Money-mouth Face Emoji

A yellow face with dollar signs for eyes, raised eyebrows, and a tongue made of a dollar bill hanging from a broad grin. This is the emoji of wanting money so badly it replaced your eyeballs. 🤑 distills a century of cartoon visual language into one face: the "Wingding Eyes" trope where a character's pupils become dollar signs at the sight of treasure, typically accompanied by a cash register "ka-ching" sound.

Looney Tunes used this gag relentlessly. Daffy Duck's eyes turned to dollar signs in "You Were Never Duckier" (1948). Scrooge McDuck's entire personality is this emoji. When Unicode added 🤑 in version 8.0 (2015), they weren't inventing a new concept. They were standardizing one that animation had been running for 70 years.

🤑 is used for anything involving money: paydays, deals, sales, crypto moonshots, dream purchases, hustle culture flexes, and the universal feeling of "I want that but I can't afford it." It's also become a red flag in online scams, appearing in cryptocurrency spam, get-rich-quick schemes, and DMs from strangers promising passive income. When you see 🤑🚀💎🙌 in someone's bio, either they're memeing or they're about to pitch you a rugpull.

🤑 occupies two worlds that don't always get along.

The first world is genuine excitement about money. "Got a raise 🤑" or "Payday finally 🤑" or "This deal is insane 🤑." In this context, 🤑 is pure celebration, the emoji of seeing your bank account go up. It's especially common in hustle culture, side-gig communities, and financial Twitter/X where making money is a lifestyle, not just an outcome.

The second world is irony and self-deprecation. "Spending $8 on a coffee 🤑" or "Look at me budgeting like a millionaire 🤑" or "$0.03 in my savings account 🤑." Here, the dollar-sign eyes are aspirational fantasy, not reality. You're not rich. You're making fun of yourself for wanting to be.

Then there's the scam world. Cryptocurrency spam and get-rich-quick DMs load up on 🤑, 🚀, 💎, and 💰. The emojis bypass keyword-based spam filters while creating a visual language of quick wealth. At this point, an unsolicited DM with 🤑 in it is basically a guarantee that someone is trying to take your money, not help you make it.

Dictionary.com notes that 🤑 is used broadly for "the Good Life" and job-related content. It's one of the few emojis that functions as both a genuine expression and a warning sign depending entirely on context.

Dollar-sign eyes are one of the oldest visual gags in animation.

The trope, which TV Tropes catalogs as "Wingding Eyes," appears when a cartoon character sees money and their pupils transform into dollar signs. It's usually accompanied by a cash register "ka-ching" sound effect. The convention dates back to at least the 1940s in American animation, with Looney Tunes being one of the earliest and most prolific users.

The trope works because it externalizes an internal emotion: greed becomes visible. You don't need dialogue. You don't need narration. The character's eyes tell you everything. It's the same principle behind 😍 (love turns eyes to hearts) and 🤩 (amazement turns eyes to stars). Unicode is essentially standardizing visual metaphors that cartoonists invented.

🤑 takes the trope and adds a dollar-bill tongue. This is a Unicode invention, not a cartoon convention. In cartoons, the tongue stays normal. Unicode's designers apparently decided that if your eyes are money, your tongue should be too. The result is a face so consumed by wealth that it's speaking in currency.

The timing of 🤑's addition (2015) coincided with the rise of cryptocurrency culture, hustle influencers, and the "grindset" meme economy. It became the unofficial emoji of financial Twitter, crypto bros, and anyone whose personality is their portfolio.

Approved in Unicode 8.0 (2015) as U+1F911U+1F911 MONEY-MOUTH FACE. Part of the Emoji 1.0 release. One of several face-with-X-for-eyes emojis that encode cartoon visual tropes into the standard (see also: 😍 with heart eyes, 🤩 with star eyes).

🤑's dollar signs make it culturally specific in a way most emoji aren't. The $ symbol is American currency. On some platforms, the eyes show generic currency symbols or just dollar signs regardless of locale. This means 🤑 reads as "American money" to many users, which can feel odd when discussing euros, yen, or pounds.

In cultures where discussing money openly is considered tacky (parts of Northern Europe, Japan), 🤑 can read as crass or vulgar. In cultures where financial success is celebrated openly (US, parts of the Middle East, China), it's celebration.

The scam association also varies by region. In markets heavily targeted by crypto spam (US, Southeast Asia, Latin America), 🤑 in a stranger's DM is an immediate red flag. In regions with less crypto scam activity, it might still read as genuine excitement about money.

• •🤑's dollar-sign eyes descend from the "Wingding Eyes" trope used in American animation since at least the 1940s. Looney Tunes, Disney, and Hanna-Barbera all used dollar-sign pupils to show greed.
• •The dollar-bill tongue is a Unicode invention. In cartoons, only the eyes changed. Unicode's designers decided that if your eyes are money, your tongue should be too. 🤑 is greedier than the trope it's based on.
• •🤑 has become a red flag for online scams. Crypto spam and get-rich-quick DMs use money emojis to bypass keyword-based spam filters. If a stranger sends 🤑🚀💎🙌, protect your wallet.
• •🤑 was added in Unicode 8.0 (2015), coinciding with the rise of cryptocurrency culture, hustle influencers, and the "grindset" meme economy. It became the unofficial emoji of financial Twitter.
• •Google searches for "money face emoji" outnumber "money mouth emoji" by about 5x. People search for the concept (money face) not the Unicode name (money-mouth).

• •The biggest risk is the scam association. Using 🤑 in marketing, DMs, or pitches about money can make you look like a scammer even if you're legitimate. The emoji has been so thoroughly colonized by crypto spam that it carries guilt by association.
• •In cultures where openly discussing money is considered vulgar (Japan, parts of Northern Europe), 🤑 can come across as crass rather than celebratory. Know your audience.
• •The ironic vs genuine reading depends on context. "Just bought a yacht 🤑" from a billionaire reads differently than from a college student. Without knowing the sender's financial situation, the humor can land flat.

• •Scrooge McDuck (Disney, 1947+) is the living embodiment of 🤑. His entire personality is the dollar-sign eyes trope extended into a character. The famous scene of diving into a vault of gold coins is 🤑 in motion. Family Guy parodied it. DuckTales made it iconic.
• •Looney Tunes' Daffy Duck regularly displayed dollar-sign eyes when spotting treasure. In "You Were Never Duckier" (1948), his eyes become literal dollar signs while eyeing a $5,000 prize.
• •The "stonks" meme (a surreal rendering of the word "stocks" with a low-poly man in a suit and a rising green arrow) captures the same energy as 🤑: financial enthusiasm divorced from financial competence.
• •Crypto Twitter/X adopted 🤑 alongside 🚀💎🙌 as the standard vocabulary of speculative excitement. The same emojis later became warning signs for scams.

• •🤑 is U+1F911U+1F911. Unicode name: MONEY-MOUTH FACE. Common shortcodes: :money_mouth_face::money_mouth_face: (Slack, Discord) or :money_mouth::money_mouth: (GitHub). Part of Unicode 8.0 (2015).
• •The dollar signs in 🤑's eyes are platform-specific. Most render $ symbols, but some platforms use generic currency marks. If your app needs to detect or analyze money-related emoji sentiment, include 🤑 alongside 💰, 💸, 💵, 💶, 💷, 💴.
• •For spam/scam detection: 🤑 combined with 🚀, 💎, 🙌, or phrases like 'DM me' is a strong signal for cryptocurrency scam messages. Many anti-spam systems now flag this emoji combination.

See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.