Original title: Letter 38: Meme Coins Are NFTs Without Pictures
Original Author: ZENECA
Original source: substack
Compile: MetaCat
Frankly, the vast majority of NFT projects/communities are reimagined meme coins, shit coins, Altcoin, or whatever you want to call them.
Join me for a walk down memory lane comparing NFTs and meme coins to see how they are similar, where they are different, and how we can learn from them.
Cobie is (to an extent) right
Cobie once famously said: NFTs are just Altcoin with pictures . The NFT community had a fairly visceral negative reaction to the statement at the time, but now more and more people are beginning to realize that what he said may be true.
When we compare what's happening in the meme coin space now with what's going on in the NFT space in late 2021 and most of 2022, it's easy to see the veracity of his point.
Yes, I know there are exceptions.
I will talk about some exceptions later, we know that not all NFTs are garbage, on the contrary NFTs have huge potential, utility and advantages. This is something that ERC-20 tokens cannot match. But for now, more than 99% of the released NFT projects are almost certainly Ponzi Air projects.
Think of those 10k PFP series, there will always be a team, a dream, and a "community" . With a few exceptions, are these tokens no different than $PEPE, $DOGE, $SHIBA, $TURBO, $BEN, or any other less successful ERC-20 token?
uh, you don't believe me?
"Oh, but my project has a plan, a roadmap, a vision, and a team doing things."
Do you think Memecoin has no roadmap? Check out the roadmap for SafeMoon, one of the most popular meme coins in early 2021:
Does it look familiar?
Yes!
The roadmap of an NFT project is usually just a more polished version of the roadmap of a meme coin.
The internal structure of most meme coins is basically the same as that of most NFT projects:
- you have an idea
- You start selling the idea around
- During the bullish/mania phase, this is often accompanied by a "pre-sale" or "whitelist", which creates the illusion of high demand and creates fomo sentiment for those who did not buy
- There is generally a "roadmap"
- Immediately after you sell, most buyers/holders start trying to sell at a price higher than they bought
- 97-99% of holders want the price to go up and sell to the next fool
- 1-3% of holders stay because they actually believe in the idea/community/vision/project/or whatever
The lifecycle also looks basically the same:
- start
- There was a lot of hype ahead of Mint/launch
- Try to push the envelope further after posting; in a bull market, this can get crazy
- an inevitable accident
- May need a second pump, but usually not
- Slowly bleeding to death, some die-hard fans tried to revive the project, but most have since left
- Meanwhile, the "hodlers" keep saying, "OMG, look how many hodlers we have", "Look who just bought again", "Why are people selling", etc. "Buy the Dip", "Teams Are Working", etc.
- Look familiar, right? None of this should come as a surprise if you've been in an NFT Discord server or Memecoin Discord/Telegram for a while.
- The vibe is surprisingly similar. Then again, I know there are exceptions. I know this doesn't work for all projects
difference:
A strange phenomenon is that when it comes to NFT projects, people seem to take more responsibility for the team than the Meme coin team. Perhaps it is because for Meme coins, people already expect that the team will disband and the tokens will return to zero, while for NFT projects, there is no such expectation.
It's not that people don't want to hold Memecoin's founders accountable, but in most cases, that expectation ends up being a rug pull.
I think people actually know that Meme Coin is a gambling game because that's really what Meme Coin is all about. The same mentality does not apply to NFT projects, probably because there are more exceptions to the rule.
This tends to mean that NFT projects have a much longer lifespan than meme coins, and we're seeing more NFT projects being "slow rugs" than the quick death of most meme coins .
We also see many projects that are actually legitimate with longer life spans and are more likely to build a sustainable business model + ecosystem that can break the Ponzi model and actually create value.
Digging deeper into the differences reveals that NFTs are inherently irreplaceable.
This uniqueness enables potential innovations, products and solutions that are simply not possible with fungible tokens.
Whenever I talk about the possibilities and future of NFTs, I like to reference that picture by @punk6529. We are in the early days of crypto. The majority of NFTs are still in the art + collectible camp, but games, metaverse, brands, culture, and intellectual property all have their place too, and a lot of exciting things are happening in these areas.
