Author: Bingwa
Preface:
With Trump's historic victory sweeping the American political arena, the wind has reversed overnight, and BTC has once again reached a new historical high. However, within the crypto world, BTC and other cryptocurrencies are fundamentally two different worlds.
Under the banner of "Build", the "value coins" claiming to be the cornerstone of the crypto world are facing unprecedented application dilemmas and FUD, and the MEME craze has struck again, which inevitably makes people rethink: in the visible bull market, should we believe in value coins again, or is MEME the true future?
Originating from the Tip of the Lotus Leaf
The Discovery of Small Certainties, Liquidity Fueling the Waves
Before discussing MEME, we need to briefly review the development history of MEME in the crypto world, and from a time dimension, it can be simply divided as follows:
From the above development history, there are several important trends that can be summarized briefly:
Liquidity expansion is the foundation: MEME was born in a bull market, and the explosive rise in coin prices is often accompanied by the expansion of US dollar liquidity.
Celebrity effect is the best booster: The explosive growth of MEME coins like SHIB or Doge has been aided by celebrity effects, such as Musk.
MEME resonates with spiritual appeals: From animal zoo pictures, internet meme pictures, to AI MEME, they all imply the most transmissible zeitgeist at the time, and the inner emotional appeals they contain are also becoming more and more rich.
The life cycle is rapidly shortened: With the rise of meme fair launch platforms like Pump.fun, the issuance of coins has entered the minute level, and the life cycle has also entered the hour level.
The era of Doge's rise was the era of the post-90s, who had basically entered the smartphone era, and the exchange of pictures and Emojis began to become popular; entering 2020, it was the era of the post-00s, and internet meme has become a basic operation, but compared to the post-90s, melancholy and lying flat seem to be more common, but they are also more anti-authority and anti-elite, they like funny and absurd things, like PEPE; entering 2024, with AI as the most cutting-edge technology and the most disruptive technology of the present day, the post-00s are still the main force of this wave, while the post-80s are still questioning the future of AI, the post-00s have already started using AI to make money, they seem to be with the technological leaders of the most forward-looking technology of this era, and they have quickly accepted the occurrence of changes.
With the rise of meme fair launch platforms like Pump.fun, 5k-10k MEME tokens are born every day. October statistics show that only 1.4% of users made more than $1,000, and over 80% lost money.
At the present time point, there is much discussion on the origin of MEME in the market, and from the perspectives of culture, the spirit of the times, and transmission effects, their corresponding foothold and theoretical explanation can be found. However, from any angle, one definitive conclusion is: MEME is not suitable to be measured in terms of utility and practicality, which is a narrow understanding of value itself, and in the irreversible trend of monetary oversupply, it is the times that have chosen MEME, and the blockchain is just the best soil to carry it.
MEME is rooted in the spiritual appeals and new value standards of the younger generation, who are contemptuous of the value standards in the grand narrative, they tend to experience happiness in small certainties, and use concrete humor to fight against abstract dignity. A meme can bring a resonance, and for the younger generation, this is both being seen and a victory in life, and this victory has unleashed huge value in the blockchain world, where rationality and ideals are outdated synonyms, entertainment to death and consumerism are supreme, they have no concept of crypto shame and crypto casino, and at the root, MEME is a part of their daily life for them, another form of gaming.
However, although MEME was created by the younger generation, it became an object of speculation and investment due to the efforts of the older generation of capital, because for the 60s, 70s and 80s generations, their most familiar posture is: not understanding but not preventing the harvesting of the young.
Value Coins Collapse in the Face of Empirical Falsification
Crashes are not terrible, but falsification may be devastating
For most old-timers who have experienced multiple cycles in the crypto world, crashes are quite common and not terrible, even BTC has had crashes, but the loss of faith in value coins/VC coins is because they are not just experiencing ups and downs or falling and then rising again, but for the vast majority of retail investors, when they get their chips, they are already at the peak of the coin price, watching it gradually descend into the sea level, until it crashes into the Mariana Trench.
The current situation is that the tokens of value coins have become the product, while the real product is neglected. There are as many market analyses and discussions about low-circulation, high-market-cap value coins as there are about MEME, and the reasons for this situation are many: overvaluation due to bull-bear cycle conversion; token distribution under crypto compliance; unbalanced and unhealthy ecosystem forces, etc.
Fundamentally, the development of value coins is the result of multiple factors, defeated by the lack of applications in narrative, ruined by the distribution of wealth effects, and corrupted by the hypocrisy of the elite. For most altcoins, toying with concepts and micro-innovations at the protocol level have become fashionable, with a proliferation of new terms such as chain abstraction, Layer2, Layer3, and intentional centralization. However, the interaction volume proves everything, and in the absence of real application scenarios, the user's usage needs are neither urgent nor irreplaceable. So the project data can only rely on project incentives, such as airdrops, points, etc., and if the incentive mechanism itself is unfair and has rat-hole behavior, it will eventually evolve into what Murad said, where the token becomes the final product, while the product itself is neglected.
