the rare pepe trading cards quietly created the first nft culture. before nfts were a thing.

before opensea. people were minting memes on bitcoin.
using the counterparty protocol. pepe became scarce.
collectible. tradable. some cards sold for thousands.
just for being rare. this was weird at the time. memes with value made no sense.but it introduced a new idea.
digital culture can be owned. not copied. not just shared. owned. years later, nfts exploded. but the seed was already planted. it proved something deeper.
memes are assets.