Of course, there are already people and companies creating amazing NFT-related things: rewards/loyalty programs, ticketing, POAPs, memberships, etc.
Of course, encrypted art is one of the technology's best use cases. Digital artists all over the world finally have a way to sell their works, and collectors finally have a way to collect digital art.
Another big difference between meme coins and NFT projects is the role played by the "team". For NFT projects, the team will be largely human-searched, and to a certain extent risking their own reputation, if the project does not go well, the community will hold them accountable (I believe that every NFT project founder will feel sorry for each other).
The same is not true for meme coins, completely anonymous projects will still gain transaction volume and achieve insane market caps. And more often than not, the project side will blatantly cheat you.
Obviously, the intentions of many NFT project founders are much purer than those of most Meme coin founders. Many of them genuinely believed in their ideas and put in a lot of effort to go from 0 to 1. That's a big part of why I'm still here, and why I'm still bullish on NFT technology.
defend meme
Seems like I'm totally belittling meme coins, but I don't actually hate them. On the contrary, I think meme is very important .
Memes are the most powerful thing in the world. Memes rule everything and everything is a meme. Meme is not just doge, pepe, religion is a meme, food is a meme, and all fashion is actually a meme.
Memes are culture.
Source: http://slideplayer.com/slide/14009958/
Many meme coins have a life of their own. It's fun to watch them evolve, mutate, spread through the community. I think it would be wrong to discard them immediately, there is a lot to be learned from meme coins.
However, there are unfortunately side effects. One of the side effects is the cognitive problems they cause. It's easy to dismiss the entire memecoin space as one giant scam. I know it's not, and you know it's not, but we want everyone in the world to know this eventually.
Just because most meme coins are scams doesn't mean the ERC-20 standard is useless.
Just because most NFTs are scams doesn't mean the ERC-721 or ERC-1155 standards are useless.
Most L1s are scams, it doesn't mean BTC or ETH are useless.
Is Memecoin the main interest/canary in the mining event? I think maybe it is!
Meme coins are an easy way for retail investors to get exposed to the space and start spending, especially when they are added to exchanges. Maybe a lot of people who have been on the sidelines decide to dabble in Memecoin first.
So is it worth investing in Meme Coin?
You can make huge amounts of money trading Meme Coins, just like you used to do with NFTs. No other market on the planet has seen 100x to 1000x returns so consistently. There is no reward without risk, no glory without courage, and the reason the rewards are so great is largely because the risks are so great.
The downside is that usually 90-100% of the time what happens is a huge negative return!
Meme coins are the epitome of asymmetric staking. Consider the case of a 100x return. In order for you to break even on a 100x investment strategy, you might have to take on the full payout of 99 projects.
One thing to remember is: the hand is always against you, the makers and the whale are always better. That doesn't mean you can't win at all, but you're playing two different games.
Trading Meme Coins is gambling.
Gambling can make money; you can even have an edge and be a money-making gambler. Just know what you're getting into, understand the risks, and only gamble with what you can afford to lose.
Most people shouldn't be making these kinds of transactions.
Everyone overestimates their ability to be a profitable trader. In fact, the cost and benefit of everyone’s monthly regular investment in BTC + ETH will be better, without doing anything else at all.
How do you know if you should trade Meme Coin?
When I was a poker pro, people always asked me, "Should I be a poker pro?"
My answer is always the same: no, if you must ask .
If you have to ask if you should trade Meme Coin, if you're asking if it's the smart thing to do for you, if you need someone else to verify it for you, then you shouldn't be trading Meme Coin. You need to know your strengths, but the plain truth is that most people don't have them.
happy treadmill
Take a step back and think about why you might want to trade meme coins, NFTs, or whatever. What is the ultimate goal? Is it to make more money? If so, for what purpose? why are you here When did you earn enough? What is the goal? What is the real goal?
Finally, two fables are left for your deep thinking:
Source: https://cmcbp.co.uk/the-mexican-fisherman-what-can-we-learn-from-it/
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/simpleliving/comments/lbjbpd/enough/
