Editor's Note: The rise of MEME coins has well demonstrated the wealth effect and innovation opportunities in the crypto culture, although MEME is currently in the early stage of pursuing short-term gains, MEME still provides a reference value for the future of cultural finance and cultural coins. The article proposes to build a MEME coin crowdfunding platform to make the tokens not only limited to memes, but combined with lifestyle products, fashion brands, DeSci and other cultural projects, in order to unleash the power of capital formation. In the future, cultural coins will become the carrier of value creation and distribution.
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In the narrative of MEME coins, fun and optimism coexist, but its logic is misleading, often using a zero-sum game mindset to interpret the world, and borrowing some uncomfortable Marxist views, emphasizing the redistribution of power and wealth, while ignoring the real value creation.
"No need to create value, just get a share." This mentality is widely accepted, and airdrops seem to have become a kind of "welfare." The more free resources you get, the stronger the desire. However, opportunities are not obtained out of thin air, but through hard work. Envy of seed round investment opportunities is the basis for the rationalization of MEME coins. However, market access is one thing, and obtaining seed round investment opportunities depends on one's social capital. In addition, many people ignore the survivor bias - most seed round investments are actually losing money.
In the current crypto market, investors, project parties and users have become accustomed to trading tokens without actual value through the "meme premium." The natural evolution of this market paradigm has led to a more explicit phenomenon: "If that's the case, let's just issue tokens that are obviously worthless." This assumption believes that the crypto field lacks real creative intent, but this is not the case - "You are not a lottery ticket."
MEME coins are essentially just a social game of ups and downs, which is not a problem. It can be seen as a new type of lottery, vaguely related to the zeitgeist. However, the rationalization logic behind MEME coins is disturbing: resisting the "evil capitalists" who exploit our profits! Even without value, we have the right to wealth! We have the right to beat the market!
However, there is a fundamental difference between wanting to make money and demanding to make money. The narrative of MEME coins caters to this hollow desire, ultimately filling the pockets of insiders, who then criticize the so-called "evil venture capitalists." Some people equate MEME coins with early crypto investments, which is wrong. The difference is that today, among the false projects supported by venture capital, perhaps only a few can create trillions of dollars in value in the next decade.
Value can only be distributed.
Value should be claimed.
Value is just a product of the way to obtain it.
Fundamentally, MEME coins are indeed full of fun, and they even have the potential to become the next trend of escapism in consumer culture. In the future, they may become agents of value creation, because the tokenization of culture is a powerful and underdeveloped tool. However, the current MEME coin narrative is essentially strongly tinged with Marxism.
So how can this narrative be transformed into a positive-sum cultural finance game?
The Rise of Cultural Finance
Since the foundation of crypto culture is money, and money is the driving force of the culture of desire, we may have found the key to a breakthrough. Culture (in this case, money) has become a product, which also well explains the emergence of MEME coins and phenomena like pump.fun.
We usually like to start from the "bundling/unbundling" framework to think about the waves of new product and technology adoption. In September 2023, before the MEME coin craze erupted, we proposed a model and pointed out: "Perhaps not so intuitive, but cultural relevance will be traded."
Our direction was correct, but we failed to foresee the rapid rise of MEME coins. Looking back, this is actually reasonable, because the wealth effect at the time and the lack of real innovation led to the outbreak of this phenomenon. However, MEME coins are not a dead end. They actually provide an excellent proof of concept for "CultureFi" and "culturecoins", and crypto technology is gradually becoming a powerful cultural incubator.
MEME coins have shown us that brands and distribution channels can be effectively bundled together, which is the core of MEME coins - they are highly efficient distribution machines. Although the MEME coin forms we see today are still very primitive, relying more on short-term rapid price appreciation for exit, they have laid the foundation for the evolution of future cultural coins. Price appreciation is undoubtedly the most effective marketing means, and in the logic of MEME coins, price appreciation is not only a means, but also an end. But for future cultural coins, price appreciation is just a tool to a greater goal, just like Ethereum, Solana or Bitcoin.
The future of cultural coins will be more diverse - tokens will not only be the carrier of culture itself, but also the medium for distribution and dissemination. Here is my revision of the "bundling/unbundling" model, although it may not be the final version, but it reflects my current in-depth thinking and insights on the crypto consumer vertical.
The potential impact of this trend is not to be ignored, and we believe that the issuance of MEME coins still has great room for innovation. Rather than continuing to launch short-term "missiles" that may be manipulated by "pump and dump" groups, perhaps a dedicated MEME coin "crowdfunding platform" can be built to transform these tokens into real cultural coins, not just for creating funny memes, but as cultural carriers closely connected to lifestyle products.
This crowdfunding platform can transform the simple price fluctuation game into a tool for unlocking products and opportunities (such as gaining access to specific products or content). Leveraging the powerful capital formation capability of cryptocurrencies, this approach can be used to launch cultural coin projects with clear missions - whether fashion brands, record companies, decentralized science (DeSci) projects (such as $HAIR), or even innovations we haven't yet imagined.
Platforms like Polymarket have already shown the potential to capture value through predicting events, fashion and culture. In today's 24/7 "live reality show" world, people want to stay closely connected to the zeitgeist through financial tools to get the thrill and dopamine stimulation, which is only natural.
Today's MEME coins are like the early websites of the Internet (if they were financialized), still in a chaotic and functionally limited primitive state. And when culture itself becomes a battlefield, direct participation will only further raise the stakes and potential impact of this game.
Cultural coins may soon develop a practical use case, leading us from the "pre-industrial era" equivalent of the Internet to the rapid industrialization of the Internet. If you believe that it was the free expansion that drove the rapid progress of the industrial age, then cryptocurrencies are the extension of that freedom for the Internet.
