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Simon
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CEO & Partner @MoonrockCapital
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Great overview of 2025 TGEs by @mementoresearch and @ahboyash. The takeaway is brutal: most tokens launched this year are down bad from TGE. And not slightly down. We’re talking 60–90% drawdowns across the board. This applies to obscure launches like $SYND, $XTER or $YALA just as much as to some of the most anticipated TGEs like $BERA, $TOWNS or $XAN. The reasons are not hard to identify: Overinflated launch valuations, absurd sell pressure from massive exchange listing fees, and "free money" airdrops handed out to people who clicked a few buttons or posted a couple of tweets. Add to that the near-total lack of fundamentals or revenue behind many of these launches, often paired with products no one actually needs. The combination of these factors sent tokens into free fall, with little to no organic demand underneath. What’s even more concerning is that the few tokens showing decent performance on paper are often more illusion than reality. Some of the top performers like $ASTER, $ESPORTS or $COAI are well-known BNB Chain insider projects. Prices are propped up artificially while the vast majority of supply is tightly controlled, and wash trading creates the appearance of demand, especially on Pancake Swap and Binance Alpha. Sure, good for those who caught these at TGE and made some money. But these projects are rarely sustainable, and they do nothing to meaningfully improve overall TGE performance. If we want token launches to become sustainable again, several things need to change: 1) Expectations in crypto need to normalize. The community shouldn’t expect billions in free money for low-effort participation. Founders don’t need to raise tens of millions at the seed stage. Investors shouldn’t expect 100x returns at launch. And exchanges shouldn’t think they deserve double-digit percentages of token supply just for listing an ERC-20. 2) We need to think longer-term. It is not normal to invest in a startup and expect liquidity or meaningful returns within 1–2 years. Many token projects fail because they launch too early. Their fundamentals have no time to grow into their valuations, prices collapse, and a downward spiral begins. Trust is lost, attention moves on, and projects never recover. 3) Valuations must come back to reality. A major driver here is tIeR oNe vCs that raised far too much capital and now feel pressured to deploy billions into early-stage startups. To fit larger checks, valuations get pushed up, markup rounds are engineered, and paper returns are manufactured. Founders often get blinded by the money and the runway, while missing the second-order effects this inevitably has on their token launch. 4) We need better ways to favor long-term supporters over extractors. Stop allocating massive token chunks to CEXs, airdrop farmers, short-term investors, and KOLs with no long-term conviction. They will dump and move on, and recovering from that is extremely hard. 5) Stop playing games the market already understands. Low-float, high-FDV tokenomics, wash trading, and artificial market-making strategies don’t work anymore. The space is too mature to be fooled by this. 6) Either commit fully to your token, or don’t launch one at all. I’m very black and white on this. Stop pretending tokens have utility while all real value accrues to the equity entity. Tokens need to be treated as equity, either directly or indirectly. The founders who truly understand this tend to avoid most of the mistakes above, because they treat their token as the most precious asset they have, not as funny money printed out of thin air. There are probably many more points to add, but this post is long enough already. If you have good additions, feel free to share them in the comments. I hope these thoughts help, whether you’re an investor, a founder, or simply a crypto enthusiast. If we want positive momentum to return to token launches, a lot needs to change. And the most important takeaway is simple: It’s on us. The faster more people realize this and stop playing short-term extraction games, the faster the space can heal. Ironically, long-term compounding would make all of us far richer than these games ever will, but too many people still think in the time horizon of a mayfly.
XTER
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Simon
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You remember Theoriq, one of the first ICOs on the Kaito launchpad? They raised $3M at a $75M FDV and ended up 26x oversubscribed, with over $78M in commitments (more than the actual FDV). Most people didn’t even know what the project was about. They just aped in because the Kaito launchpad was hyped at that time and the ICO offered a 100% unlock for investors. It then took them 4 months to do the TGE for $THQ, which opened only slightly above the ICO price and has been bleeding ever since, now almost -50% below ICO price just 4 days after TGE lol. Stop aping into every shitty project just because you like the tokenomics. Start investing in fundamentals and in projects you actually believe in. The days of easy ICO flips and quick money are over, and that’s a good thing.
THQ
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