The man who hit the pulse of American social sentiment has issued a token.

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Author｜Azuma（@azuma_eth）

Who is currently the most influential person in the United States? The answer might not be the well-known Trump or Musk, but a man named Nick Shirley.

Who is Nick Shirley? He is an independent investigative journalist stirring up social sentiment in the U.S. today. On December 27, Nick Shirley posted multiple videos of his investigative visits on social media platforms such as X, Instagram, and YouTube, accusing Minnesota of rampant fraud and corruption.

In the videos, Nick Shirley visited a Somali-run daycare that was supposedly operational but did not open its doors, and the 99 registered students listed in public records were nowhere to be seen. He asked a local resident who had lived in the area for 8 years, and the interviewee said, “I’ve been living here since 2017, but I’ve never seen any children.”

Nick Shirley stated in the video: “This is one of hundreds of ‘daycares’ that received millions of dollars from the government. This one, which even misspells ‘learning’ as ‘learing,’ received $1.9 million in tax-exempt funding… And this is just one case among thousands of fraudulent businesses in Minnesota… Governor Tim Walz knows about these frauds but has never reported them.”

Nick Shirley’s videos have sparked massive attention and discussion in the U.S., with hundreds of millions of views across the internet within just two days. His 42-minute comprehensive investigation video on X alone has garnered over a hundred million views.

Prominent figures from politics and business have also engaged with Nick Shirley. U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris retweeted and responded multiple times, saying that Nick Shirley’s investigation is more valuable than all the works that will compete for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize; Elon Musk also followed Nick Shirley’s account and highly praised his media contribution, calling ‘learning’ the “word of the year.”

Here’s some background on U.S. politics: Minnesota is traditionally considered a Democratic stronghold, but recent years have seen a significant shift, turning it into a swing state. More importantly, the current governor, Tim Walz, was Harris’s running mate in the 2024 election and could have become Vice President under Vance… So it’s not surprising that Harris personally stepped in to criticize.

Given the hot topic and its meme-friendly social and political attributes, the on-chain community naturally responded.

First, the community spontaneously hyped the most abstract typo in the investigation—‘learing’—and on the Solana chain, this meme token’s market cap temporarily reached $3.34 million.

Next, the community discovered that Nick Shirley seemingly registered a creator platform on Zora and issued a personal creator token $thenickshirley on Base. Interactions between Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong and Nick Shirley confirmed that this token was indeed issued by him.

As of this writing, $thenickshirley ’s market cap is approximately $5.65 million (peaking at $9.02 million), and Nick Shirley has earned $41,646 in creator royalties.

Brian Armstrong stated that this demonstrates content monetization on the Base platform outperforms other platforms. Nick Shirley also thanked Brian Armstrong after making money and praised Base and Zora as “legends.”

Additionally, prediction market Polymarket quickly followed up with speculation about the “next steps” regarding this topic, with current odds shown below:

An hour ago, Nick Shirley posted his Venmo and crypto addresses on X, openly accepting “tips.”

From the rising meme trend $thenickshirley, to Nick Shirley’s token issuance, to the launch of “multi-channel crowdfunding” and ongoing market-driven fermentation, we are witnessing a performance of the synergy between online media and open finance.

This is not merely a meme speculation; it’s more like a real-world experiment on “creator economy + on-chain content monetization”—a person with enormous influence and public interest in the real world, without sponsors, platform revenue sharing, or advertisers, directly completing the cycle of attention monetization through on-chain tools.

What it proves is not “how much this token can rise,” but a deeper question: whether content can truly be monetized on decentralized platforms in a lower-friction, more transparent way. Perhaps, this hints at the future evolution of the media industry.