The collision of culture and capital: Meme coins in this cycle and their star representatives

From the last cycle…

Starting from the last cycle of people and Shib, meme is a cultural expression of a group. From the perspective of the community, meme coins are the most consistent with the sentiment of retail investors and the community atmosphere. Lets review the rise of people. The community was originally established to win a rare copy of the US Constitution at an auction. Constitution DAO attracted 17,437 contributors and raised more than $47 million. PEOPLE is the token given by ConstitutionalDAO to its contributors, and it became a token owned by the community after the auction failed. And in the process of raising funds and bidding through digital currency, groups that also agree with community autonomy and the federal constitution are connected, and finally the organizational rights are returned to the community itself. This origin gives people a strong political color, and People Coin has a relatively obvious market performance in many political events since then. For example, during the US mid-term election in June this year, people created a nearly 600% increase in a short period of time. Similarly, peoples previous currency holding addresses and currency concentration also reflect that this is a decentralized social experiment.

Since its launch in August 2020, 시바 이누 (SHIB) has become one of the most watched meme coins in the world at an astonishing speed, thanks to its clever brand positioning and strong community power. SHIBs founder Ryoshi locked 50% of the tokens on Uniswap at the time of issuance, and the other half was transferred to the address of Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, who destroyed 90% of SHIB in May 2021 and donated the rest to the Indian Pandemic Relief Fund. This event attracted the attention of the global media, driving SHIBs market value to soar rapidly, reaching more than 40 billion US dollars in October 2021, ranking among the top ten 암호화폐currencies in the world. SHIBs market value performance is particularly eye-catching: it has rapidly increased in value from a few million US dollars in the early days, and even surpassed many old mainstream currencies in a short period of time, becoming the object of millions of investors.

SHIB community ShibArmy is the core force of its continued development. Currently, there are more than 2 million participants, who are active on social media such as Twitter and Reddit, and continue to expand their influence. To further enhance the value of tokens, the SHIB team launched the decentralized trading platform ShibaSwap, and issued tokens such as LEASH and BONE, forming a rich ecosystem. In addition, SHIB is developing the Layer 2 solution Shibarium to further improve transaction efficiency and enhance its practical application scenarios. This decentralized distribution mechanism, community promotion and ecological expansion have built a unique meme coin ecosystem. SHIB is no longer a simple meme coin, but a community-driven project with practical application value, showing the potential of meme coins beyond market sentiment and speculation.

In any case, whether as cultural or political symbols, DAO and meme coins have shown surprising effects in the market. As a result, more and more people believe that DAO and digital currency are naturally suitable for memes.

Meme style of this cycle

BRC 20 and inscription

The meme coin craze in this round of market cycle presents some completely different characteristics from the previous ones. With the rising expectations of BTC ETF, Bitcoin-related tokens such as BCH have become the new destination of market funds. In addition, some designs that are comparable to Ethereum have emerged in the Bitcoin ecosystem, such as BTCs Layer 2, EVM and BRC 20 standards. The birth of BRC 20 has enabled the Bitcoin network to issue tokens and quickly attracted a lot of capital attention.

In this context, star tokens in BRC 20, such as Ordi, took the lead in rising strongly, further boosting the hot market of BRC 20. At the same time, animal coins such as Rats also gradually emerged, pushing the meme coin trend to a new height.

Other public chains such as Avalanche and Solana have followed suit and launched similar inscription designs, allowing inscription projects to flourish on various chains, and the meme coin market has once again ushered in the vitality of diversity and innovation.

Celebrity Effect and Special Events

In addition, meme coins are also greatly influenced by celebrities and some special events. During the US election, meme tokens centered around Trump triggered a craze in the crypto market. For example, meme coins such as MAGA, Super Trump Coin and FreeDum Fighters used political events to attract investors attention. In particular, FreeDum Fighters proposed the concept of PolitiFi and launched a fictional duel mechanism between characters supporting Trump and his opponent Harris (MAGATRON and Kamacop 9000).

Similarly, after Musk changed his social media profile to Chief Troll Officer, meme coins such as TROLL instantly exploded the market. The price of TROLL coin soared 330% in just 24 hours, attracting a large number of speculators to enter the market. This move directly triggered a craze for TROLL and other meme coins, and many traders realized huge returns by purchasing TROLL in a short period of time.

Along with the AI craze comes AI meme. Take GOAT (goatseus maximus) as an example. The concept of this token was created by the AI bot Truth Terminal and introduced by the developer using the Claude-3 Opus training model. The success of GOAT has led to the emergence of different AI meme coins, such as SHEGEN, but none of them has surpassed GOAT in scale and influence.

Public chain and meme ecology

Although meme coins were originally only used for entertainment or topics, they have played a relatively significant role in promoting the user growth of the crypto ecosystem and the development of public chain networks. Due to the high transaction frequency, this type of token has attracted a large number of new users, which has led to the creation of wallets and an increase in the number of transactions. For example, Ethereum has become the preferred platform for launching meme tokens due to its ERC-20 standard, while Solana has attracted a large number of meme coin users with its low-cost transactions. The characteristics of various public chains attract traders of different tones, and meme has increased the user base and ecological exposure of public chains. At this time, meme launchpad also came into being. Pump.fun is designed for users to participate in the creation and trading of meme tokens. Its gamification mechanism and social interaction enhance the activity of the Solana ecosystem.

