Giggles raises $1.2 million, led by 1kx in the Meme trading platform round

A TikTok-style meme trading platform, Giggles, has completed a $1.2 million pre-seed round, led by 1kx Capital. The company was built by 19-year-old Canadian founder Justin Jin. Its core principle is “everything can be traded.” Users can make early buys on short-form videos and memes, along with price discovery; it has already attracted roughly 450,000 users to join the waitlist.

Funding details: crypto and traditional VC firms are backing the meme track together

Giggles’ pre-seed round was completed in 2025, with an investment roster spanning crypto-native investors and traditional tech VCs:

List of main investors

1kx Capital (lead investor): a well-known VC firm focused on early crypto-native investments

Virtuals Protocol: an important investor in the AI agent and digital assets space

Social Graph Ventures: a niche VC focused on social media and the content economy

Noar Ventures and Night Capital: other institutional investors in this round

Angel investors: individual investors from organizations such as Opentures and Bain Capital

Giggles’ core mechanism: short videos rolling in meets prediction markets

Giggles’ operating logic can be understood as a blend of “TikTok + prediction markets”—users browse content in a TikTok-style feed interface, but every video or meme has tradeable attributes. If a user buys into a piece of content early, that content’s later viral spread can generate profits for holders; if the bet content fails to go viral, they face losses.

This mechanism combines the dopamine loop of social media “doom scrolling” with the speculative temptation of crypto markets, aiming to build “the first crypto application that users use for more than 30 minutes every day.” The platform currently prices with a virtual “spirit energy points” system; later, it plans to integrate real crypto assets.

Jin’s larger vision is that, in an era flooded with AI-generated content and overrun by bots, a meme trading mechanism can act as an information-organization and filtering tool—helping truly valuable content stand out from the noise. He said, “Trading and guessing which content will go viral creates a downstream effect—it actually organizes information.”

From memes to funding: an entrepreneurship story that couldn’t possibly happen

Giggles’ very creation is a meme. In 2023, amid a wave of rumors about a TikTok ban, Jin created a series of memes about fake applications, using the name “Giggles,” a phrase that already had an established meaning in the TikTok community, and they quickly went viral on TikTok. He then created a landing page for this nonexistent app, setting up a waitlist—the page reached 100,000 visits within a single day.

Facing unexpected traffic spikes, Jin decided to turn the meme into reality and contacted co-founder Edwin Wang, whom he met on YouTube. Wang used to be a Minecraft YouTuber and ran a market on the Minecraft platform, which was ultimately shut down for violating monetization rules—this background made him an ideal partner for building Giggles. Currently, Giggles has 8 employees, aged from 19 to 38; Jin himself is the youngest.

Frequently asked questions

How much funding has Giggles raised, and who led the round?

Giggles completed a $1.2 million pre-seed round (exact amount: $1,234,567), led by 1kx Capital. Participants include Virtuals Protocol, Social Graph Ventures, Noar Ventures, Night Capital, and angel investors from organizations such as Opentures and Bain Capital.

How does Giggles’ meme trading mechanism work?

Users can make early buys on short videos and memes on Giggles. If the content they hold goes viral afterward, holders can earn revenue. The platform currently uses virtual “spirit energy points,” and later plans to integrate real crypto assets, combining social media consumption habits with the prediction logic of crypto markets.

What development stage is Giggles in right now?

Giggles is currently still in invite-only beta testing, with about 450,000 users already joining the waitlist. The company was founded by 19-year-old Justin Jin and is headquartered in Canada. It currently has 8 employees.