IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/finlet/v72y2025ics1544612324015629.html

PolitiFi: Just another meme, or instrumental for winning elections?

Author

Listed:
  • Proelss, Juliane
  • Schweizer, Denis
  • Sévigny, Stéphane

Abstract

As the 2024 U.S. presidential election looms, the intersection of cryptocurrency and political finance has garnered significant interest. This study explores the new crypto category of PolitiFi, which merges politics and finance and is linked to political figures and agendas. Our analysis underscores the strategic deployment of these tokens to enhance visibility, shape narratives, and appeal to younger, more technologically adept voters within the crypto sphere. The alignment of cryptocurrency adoption with voter demographics highlights PolitiFi's potential to redefine political engagement and campaign strategies, and influence election outcomes. Empirical analyzes show that PolitiFi's development has exhibited a distinct trajectory, rapidly demonstrating independence and a critical decoupling from other meme coins in the cryptocurrency market.

Suggested Citation

  • Proelss, Juliane & Schweizer, Denis & Sévigny, Stéphane, 2025. "PolitiFi: Just another meme, or instrumental for winning elections?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:72:y:2025:i:c:s1544612324015629
    DOI: 10.1016/j.frl.2024.106533
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1544612324015629
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.frl.2024.106533?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Patell, Jm, 1976. "Corporate Forecasts Of Earnings Per Share And Stock-Price Behavior - Empirical Tests," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(2), pages 246-276.
    2. Stephen Ansolabehere & John M. de Figueiredo & James M. Snyder Jr, 2003. "Why is There so Little Money in U.S. Politics?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(1), pages 105-130, Winter.
    3. James W. Kolari & Seppo Pynnönen, 2010. "Event Study Testing with Cross-sectional Correlation of Abnormal Returns," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(11), pages 3996-4025, November.
    4. Omane-Adjepong, Maurice & Alagidede, Imhotep Paul, 2019. "Multiresolution analysis and spillovers of major cryptocurrency markets," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 191-206.
    5. Proelss, Juliane & Sévigny, Stéphane & Schweizer, Denis, 2023. "GameFi: The perfect symbiosis of blockchain, tokens, DeFi, and NFTs?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    6. Aloosh, Arash & Ouzan, Samuel & Shahzad, Syed Jawad Hussain, 2022. "Bubbles across Meme Stocks and Cryptocurrencies," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    7. Koutmos, Dimitrios, 2018. "Return and volatility spillovers among cryptocurrencies," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 173(C), pages 122-127.
    8. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:1:p:137-163 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Elsayed, Ahmed H. & Hoque, Mohammad Enamul & Billah, Mabruk & Alam, Md. Kausar, 2024. "Connectedness across meme assets and sectoral markets: Determinants and portfolio management," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    10. Kraaijeveld, Olivier & De Smedt, Johannes, 2020. "The predictive power of public Twitter sentiment for forecasting cryptocurrency prices," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    11. Yousaf, Imran & Pham, Linh & Goodell, John W., 2023. "The connectedness between meme tokens, meme stocks, and other asset classes: Evidence from a quantile connectedness approach," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    12. Benaim, Mickael, 2018. "From symbolic values to symbolic innovation: Internet-memes and innovation," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(5), pages 901-910.
    13. Clemente, Jesus & Montanes, Antonio & Reyes, Marcelo, 1998. "Testing for a unit root in variables with a double change in the mean," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 175-182, May.
    14. George A. Akerlof & Robert J. Shiller, 2015. "Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10534, December.
    15. Bonaparte, Yosef, 2023. "Introducing the Cryptocurrency VIX: CVIX✰," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    16. Pedersen, Lasse Heje, 2022. "Game on: Social networks and markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(3), pages 1097-1119.
    17. Bonaparte, Yosef & Kumar, Alok, 2013. "Political activism, information costs, and stock market participation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(3), pages 760-786.
    18. Katsiampa, Paraskevi & Corbet, Shaen & Lucey, Brian, 2019. "Volatility spillover effects in leading cryptocurrencies: A BEKK-MGARCH analysis," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 68-74.
    19. Luigi Guiso & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2008. "Trusting the Stock Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(6), pages 2557-2600, December.
    20. Mark Grinblatt & Matti Keloharju & Juhani Linnainmaa, 2011. "IQ and Stock Market Participation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(6), pages 2121-2164, December.
    21. Phillip, Andrew & Chan, Jennifer S.K. & Peiris, Shelton, 2018. "A new look at Cryptocurrencies," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 6-9.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Flynn, Matthew & Tarkom, Augustine, 2025. "How do financial markets price political uncertainty? Evidence from the 2024 United States presidential election," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    2. Chen, Muying & Wang, Shouyang & Wei, Yunjie, 2025. "Fragility of TRUMP and MELANIA coins," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 85(PD).
