Author:Zoomer Oracle
Compiled by: TechFlow
Crypto Coins with Cult-like Nature
The word "cult" is perhaps one of the most commonly used terms on CT to describe the meme coin craze. During the 2023 bear market, I posted an article that was my most popular tweet, titled "The Art of Cults".
I explored the distinction between the desire for cults and the essence of tech coins. Today, the market is chasing this trend, with every meme coin with a large following rapidly appreciating in value. It's great to see this theory basically holding true. However, within the "cult coins", there is another category of coins that has hardly been mentioned. When we think of "cult coins", we usually think of meme coins.
However, there are also some tech-focused coins (without venture capital) that have a large following as well. The reason is that these projects had almost no venture capital in the beginning, attracting the initial loyal supporters. Usually, these are early miners who will do everything they can to be loyal to their belief in the project's ability to change the world.
The performance of these coins far exceeds that of tech coins with venture capital, and can almost be said to be on par with the investment returns of meme coins. Here are some representatives:
Old-school Tech Cult Coins:
HEX
Cardano (ADA)
Raiblocks (NANO)
If you've been following these coins since 2017, you'll find that they attracted a large following right from the start of the project. Many people thought these coins would become the next Bitcoin. However, most people did not take these tech cult coins seriously, generally believing them to be "bubbles" and that only "fools" would buy these "useless coins".
In fact, the performance of these coins is often much better than the so-called "legitimate" coins. This is because their communities have a strong cult-like quality. They are a unique presence in the cryptocurrency space, as most people on your Telegram groups or crypto Twitter don't have a large investment in these coins.
Of course, coins like Cardano, Hex and Nano suffered losses when the market bubble burst, and their once-fervent followers also gradually faded away.
But new coins are emerging in the same way. New market cycles bring new coins, which also means new tech cult coins are on the rise.
In the past 1-2 years, we have witnessed the rise of a new generation of "cult tech coins". Here are a few representative examples:
Bittensor (TAO) - Market cap of $4.7 billion, fully diluted valuation of $13 billion
Kaspa (KAS) - Fully diluted valuation of $3.4 billion
Both of these coins have a large number of supporters. People started mining them early on and firmly believe these coins can change the world. Whether you agree or not, as a profit-maximizing individual, you should learn from the past. Take a look at the data:
TAO's lowest trading price was less than $35, and its current trading price is $642, a return of 18x.
Kaspa's lowest trading price was less than $0.0004, and its current trading price is $0.1358, a return of 339x.
Although the returns differ, it can be said with certainty that these two coins are not held by most crypto Twitter users, and their performance far exceeds the venture-backed tech coins newly launched on major centralized exchanges. At this point, the only conclusion I can draw is that this is a separate category that is rarely discussed. Most people refer to these coins as "this cycle's Cardano", but in fact they belong to a separate category, which means there are more coins with this potential.
On my current watchlist, there are two coins that may fall into this category:
Many early investors in Bittensor also invested early in QUIL. You can research the tags on QUIL and you'll find that many users have both the TAO and QUIL logos in their personal profiles. The group promoting QUIL is very similar to the group promoting Bittensor. The cyberpunk culture and community spirit are fully embodied in these two projects.
One project focuses on decentralized AI, while the other focuses on decentralized internet infrastructure.
Of course, AI itself is a hot topic, so many people buy TAO because of the combination of AI and cryptocurrency. I think the discussion of decentralized internet will eventually emerge, especially when projects like Nillon are launched in the fourth quarter, people will discuss the difference between QUIL (community-driven) and Nillon (VC-backed). I'm not going to argue which technology is better, but this attention may be enough to drive the market upwards.
It's worth noting that QUIL will have a large amount of token unlocking today or this week. I don't want miners to have the opportunity to sell at high prices, so I suggest waiting for the market to stabilize before making a decision. Keep this in mind. I have an investment in QUIL (also bought at a higher price) and plan to increase my position when miners are willing to sell.
In this category, I'm also bullish on META DAO. META has a very smart community who genuinely believe they can change the way DAOs operate in cryptocurrency.
Overall, I think DAO is one of the most boring parts of cryptocurrency. But the experiment META is undertaking may be one of the most interesting in the crypto space right now. Their view is:
We humans sometimes can't make the right decisions. For example, in terms of predicting outcomes, prediction market participants often perform better than professional pollsters. Google has even researched using internal prediction markets to make better decisions. I suggest reading the founder's article to fully understand this concept.
You might be wondering: what's the connection? But in fact, prediction markets have already proven to be a good product-market fit in the cryptocurrency space (such as Polymarket and Drift). This is a huge opportunity. Introducing prediction markets into DAO proposals will make it interesting again. We are moving towards an era of "futarchy" driven by prediction markets, rather than relying solely on humans holding the majority of Tokens to control governance.
Currently, "futarchy" is applied in less than 5% of Solana projects. As this is a brand new concept, I speculate that some veterans are watching the situation and then deciding whether to further invest. The chart shows prices are constantly rising, which makes me feel the earliest observers have already started buying in because they believe this concept may work.
Overall, this is an extremely passionate community with no competitors and an absolutely unsaturated market. All the supply is circulating in the market. It's not discussed much on crypto Twitter yet, and the chart looks very good. At the time of writing, its fully diluted market cap is $70 million. It's worth noting that liquidity is not very good, so be careful if you decide to invest.
I'm going to end this article here, as it's really too long. I like to record my thoughts because it can spark discussions about angles I hadn't noticed before.
