Written by: Kaori
Among technology Internet assets, the most widely circulated in the market are undoubtedly investment myths such as Nvidia, Luckin, and Pinduoduo. Doubling the price of these leading targets with huge market capitalization is enough for those big-funded players to call it quits.
But from the perspective of ordinary people, the strongest asset this year is still the most explosive Crypto. In 2023, which is recognized as a bear market, the two meme coins PEPE and ORDI shocked the industry with increases of 375,000 times and nearly 20,000 times respectively.
The meme coin project is the "wealth code" with the greatest opportunity for ordinary investors in the cryptocurrency field, because there is never a shortage of new things here. Unlike other commercial encryption projects such as DeFi and web3Game, Meme does not seem to have a business model, but its business model and PMF (Product Market Fit, products that match user needs) are very clear, namely: serving the public crypto investors Provide a speculative medium with great imagination.
The so-called "providing for public investors" means that the concept of Meme is simple and fresh, and its concepts may be weird or conflicting, so it is easier to capture the public's attention in the massive amount of information. The so-called "highly imaginative" means that they have no actual business as the gravity of currency prices, and the valuation of only the word "consensus" can be as high as the sky.
No matter how serious crypto practitioners are, they cannot deny that "speculating to make money" is an important or even the first driving force in the crypto world, and the endless meme projects are PMFs that respond to such needs.
meme cultural inheritor PEPE
The success of the “dog-type” meme coin has made the market realize that memes have a unique role in the field of cryptocurrency. “Preaching” and sharing a certain subculture in the community can generate huge power. After a bear market, meme coins like Shib and Doge not only survived, but even performed better than some so-called value investment projects.
If you are a traditional investor, whether it is value investing or short-term investment, you will definitely study all aspects of asset issuance to ensure safety when choosing investment targets. But meme coins don’t give you this time, they rely on emotion and marketing.
PEPE is a "meme" that has been popular on the Internet for many years. It is inspired by the classic meme "Pepe the Frog" in Matt Furie's "Boy's Club" cartoon. It became popular on cultural forums such as Myspace, Gaia Online, and 4chan in 2008, and in 2015 it became one of the most popular viral images on the social platform Tumblr.
Crypto has no shortage of hype surrounding the sad frog, with everything from tokens to NFTs. And PEPE in 2023 has brought the value of this meme to a climax.
PEPE's official X account posted its first tweet on April 5, and PEPE trading started on April 15. The initial price of PEPE is approximately $0.000000001, with a total supply of 420.69 trillion.
PEPE claims to be "the most watched meme coin in existence. Dogecoin is obsolete, and it's time for PEPE to dominate." The two numbers "420" and "69" in its supply of 420.69 trillion are also meme numbers with subcultural attributes. It can be said that PEPE’s popularity is inseparable from the previous cultural foreshadowing of the “Sad Frog” emoticon package, as well as the wealth imagination that many previous meme currency projects have brought to this market.
PEPE’s early price action was driven by frog-themed memes shared on social media by the founding team and fans. Until May 6, PEPE was launched in the Binance Innovation Zone, and then Binance launched the PEPE 1-20 times U-standard perpetual contract. The price of PEPE hit new highs repeatedly at that time.
The market at that time was riding on emotions, with Bitcoin doubling from the bottom of the plunge. Cryptocurrency players were extremely jealous when they saw the surge in AI and chips in the U.S. stock market. They urgently needed a target to vent their pent-up emotions for a long time, and added Binance Effect, PEPE’s performance in the first half of this year is unparalleled.
In just one month since its inception in late April, PEPE's market capitalization has reached a staggering $1.5 billion, with 24-hour trading volume exceeding $1.7 billion at its peak. This trading volume compares favorably with the Bitcoin spot trading volume of some of the largest centralized exchanges during the same period. PEPE may be the first to rival Bitcoin’s trading volume in the bear market.
ORDI, the inscribed faucet dressed as a meme
Unlike PEPE, which placed itself on the meme cultural track from the beginning, ORDI, the inscription of the Bitcoin ecosystem, chose a more hidden meme path to ascend to the throne of wealth effect.
The story of ORDI will start in December 2022. Bitcoin ecosystem developer Casey launched the Ordinals protocol, and the crypto market began to experiment with Bitcoin assets.
