Author: Daniel Li

In March 2025, a global wave of financialization of cultural symbols triggered by AI-generated images swept the Internet. OpenAI officially released the GPT-4o multimodal model on March 25, and its built-in "Ghibli-style" image generation function quickly ignites social media. Users only need to upload images and enter instructions to convert any image into the classic aesthetic style of Miyazaki animation. This technological breakthrough not only makes ordinary users become "digital artists", but also catalyzes a carnival across technology, art and finance.

In just 24 hours, more than 5 million tweets related to Ghibli style emerged on the X (formerly Twitter) platform, and the participation of technology leaders such as Musk and Sam Altman pushed the popularity to the peak. At the same time, the crypto market quickly responded: at 6 pm on March 26, GHIBLI, the Meme token of the same name based on the Solana chain, was launched. The market value exceeded US$40 million within 24 hours, an increase of more than 100 times, and the transaction volume reached US$109 million. Behind this carnival is the dissolution of artistic originality by AI technology, and the plunder of emotional value by crypto capital.

01GHIBLI's popularity is a co-conspiracy experiment of algorithms, capital and cultural symbols.

GHIBLI's luck is inseparable from three major engines - technological revolution, celebrity effect and narrative hunger in the crypto market. These three factors are indispensable.

Technical Revolution: GPT-4o's "style transfer" and artistic democratization trap

OpenAI's GPT-4o multimodal model accurately analyzes the visual characteristics of Ghibli's works through comparative learning techniques - soft color gradients (such as the forest green of "Spiritual Away", round character lines (such as the innocence of "Tongkat") and delicate natural scenes (such as the original forest of "Princess Ghost". Users only need to upload the picture and enter the command "Repaint in Ghibli style", and the model can generate highly restored imitations in 5 seconds. The core of this technological breakthrough lies in multimodal integration capabilities: GPT-4o implements joint training of text, images, and audio for the first time, and directly completes cross-media content generation without relying on external models such as DALL-E.

However, the essence of this "no threshold creation" is the industrialized dimensionality reduction of art. Miyazaki denounced AI-generated content as early as 2016 as an insult to life itself, it is believed that it lacks the emotional temperature of hand-animated animation. The democratization of technology seems to give the public the right to express itself, but in fact it eliminates the uniqueness of artistic creation. When Musk generated a personal portrait of Totoro style through GPT-4o, the public's focus shifted from the narrative depth of animation to symbolic visual labels, and the artistic value was simplified to a batch-replicable template.

Celebrity effect: social capital fission and the casting of financial symbols

The in-depth participation of technology leaders is the core catalyst for the outbreak of the GHIBLI phenomenon. Its strategy is essential to transform personal influence into social capital, and then complete financial cash out through the crypto market. At 9 a.m. on March 26, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman replaced the X platform avatar with a Ghibli-style portrait with a caption, and wrote "This is the theme today." The tweet was retweeted 1.2 million times, directly pushing the market value of GHIBLI tokens soared from $5.3 million to $15 million in 3 hours. The next day, Musk released a Ghibli-style portrait wearing a kimono and in a bamboo forest, with the caption "This is the theme today". The number of clicks reached 55.9 million, setting a record of single tweet interaction in 2025. The GHIBLI trading volume surged 17 times in 24 hours, accounting for 23% of the total trading volume of Solana chain.

Celebrities in the encryption field are also unwilling to fall behind. Binance CEO Richard Teng, Ripple executive Brad Garlinghouse and others intensively released Ghibli-style avatars, forming a chain communication effect. On-chain analysts found that the associated address of Garlinghouse holds a GHIBLI token worth $870,000, which is suspected to be a compound harvesting strategy of "celebrity endorsement + hidden position". This "identity symbol reconstruction" not only satisfies the public's pursuit of personalization, but also amplifies the token's communication potential through celebrity credit endorsement, forming a closed loop of "social popularity → financial premium".

Natural hunger in the crypto market: From liquidity traps to emotion-driven pricing

The outbreak of GHIBLI coincides with the crypto market's deep macro dilemma. In early March, Trump announced an increase in tariffs on imported goods, which triggered inflation concerns. Bitcoin price plummeted 40% from its high at the end of 2024, Ethereum cut 60% and its total market value shrank by 38%. Institutional funds are withdrawing at a faster pace, and Bitcoin ETF net inflows sharply dropped from peak of US$1.2 billion to 89 millionDollar. Against this background, the hot spot Meme coins with high volatility have become the target of capital pursuit. On the first day of GHIBLI launch, the share of Meme currency trading volume on Solana's chain soared from 14% to 39%, while the DeFi protocol TVL fell by 23%, indicating that liquidity shifted from technology projects to emotional assets.

The deeper logic lies in filling the narrative vacuum. Tracks such as AI and RWA fell silent due to the bursting of the valuation bubble, and GHIBLI quickly occupied his mind with the cross-border narrative of "Ghibli aesthetics + AI generation". Its market value exceeded US$24 million in 24 hours, an increase of 10,824%, revealing the new pricing logic of the crypto market: emotional value > technical value. This transformation exposed the speculative nature of the industry - when technological innovation is weak, the financialization of cultural symbols becomes the only life-saving straw.

