Meme coin - Culture, luck and attention
Once considered risky investments, meme coins are now gaining more and more widespread attention. So are meme coins really good for crypto and what is the right approach to meme coins?
Where did meme coins start?
In 2000, a Japanese teacher posted a picture of his Shiba Inu dog. The funny image of the dog went viral and became a phenomenon, a meme widely shared on social networks.
In 2013, a user named 4chan continuously posted dog memes on Reddit and gradually many celebrities used this meme. At the end of 2013, the electronic currency Dogecoin took the image of a dog as an avatar and was born and was the first coin with economic value attached to a meme, the term meme coin started from there.
2021 saw an explosion of meme coins. Billionaire Elon Musk continuously shares dog meme images, meme coin $DOGE has shown incredible growth. The term meme in the crypto market gradually received attention and was followed by the appearance of many new meme coins.
Development history of memecoin
Up to now, a few meme coins have really created a strong network effect, contributing to attracting cash flow into the project in particular, and further into the entire ecosystem and crypto market. The remainder witnessed a rapid decline and disappearance, accompanied by property losses for investors. With many mixed opinions, is meme coin just a game of chance or does it really have a positive influence on the crypto market?
Meme coin is culture?
Memes represent images, sayings, and perceptions that are influential and contagious. Typically in the crypto market we can see funny images of Shiba Inu dogs or green frog stickers that are used a lot by the community on Telegram.
The community contributed, created and shared ideas that helped create the meme's network effect. Combined with economic factors from tokens, meme coin becomes a branch that attracts a lot of attention in the crypto market. It can be said that meme coin has contributed to forming a part of culture in the current crypto market.
Are all tokens memes?
$WIF crowdfunds to put images on the Vegas ball
There are many who say current governance tokens are largely useless and do not bring value to investors. So how are those tokens different from memes?
Comparing capital allocation when developing projects, most projects with products use more resources for personnel and product development. Meme coin uses more resources for marketing.
In an attention-oriented market, meme coins with a focus on marketing will easily attract cash flow. Meme coin projects therefore tend to grow rapidly in a short time.
However, because it does not take many resources to develop, the number of meme projects is very large. In the Solana network alone, an average of about 3,000 meme coins are created every day. Aggregators such as CoinMarketCap requesting information also recorded 138 coin memes posted in April.
· Meme coin projects do not have as high engagement as projects with products.
· Projects with actual products often spend a lot of resources focusing on developing ideas.
· Meme coin projects often do not have specific products and spend focused resources to create community attention. In case they do not attract great interest, they tend to stop and move on to making other meme coins.
Current coin meme picture
Themed coin memes
Meme coins usually belong to a certain topic. The easier the topic is to influence and spread, the easier it is for the meme coin to attract the community. Currently, the meme coin segment is dominated by themes related to animals, most notably dogs and cats.
Meme coin has the largest capitalization by topic
In addition to animal themes, trending themes also easily attract attention. Typically, the US presidential election with the two candidates with the highest ratings, Trump and Biden, has caused two meme coins, MAGA and BODEN, to grow strongly. Besides, there are also meme coins that represent an important event in the crypto market such as PEOPLE created from the fact that a crypto community bought 1 of 13 copies of the US constitution.
Meme coins that follow trends often have price behavior that increases quickly and strongly and then decreases deeply when that trend passes. Because when one trend ends, another trend appears, so the money flow will circulate continuously and not return to the old meme coin. Therefore, almost all trending meme coins cannot break the old peak.
In contrast, some meme coins have strong network effects and do not depend entirely on token economics. This group has the ability to last longer and increase in cycles, typically DOGE and PEPE.
Meme coin by ecosystem
Meme coins also partly represent the community of an ecosystem. However, not every ecosystem has a developed meme coin. The reason may be because the system owns a community that is not strong enough or because the development orientation of that network focuses on other fields.
For example, Tron focuses most of its value on receiving and sending USDT. Arbitrum previously announced its focus on DeFi, but Arbitrum recently changed its perspective and announced that it would use part of its resources to develop memes. and meme community.
Meme coins have the largest capitalization across several ecosystems where memes thrive
Because it is tied to the ecosystem, if the ecosystem develops, the meme coin will also benefit. The top meme coins with the largest community, stable liquidity and foundation support will easily attract cash flow.
In an ecosystem suitable for meme coins, as it grows stronger, there will be new meme coins to attract the community. Meanwhile, in smaller ecosystems, money flow is often concentrated in only a few top meme coins. The meme coins behind have high risks and short life cycles.
New trends in meme coins
With the development of meme coin, many new trends gradually appear and attract users' attention.
Meme coins have products
Similar to how NFT collections from a collection with simple images gradually have related products added. Meme coin projects are also starting to develop more products for themselves.
Most notably, Dogecoin has developed Doge Chain, Shiba Inu has also just announced a capital call of 12 million USD to develop the chain. From a product perspective, some examples include meme coin Hairy The Bene which is developing a set of NFTs, meme coin Fish on Ton also developing a few accompanying NFT collections.
Project around meme coin
In addition to products developed directly by the memecoin project, there are new projects that help users access meme coins more easily. Recently we have the Pump.fun project that allows anyone to quickly create a coin by providing their name, ticker code and Jpeg image for less than 2 USD. Pump.fun is especially popular in the recent meme coin trend because the project has an additional anti-rug pull mechanism when tokens are not pre-sale or allocated to team members.
Correct approach to meme coin?
Currently, the number of meme coin projects appearing is increasing, while the number of projects with quality community and culture is very small. Investors also need to have a different approach if they do not want investing to become risky speculation.
Project evaluation method
For projects with common products, investors often evaluate factors such as product overview, development team, tokenomics, partners/investors. That is also the method applied by Coin98 in the Coin & Token section to help readers learn about the project in the fastest and easiest way.
However, with meme coins, most do not have the above information. Factors that can be used to evaluate are the story the memecoin represents, tokenomics, and market interest.
As classified above, each meme coin group will have its own characteristics. Investors need to understand which group meme coin belongs to in order to have a corresponding investment strategy.
Investment method
With a very large number of meme coins and little information, capital allocation to buy meme coins must also be different from investing in project tokens.
In addition to factors such as determining when to buy and sell, buying and selling points, etc., investors should only use a small, even very small, portion of capital in the investment portfolio. Small-cap meme coins require buyers to grasp information quickly and continuously. Currently, there are tools to help participants have an advantage such as Telegram bot that allows users to track newly released meme coins and can quickly buy and sell.
Some meme coins are at the top of well-developed ecosystems, with liquidity and strong communities, this group has slower growth but is more secure.
However, participants should also note: Investing in crypto is risky, investing in memecoins is much riskier. You should only participate in what you truly know about and accept the risks you may encounter. If you don't know what you're investing in, you shouldn't participate.
Future coin meme picture
Unlike the past when meme coins were considered risky investments, they are now gaining more and more widespread attention. Many VCs have started getting serious about allocating a significant portion of their portfolio to meme coins.
The truth is that most meme coins are short-lived and cause most investors to lose money. However, a small segment is helping to attract new money into the crypto market.
The focus of attention is often meme coins that have strong communities, their own culture, or meme coins that are at the top of developed ecosystems. On the contrary, most meme coins will disappear in a short time and are very risky.
In addition, meme coins are gradually having more products similar to the way NFTs develop. It is not certain that meme coin products will be successful, but that is a difference in a market filled with meme coins today.
summary
Once considered risky investments, meme coins are now increasingly widely accepted. However, with completely different properties compared to the project's coins, investors need to clearly understand the types of meme coins and have an appropriate approach when participating.