The mechanism of Pump.fun is to publish new meme coins with one click, and mint tokens reasonably through the bonding curve pricing system. Newly created memecoins will be sent directly to raydium transactions, and when the market value reaches the limit, the platform will inject liquidity into raydium and destroy some tokens to enhance the liquidity and stability of the currency. For creators, they only need to pay an initial fee of about 0.02 SOL and a migration fee of 2 SOL. These gameplays not only make Pump.fun a memecoin platform that is easy for project parties to cold start and participants to trade conveniently, but also make the Solana ecosystem more sticky and interactive.

In response to the craze for meme tokens, many public chains have also taken the initiative, such as accelerating transaction speeds and launching new token standards. Blockchains like Solana even call meme tokens cultural tokens, emphasizing their important role in spreading blockchain awareness and promoting community development. All this shows that meme tokens can not only enhance network effects, but also attract new users through cultural communication. After this, meme tokens may continue to serve as a carrier of cultural communication and a traffic entrance.

Why is 밈 코인 successful?

Lets first look at why meme coins are rising in this cycle from a trading perspective. The most important reason is that other targets in the market that are in the low valuation range are not enough to absorb funds. Our ideal bull market is that ETH and BTC drive other altcoins to take off together, but in this cycle, most altcoins have not outperformed BTCs yield; secondly, the wealth effect of new projects is not as expected: the numerous new projects have greatly dispersed market funds, and the valuations of the top new projects have been inflated in the primary fundraising stage, and they began to fluctuate sharply after the subsequent IEO/IDO went online, so the returns of small and medium-sized investors in the exchange are relatively average. The anti-centralized capital game sentiment brought about by these has made retail investors more willing to choose meme. In addition, the new narratives of this cycle, such as intent, zk or FHE, have not been recognized by most traders in the market. Most market participants are skeptical. These narratives that currently do not see secondary wealth are still so far away, and the market is in great need of new narratives that can be hyped.

From the perspective of meme itself, we can find that a good meme coin basically meets the following conditions after reviewing successful meme coins: the meme itself must have unique symbols and symbolic meanings, and have the possibility of viral spread and secondary creation. Shiba Inu is a good example. Alternatively, the community as a whole has an inspiring story and vision that arouses emotional resonance in the community, allowing more users to identify with and participate in it.

Secondly, operations are crucial to the success of meme. Community autonomy should be achieved at the beginning, and a unified and consistent atmosphere should be formed through a large amount of communication. The founding team must be good at using publicity methods such as social media and various means to maintain user stickiness, ensuring that community members have the opportunity to participate in decision-making and enhance cohesion and sense of belonging.

The most critical point is that there must be a group of sufficiently strong and stable bookmakers who are willing to support the project for a long time, thereby providing support for the price of the currency. The long-term trust and belief of these holders is an important guarantee for the stable growth of Meme Coin.

Is Meme Coin hype or self-expression?

Control and Risk

As of recently, the total market value of the Meme coin sector is about $58 billion, accounting for about 2.5% of the total value of the entire cryptocurrency market. Although it has a certain position in the market, the overall scale is still small. As of the end of 2024, the top ten meme coins account for most of the market value of the meme coin market. Among them, Dogecoin (market value of about $11 billion) and Shib (Shiba Inu, market value of about $6.5 billion) are in the lead. Together with other popular meme coins such as Floki Inu, Dogelon Mars and 베이비 도지 Coin, the total market value of these top meme coins accounts for more than 80% of the market value of the entire meme coin market, with a recent total valuation of about $39.7 billion. The meme sector shows a highly centralized phenomenon, with a few tokens accounting for most of the market share. At the same time, because some Meme coins are mainly held by strong dealers and manipulate a large number of chips, the overall volatility is relatively large. Faced with such a highly concentrated and volatile market environment, trading for profit has become a nearly speculative act of trying to pull chestnuts out of the fire.

The challenge of balancing innovation and value

The author believes that the most attractive value core of Meme is anti-orthodox expression: anti-mainstream narrative, anti-centralized capital… It is a symbol that grows out of the communication of the community, and the expression carried by this symbol itself represents the personal expression of each participant in the community. However, meme and meme coin are two completely different things. It seems to run counter to the essence of meme to rack ones brains to think of new narratives and new gimmicks, and then use celebrity effects or market making to drive the price of coins. Some people think that meme coins are the most insignificant innovation in the crypto world. It has occupied a lot of block space and affected the system of the blockchain itself; others think that hyping memes is just a natural product, and guiding the hype enthusiasm of the community reasonably is also the meaning of crypto. . Regardless of peoples views on meme coins, they are shaping the future of blockchain in a unique way, and to a certain extent reflect the complexity and diversity of the digital asset market. In this context, how to balance innovation and value is still a question that the entire crypto community needs to think deeply about.

About MemeBox

MemeBox is a new brand under Gate.io dedicated to the prosperity of the MEME ecosystem. It will deeply explore the potential and opportunities of the Meme market. MemeBox is committed to perfectly integrating technology and culture, gathering Meme culture enthusiasts from all over the world with an open and inclusive attitude, and jointly promoting a new trend of Meme culture!

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