02GHIBLI may set off a paradigm revolution in Meme coins: from cultural symbols to financial instruments

The popularity of GHIBLI is not only a short-term hot event, but also reveals a profound change in the Meme coins market. Compared with the traditional "dogcoin model" - relying on the spontaneous promotion of grassroots communities, GHIBLI is more like a top-down precise marketing. Its rapid communication and strong market momentum show three key characteristics of Meme currency evolution: 1. Cross-circle communication, creating a closed loop of cultural capital

The popularity of GHIBLI is not accidental, but a successful "cultural breakthrough" operation. Ghibli IP itself has global influence, and GHIBLI tokens use this IP to attract a large number of non-encrypted users, causing unprecedented expansion in crypto market traffic. Data shows that Musk's tweet about GHIBLI reached 55.9 million views, 70% of which came from users in non-crypto community. This phenomenon shows that Meme coins no longer rely on traditional crypto communities, but have achieved wider market coverage through IP, social media dissemination and emotional hype. This model provides Meme coins with unprecedented growth momentum and makes them more speculative.

2. Instant financialization, Meme Coin’s “industrial assembly line”

Traditional encryption projects usually require months of development, review and community construction, while the new generation of Meme Coin completely abandoned this process and achieved "second listing". The efficient transaction speed and lower handling fee of Solana chain are MThe popularity of eme coins provides a technical foundation. Taking the Pump.fun platform on the Solana chain as an example, it compresses the coin issuance process to 5 minutes, making the generation and transaction of Meme coins extremely efficient. The essence of this model is that through smart contracts, the market can quickly capture hot spots and complete a complete closed loop from emotional guidance to token trading. This highly financialized process makes Meme coins no longer just a part of community culture, but more like a "short-term financial tool" specifically used for rapid game of market funds.

3. Harvest standardization and precise control of market rhythm

As Meme currency trading becomes more and more mature, market manipulation methods are becoming increasingly refined, and the funding parties have begun to use social media data analysis to accurately control the token release rhythm. For example, on-chain data shows that during the most active trading period of GHIBLI tokens, an address added 7.28 million GHIBLI liquidity in Meteora and quickly drew its investment 24 hours later, causing the token price to plummet by 43%. This operation method shows that the Meme currency market is evolving into a "data-driven financial game". The dealer formulates accurate harvesting strategies through social media popularity monitoring, on-chain data analysis and other means, making it difficult for ordinary investors to capture real market trends.

03 The ultimate question of the crypto market: speculation carnival or value reconstruction?

The Ghibli craze set off by GHIBLI comes and goes faster. At present, the latest price of GHIBLI is only US$0.006964, a drop of more than 80% compared to the all-time high set on March 28. GhibliCZ, which was launched during the same period, exceeded US$14 million in just 24 hours, but fell back to US$3.2 million in just 48 hours, with price fluctuations as high as 318%. A similar situation also occurred in KawaiiCoin on the BNB chain - this token takes "cute culture" as its selling point. The trading volume on the first day of its launch once accounted for 9% of the total trading volume of the BNB chain. However, due to the lack of practical application scenarios, the price was halved in just two days, and the market popularity quickly faded.

This short-term surge and plunge is not an isolated case, but a fate that continues over and over again in the entire Meme currency market. Historical data shows that 99% of Meme coins have less than three months of life. They often experience severe price fluctuations in a short period of time, and then quickly return to zero, becoming "sacrifices" in the speculative market. GHIBLI's roller coaster market once again confirms this market law - most Meme coins are essentially just emotions-driven financial games, they are neitherPrepare long-term value, and does not rely on real technological innovation, but is a short-term speculative product that revolves around the cycle of "emotion-flow-funding".

However, is this market logic really sustainable? If the industry continues to indulge in the fast-food model of "hot spots → tokens → harvest", the crypto market will eventually become a speculative battlefield full of scams and bubbles, lacking any actual value support. In the past few years, whether it is the fanatical hype of NFTs or the rounds of Meme coin craze, they have finally pointed to the same core issue: when the main driving force of the market shifts from technological innovation to emotional manipulation, the long-term development of the entire industry will be in danger.

GHIBLI's plunge will not be the last, nor the biggest. In the future, many factors such as regulatory intervention, legal litigation, and changes in market trends may become the fuse to puncture the Meme currency bubble. What the crypto industry really needs is not more short-term speculation opportunities, but a redefinition of long-term value.

Ghibli's IP was originally a symbol of warmth and healing, but now it has become a tool for financial speculation. This is not only a profound question of the crypto market, but also a deep thought of the entire digital cultural ecosystem - should we continue to cater to short-term market sentiment, or to build a digital economy system with truly long-term value? This will be a problem that all crypto market participants must face.