On March 8, 2023, an anonymous developer named @domodata launched the BRC-20 inscription protocol based on the Ordinals protocol and deployed the experimental token $ORDI. On March 9, ORDI was minted. The cost of a mint was about US$2-3, and each mint contained 1,000 ORDIs, which meant that the unit price of ORDI at that time was US$0.003.
The current ORDI price is $54 per unit. In 9 months, it rose from 0.003 to 54, nearly 20,000 times.
One year later, looking back now, ORDI may be the most successful experiment in this Bitcoin experiment, but ORDI’s price flywheel did not take off at the beginning.
Bitcoin has only been used as a store of value and transfer for a long time. When people start to build an ecosystem in it and experience applications, they will find that compared to Ethereum’s mature fields such as DeFi and NFT, the Bitcoin ecosystem is still not very friendly to ordinary crypto users. . At that time, the price of Bitcoin did not give people confidence. Except for players who were firmly involved in the Bitcoin ecosystem, no ordinary investor would believe that Inscription projects such as ORDI could really be implemented.
On March 23, UniSat launched the BRC-20 trading market, and the ORDI price rose to $0.3. Later, due to a double-spending problem, UniSat closed the trading market. A month later, UniSat launched the BRC-20 trading market again, which was only open to some users, and the ORDI price rose to US$1.
People are gradually realizing the future expectations of BRC-20, a new asset issuance method. For new things, people in the crypto are always willing to invest energy in the front line for research. Relying on the consensus of fair lunch, they have attracted a lot of funds. field.
With the entry of mainstream trading platforms one after another, the seeds of ORDI’s first wave of explosions have gradually been planted. On April 27, OKX initiated a vote on whether to support BRC-20, and users received OKX expectations for the launch of BRC-20.
On May 8, gate launched ORDI, and the price once exceeded 20 US dollars, reaching a record high. On that day, the handling fees on the BTC chain accounted for 43.7% of the total income of miners. However, with the crash and the downturn of the entire market, the price of ORDI continued to fall to around $7.5. On May 20, OKX and Huobi launched ORDI, but as BTC fell to $25,000, the market continued to slump, and ORDI also fell to $5. What followed was a continuous decline in ORDI prices for more than 4 months.
During this period of time, the Bitcoin ecosystem has not seen any significant progress or breakthroughs. Most people in the market have become skeptical about Bitcoin Inscription, which had gained some popularity a few months ago. In September, some users had problems withdrawing ORDI from OKX, and there was dissatisfaction in the market. It was not until October 18, when UniSat released BRC-20-swap, that ORDI prices began to pick up again.
Since then, the Bitcoin ecosystem has exploded, and narratives and emotions have reached unprecedented popularity. On November 7, Binance announced the listing of ORDI, and its price rose from $7.4 to $13.5; as the price of BTC rose, the price of ORDI rose all the way to $20. December has just begun, and the price of ORDI rose from US$21.7 to US$32; on December 5, ORDI exceeded US$50, reaching a record high of US$54.
In these more than 270 days, the price of ORDI ranged from US$0.003 to US$54. It is not an exaggeration to call it the first currency in 2023. But in this process, ORDI has experienced a lot of doubts from the beginning of not being able to understand and look down upon the current BTC ecological price leader. Even Casey, founder of the Ordinals protocol, expressed his sentiments about BRC-20 to the market around the time ORDI was listed on Binance.
From PEPE to ORDI, it can be seen that Binance is still the most recognized asset issuance platform by the market. Listing on Binance has become the key to whether a token can obtain a price pump, and this is also the most popular marketing method for meme projects. "What I have is not important, but where I am is more important." Just as Dogecoin's landing on the moon has brought expectations for further price increases for the token.
Even in the eyes of speculators, Crypto itself is a huge meme, and ordinary people still have opportunities to make gold here. Compared with logical investment targets such as Nvidia and Pinduoduo, meme coins are still the most explosive wealth opportunity for ordinary people.
In the crypto market, the prerequisite for purchasing any token is that someone (in the future) wants to buy it from you at a higher price. This is especially true for meme coins, but they rely more on psychological drivers than fundamentals. This is called "Castle-in-the-Air Theory" in economics, which refers to focusing on the psychological value of assets and emphasizing the impact of mass psychology on asset prices. That is, "Investors try to build a kind of castle in the sky and consider possible future price increases instead of estimating its intrinsic value."