    3. Conlon, Thomas & Corbet, Shaen, 2025. "Memecoin contagion: Irrationality, illicit behaviour, and Cryptocurrency risk," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 86(PA).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yousaf, Imran & Abrar, Afsheen & Ali, Shoaib & Goodell, John W., 2024. "Connectedness between energy cryptocurrencies and US equity markets: A quantile-based analysis," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 96(PB).
    2. Yousaf, Imran & Jareño, Francisco & Tolentino, Marta, 2023. "Connectedness between Defi assets and equity markets during COVID-19: A sector analysis," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    3. Nobanee, Haitham & Ellili, Nejla Ould Daoud, 2023. "What do we know about meme stocks? A bibliometric and systematic review, current streams, developments, and directions for future research," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 589-602.
    4. Mbarek, Marouene & Msolli, Badreddine, 2025. "Tokens and cryptocurrencies: Evidence from asymmetric frequency connectedness approach," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 77(PA).
    5. Mobeen Ur Rehman & Neeraj Nautiyal & Xuan Vinh Vo & Muhammad Kashif & Sang Hoon Kang, 2026. "Quantile time-frequency connectedness and networks across cryptocurrency markets," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 12(1), pages 1-35, December.
    6. Proelss, Juliane & Sévigny, Stéphane & Schweizer, Denis, 2023. "GameFi: The perfect symbiosis of blockchain, tokens, DeFi, and NFTs?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    7. Asil Azimli, 2024. "Time-varying spillovers in high-order moments among cryptocurrencies," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 10(1), pages 1-39, December.
    8. Chenghao Liu & Aniket Mahanti & Ranesh Naha & Guanghao Wang & Erwann Sbai, 2025. "Enhancing Cryptocurrency Sentiment Analysis with Multimodal Features," Papers 2508.15825, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2025.
    9. Lee, Geul & Ryu, Doojin, 2025. "Fear of missing out and cryptocurrency miners: Evidence from Dogecoin and Litecoin," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 46(C).
    10. Katsiampa, Paraskevi & Corbet, Shaen & Lucey, Brian, 2019. "High frequency volatility co-movements in cryptocurrency markets," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 35-52.
    11. Ahmed, Mohamed Shaker & El-Masry, Ahmed A. & Al-Maghyereh, Aktham I. & Kumar, Satish, 2024. "Cryptocurrency volatility: A review, synthesis, and research agenda," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    12. Balcilar, Mehmet & Ozdemir, Huseyin & Agan, Busra, 2022. "Effects of COVID-19 on cryptocurrency and emerging market connectedness: Empirical evidence from quantile, frequency, and lasso networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 604(C).
    13. Delis, Manthos D. & Dioikitopoulos, Evangelos V. & Ongena, Steven, 2023. "Population diversity and financial risk-taking," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    14. Sha, Yezhou & Wang, Zilong & Yin, Zhichao, 2024. "House purchase restriction and stock market participation: Unveiling the role of nonpecuniary consideration," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 224(C), pages 390-406.
    15. Abudy, Menachem (Meni) & Mugerman, Yevgeny & Wiener, Zvi, 2021. "Stock markets and female participation in the labor force," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    16. Frederic Haase & Tom Celig & Oliver Rath & Detlef Schoder, 2025. "Wisdom of the crowd signals: Predictive power of social media trading signals for cryptocurrencies," Electronic Markets, Springer;IIM University of St. Gallen, vol. 35(1), pages 1-23, December.
    17. Huynh, Toan Luu Duc & Nasir, Muhammad Ali & Vo, Xuan Vinh & Nguyen, Thong Trung, 2020. "“Small things matter most”: The spillover effects in the cryptocurrency market and gold as a silver bullet," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    18. Jareño, Francisco & González, María de la O. & López, Raquel & Ramos, Ana Rosa, 2021. "Cryptocurrencies and oil price shocks: A NARDL analysis in the COVID-19 pandemic," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    19. Martin Waltz & Abhay Kumar Singh & Ostap Okhrin, 2022. "Vulnerability-CoVaR: investigating the crypto-market," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(9), pages 1731-1745, September.
    20. Walid Mensi & Mobeen Ur Rehman & Muhammad Shafullah & Khamis Hamed Al‑Yahyaee & Ahmet Sensoy, 2021. "Correction to: High frequency multiscale relationships among major cryptocurrencies: portfolio management implications," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 7(1), pages 1-1, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • G17 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Financial Forecasting and Simulation
    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors
    • P18 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Energy; Environment
    • Q41 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Demand and Supply; Prices

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:finlet:v:72:y:2025:i:c:s1544612324015629. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/frl .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.