Regulatory crackdowns lead to new anti-SEC memecoin called NotWifGary (NWG)

A small group of community members have banded together to create a decentralized memecoin called NotWifGary (NWG) – a project with an anti-Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), pro-Ethereum stance. This development follows the recent intensification of regulators’ attention to the crypto industry.

Although some members of NWG have a background in the zkEVM ecosystem Linea, NWG founder stated Marco Monaco on May 15 explicitly stated that the project has no ties with Linea or Consensys. He indicated the following:

“My involvement in this project is 100% on a personal level and I do not do this in my official @LineaBuild role. This project has no ties whatsoever to Linea or @Consensys, even if $NWG will stand with similar companies and support them in their fight against the SEC.”

Along with 11 “brave friends,” Monaco attributed the project’s creation to “regulatory uncertainty” affecting Ethereum. The official NWG Project posted to

NotWifGary will be a meme coin, more specifically a CultureCoin. It will go live in the most decentralized way with a truly fair launch. The 12 project backers proposing $NWG have all been announced and 100% of the allocation will be deployed into a pool.

On its website, the project states that its meme coin will be launched on Linea as an ERC20 token, “staked from a multisig wallet involving Original Project Backers.”

The NWG project is not yet live and the intention is to bootstrap the liquidity pool (LP) through community donations to ensure the token is “sufficiently decentralized” and has a “fair launch.”

Donations will not provide an allocation of $NWG tokens. Donors will receive the “NWG Launch Team” SBT. The SEC recently took regulatory action against highly regarded companies such as Robinhood, issuing a Wells Notice on May 4, and caused a delay in Exodus’ NYSE listing on May 10.

Democratic Rep. Wiley Nickel explained on May 15 that the SEC is turning crypto “into a political football,” unnecessarily forcing President Biden to “take sides” on the issue.

Nickel’s comment follows the staff’s proposal to adopt rule SAB 121, which would require SEC reporting entities to record custodial crypto as liabilities on balance sheets.