As shown in the figure below, in the mainstream narrative logic of an industry's value coin, each participant has different demands around the wealth effect, unfortunately none of these demands are centered on the real value of the project itself, or we can say more cruelly: the so-called narrative is just a fig leaf for harvesting the young, because all narratives are too easily falsified in a short period of time, and what is proven to be true is mostly nesting dolls or Ponzi schemes.
Hundreds of public chains, hundreds of L2s, hundreds of cross-chain bridges, thousands of DeFi, and countless narrative concepts, in the maze of concepts, the seemingly seamless logical edifice cannot withstand a simple blow from reality, and if there is no widespread spillover of external liquidity and homogenization of narrative competition, the situation will only get worse.
The hypocrisy of many project parties has become the last straw that broke the back of value coins, many project parties are both players and referees; on one hand they despise digital beggars, on the other hand they secretly build rat holes, shouting about disruption, revolution and innovation, but holding sickles, big sickles and even bigger sickles.
You gaze into the abyss, and the abyss also gazes into you, using grand narrative value to attract capital and users, and using unfair means to implement wealth distribution, once the former is falsified, the latter will definitely fall into the abyss, but the abyss of value coins may be longer than anyone imagines.
The Future of MEME and Value Coins
History will repeat itself, but not simply repeat
Victory is always written by the victors, and the confirmation of value only has the greatest consensus at the moment of its realization. The main idea in the crypto world is still tokenization, and a token has no difference in essence whether it is a value coin or a MEME coin before it breaks out, it is just a difference in the path of realization.
The advantage of value-based coins is that from cold start to price cycle, there is a complete and replicable methodology to implement, and the probability of success is relatively high, but the ceiling is also quite limited. In terms of the ultimate purpose, it solves the utility demand of users.
The advantage of MEME coins is that although they do not have a completely replicable implementation path (compared to value-based coins), the randomness is relatively larger, but the ceiling is very high, and the operation of MEME coins is now more capitalized, and the maturity is not inferior to value-based coins. In terms of the ultimate purpose, it solves the demand for community identity of users.
The original sin of a project is not whether users make money, but whether it has value. In the long run, we need to be aware that the blockchain world is inherently multi-valued, and neither the FUD on value-based coins nor the pursuit of MEME necessarily means that one of these two forms should survive, as these two opposites only represent the struggle for discourse power of different capital, not the reality. For the majority of the market, a simple and fundamental truth is: in a fair environment, projects that can make people make money are valuable projects, which is almost the only criterion.
So, regarding the future of value-based coins and MEME coins, we only need to answer two questions: who can be relatively fair, and who has a better risk-return ratio.
Fairness depends on the perfection of the system; the risk-return ratio depends on the development of the narrative and liquidity. The two together determine the future cycle rotation and the future of crypto.
After Trump took office, we can be more certain that the institutional environment will improve, but whether this improvement is beneficial to the reversal of the current poor industry form of value-based coins is still unknown;
In terms of risk-return ratio, the source of whether the narrative development of value-based coins can continue lies in whether there will be a large influx of new entrants, but if it is assumed that it cannot be deeply integrated with real demand, the falsification will still come quickly, and the worst is that this process is difficult to accelerate, blockchain will not become the mainstream of the world overnight, but in terms of liquidity, value-based coins seem to have an advantage, because more general investment institutions still tend to invest funds in the value-based coin track, but in the case of no essential improvement in the narrative logic, the lack of cannon fodder is turning from a joke into a reality.
If we look at the future from this perspective, the basic situation of value-based coins is institutional improvement, slow narrative progress, and continued liquidity overflow, then the most likely state is not to die and go to zero, just like the real estate in China, in the state of overvaluation collapse, it will usher in a long period of elimination and adjustment, and the great sifting will give birth to the real value-based coins.
For MEME, an era of blossoming is coming, stronger capital operations, and the flow boost of exchanges have all accelerated the momentum of MEME, but for retail investors, it does not mean that it is easier to make money, but as long as the wealth effect continues to exist, the majority of the market will still be willing to believe: this time I will definitely succeed in PVP.
Let making money happen in a fair environment, and sustainability will exist. Each cycle has different narratives, and the number of dead value-based coins and MEME coins is countless, the common feature of the real surviving value-based coins and MEME coins is not the so-called struggle for value orthodoxy, but who wins the recognition and support of the broader community of users.
If I have to make a final summary, it must be: there is no eternal universal value in the world, and there is no high and low distinction between value-based coins and MEME coins, from a historical perspective, it is always those projects that can continuously gain community recognition and user trust that can continue to be long-lasting, and this is the true value.
Money never sleeps, and new stories are on the way, and this time I hope you can win!
