games around $COOP coin. There are NFTs being created about the series, and the community is banding around $COOP coin in a way that is kind of beautiful to see.
I’m seeing auctions for valuable Algorand NFTs being held explicitly for $COOP, and marketplaces such as EXA and Algogems listing items for $COOP.
Twitter user 1NFT_ALGO even went so far as to make a $COOP song, which you can listen to here.
What is next for Coop Coin?
$COOP has been exploding in value, and is currently the most traded coin on Algorand by a huge margin— it’s 24 hour volume is sitting at over $200,000 and is 4x that of second place. $COOP has also become the sixth largest by TVL, and is approaching a 4 cent valuation. The token has ironically strong tokenomics and distribution, with all tokens fully out and no vesting schedules— probably because the token was created as an actual joke.
What’s next for $COOP coin’s price, development, and community? I have no clue. The craziness of $COOP has just continued to build on top of itself and has been one of the most entertaining things to happen to the Algorand community in a while. Just look at this interaction between Cooper Daniels and The Algorand Foundation’s CEO Staci Warden.
If you are looking to buy into the $COOP craze, keep in mind that you’re investing in “fun and community,” as Cooper Daniels puts it. $COOP is a satire token created to undermine the absurd greed that exists within crypto, do not get caught up seeing it as a full blown investment and something that will change your life. Enjoy the hilarity while it grows and appreciate seeing what kind of creativity the Algorand community can produce.
My personal perspective on $COOP is that it has been a lot of fun during a pretty brutal bear market. It has made me engage with Algorand a lot more over the last 2 weeks, and I’ve been constantly surprised at how strong the community is. If anything, it served as a strong reminder that the Algorand community has a lot of strength behind it, even if it lacks the large scale capital of other blue chip crypto ecosystems.
Learn More About Algorand
Follow the @algonautblog on twitter.
Keeping up with this blog and reading other articles is a great way to learn about the ecosystem. Here are the most popular articles I’ve written.