踩中全美社会情绪的男人(Nick Shirley)发币了!

Who is the person with the highest popularity in the United States right now? The answer might not be the well-known people like Trump or Musk, but a man named Nick Shirley.

Who is Nick Shirley? He is an independent investigative journalist who is stirring up emotions in American society. On December 27th, Nick Shirley posted several videos on social media platforms such as X, Instagram, and YouTube, revealing his findings about rampant fraud and corruption in Minnesota, USA.

In one of the videos, Nick Shirley visited a daycare center in the state. The center was supposedly open for business, but it wasn’t actually open at all. The 99 registered students listed in official records also disappeared. Nick Shirley asked a local resident who had lived in the area for eight years. The resident said, “I have lived here since 2017, but I’ve never seen any children working there.”

Nick Shirley said in the video, “This is just one of hundreds of daycare centers that receive millions of dollars in government funding. A facility that even has a name that doesn’t make any sense, yet it still gets $1.9 million in tax-free funding… And this is just one of thousands of companies in Minnesota that are involved in fraudulent operations… Governor Tim Walz knows about these frauds, but he never reports them.”

Nick Shirley’s videos attracted enormous attention and discussion in the United States. In just two days, the total number of views for his videos reached hundreds of millions. The 42-minute investigation video on X alone received hundreds of millions of views.

Well-known figures from the political and business worlds also joined in interaction with Nick Shirley. Vice President Wants repeatedly shared and responded to his posts, stating that Nick Shirley’s investigation was more valuable than all of the works nominated for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize. Elon Musk also followed Nick Shirley’s account and praised him for leveraging media power effectively, calling “learing” the “best word of the year”.

It’s worth mentioning that Minnesota is traditionally considered a stronghold of Democrats in American politics. However, in recent years, the political landscape has changed significantly, with Minnesota becoming a swing state. Importantly, current Governor Tim Walz was Harris’ running mate in the 2024 election, making him a potential successor to Wants as vice president… So it’s not surprising that Wants took action himself.

Given the high level of attention this topic received, along with its social and political significance, ChainWorld definitely won’t miss out on this opportunity.

Initially, the community started discussing the most abstract mistake in this survey—“learing”. On the Solana chain, the market value of this meme token is currently around $3.34 million.

Later, it was discovered that Nick Shirley allegedly registered an account on Zora’s creator platform and issued personal creator tokens called $thenickshirley on Base. interactions between Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong and Nick Shirley confirmed that these tokens indeed belonged to him.

As of the time of writing, $thenickshirley’s market value is currently estimated at $5.65 million (with a peak of $9.02 million). Nick Shirley has already earned $41,446 in royalties.

Brian Armstrong commented that this demonstrates that content monetization on Base is more effective than on other platforms. Nick Shirley also thanked Brian Armstrong after making money, and praised Base and Zora as “legendary”.

Additionally, prediction market Polymarket quickly responded to this topic, with the current odds as follows:

One hour ago, Nick Shirley posted on X links to Venmo and cryptocurrency addresses, offering rewards openly.

From the emerging Meme phenomenon $thenickshirley, to Nick Shirley’s decision to launch his own coin, to the “multi-channel crowdfunding” efforts and the ongoing developments in the market, we have witnessed a truly remarkable collaboration between online media and open finance.

This is certainly not just a simple Meme speculation; it’s a real-world experiment involving “creator economy + on-chain content monetization.” It’s a case of a person with significant influence in real life being able to convert attention into currency using on-chain tools, without any sponsors, platform splits, or advertisers.

What it verifies isn’t “how high this token can rise”, but rather a more fundamental question: whether content can indeed be monetized on decentralized platforms in a frictionless and transparent manner. Perhaps, there lies the direction of future evolution for the media industry.