In what may be the most San Francisco story ever told, a beloved Mission district bodega cat named KitKat, who was struck and killed by a Waymo last week, has now sparked a meme coin valued at more than $3.5 million.
KitKat was a fixture at a 16th Street convenience store and the surrounding commercial corridor. The token $KITKAT “honors his memory and demands justice for all innocent lives,” according to its profile (opens in new tab) on the value tracker Dexscreener. (Coin owner Daniel Zeidan, whose father employed KitKat at Randa’s Market, said he did not write that copy.)
But meme coins are better known for fraudulent schemes than for delivering justice, and some friends of the late tabby are skeptical.
In the wake of the cat’s death, Supervisor Jackie Fielder introduced a resolution calling on the state to give cities more power to ban Waymo autonomous vehicles. National news outlets picked up the story after The Standard broke it.
Then came the hucksters. Zeidan and his dad were hounded by impresarios urging him to cosign a tribute coin.
“We had people calling the store, offering my dad money to endorse a coin,” Zeidan said. “I got a call saying there are people online profiting off this with their own coin, and they said it would be more justified for the money to go to the owner of the cat.”
Zeidan said he has no experience in the world of meme coins and wasn’t sure what to do.
“We wrestled with it,” he said, “because it felt weird.”
But after talking with a crypto lawyer, he decided to go for it. As he explained, somebody was going to make money off of KitKat’s death, so why not his family? The coin, which started trading Sunday, currently goes for about a third of a cent per token.
Zeidan insists “the last thing I would want to do is mislead people.” He said he’s “in full control” of the coin.
But he doesn’t manage the coin’s X account (opens in new tab) and had no idea that somebody had put up a billboard (opens in new tab) advertising the token (and, for some reason, boosting Tesla) 380 miles away in L.A. County. Other people — with whom Zeidan says he has no connection — have spent their own time and money promoting the coin, presumably in an effort to pump its value. And by now, we all know what comes after a pump.
Whoever is behind the coin’s X account did not respond to an interview request.
Fielder, a Democratic Socialist, caught heat (opens in new tab) online for reposting an X account dedicated to boosting the meme coin. The supervisor said in a text message that she had heard about a coin but that it’s not her focus.
Zeidan said he plans to give some of the profits to animal welfare groups and has already made a crypto donation (opens in new tab) he said is worth $10,000 to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do with the rest of the proceeds.
Doubts remain. Marketed as the key to a democratic and “decentralized” economy, crypto has proved addictive to traders, lucrative for a minority (including President Donald Trump), and catastrophic for victims who have seen their savings vanish as hyped tokens go belly up.
Cryptocurrency is, however, an incredible avenue for turning internet fame into money. Look no further than “Hawk Tuah Girl” Haliey Welch, who became an overnight celebrity after detailing her fellatio technique in a sidewalk interview. Her fans poured $500 million into a signature coin; hours later, its creators cashed out and the coin’s value crashed, screwing almost everyone who bought in. (Welch claims she was deceived and didn’t make any money from the scam.)
Zeidan insists that his coin, which has been promoted with AI-generated images of a winged KitKat resting on golden clouds, will be nothing like that. He’s the sole proprietor and said nobody else has access to the “creator wallet.”
“I am in full control,” Zeidan said. “I know there’s a bad reputation with these new coins, but I’m hoping to have something good come out of it.”
Some who knew and loved KitKat are not impressed. William Bogart, 30, has been seeing movies at the Roxie Theater next door to Randa’s Market on a near-daily basis for years.
“I’ve never known a cat to be so outgoing,” Bogart said. “It is a loss that my friends and I have felt deeply.”
Bogart recently visited KitKat’s altar outside the theater and was moved by the outpouring of love for the neighborhood mascot but did not have the same reaction to his eponymous crypto.
“An altar is an appropriate way to grieve. Considering ways to prevent this in the future is an appropriate way to honor his memory. Capitalizing on his death with a little digital token is not appropriate. It’s disgusting,” Bogart said. “Anyone that thinks they are honoring KitKat with something like this is deluding themselves.”