May 30th, 2023

Meme Coins: The Next Jackpot or Just a Gamble?

There has been a lot of buzz on social media about traders who seemingly struck gold by investing in the PEPE meme coin. These stories of overnight success have sparked an important debate: Can meme coins be a reliable way to build wealth, or are they more like playing the lottery and relying on luck?

To answer this question, we need to explore the different approaches taken by various socio-economic classes when it comes to playing the lottery. Comparing meme coins and lotteries can shed light on how people view wealth accumulation.

For those who are unfamiliar, meme coins are digital currencies inspired by internet memes. Unlike traditional cryptocurrencies, meme coins usually don’t have practical applications beyond being traded and shared among users. Their value is heavily influenced by social media sentiment and other factors, leading to significant price fluctuations and the potential for market manipulation. While meme coins come with considerable risks, they have gained a substantial following of individuals who see them as a way to challenge established financial systems and connect with like-minded communities online.

One specific example is the PEPE meme coin, which experienced an astounding 9,071% surge in value before its listing on Binance, reaching a market capitalization of $1.8 billion. However, traders are now sharing cautionary advice due to the recent breach of crucial trend and support levels by the coin. Meme coins, especially those developed by anonymous teams, are vulnerable to “rug pulls,” where developers abandon the project, leading to a collapse in value. Moreover, price volatility tends to be most pronounced during Asian trading hours.

Let’s consider the different strategies people employ to accumulate wealth. Renowned billionaire investor Warren Buffet, for instance, prioritizes investing in stable, blue-chip stocks that align closely with the growth of the US economy. By consistently maintaining a funding rate 2-3% below his peers, Buffet has amassed a personal fortune of $112.8 billion. His success teaches us two crucial lessons: investing in well-established blue-chip companies without unnecessary risks is sufficient, and remaining invested over an extended period allows for substantial wealth accumulation. Therefore, emphasizing safety and longevity are key factors in achieving financial prosperity.

On the other hand, the allure of the lottery lies in the promise of instant wealth with minimal effort and investment, which proves irresistible to many. Despite the astronomical odds of winning a jackpot (1 in 300 million for Powerball), the average player spends around $200 per year, resulting in a significant cumulative amount over time. Surprisingly, research suggests that individuals in lower socio-economic classes tend to play the lottery regardless of the odds, while wealthier individuals participate only when the jackpot offers substantial returns. A $10 million win may not make a significant impact for the wealthy, but a jackpot exceeding $100 million captures their interest.

In essence, the PEPE meme coin and the lottery represent two sides of the same coin. Both offer the allure of quick wealth with minimal investment, but both also carry significant risks. While Buffet’s investment strategy prioritizes safety and is grounded in long-term plans, playing the lottery or investing in meme coins resembles a game of chance, where success depends on luck and hoping for the best outcome.

Now, let’s take a look at some other meme coins that have gained traction in the market. The surge in popularity of meme coins can be attributed to various factors, including the growing fascination with cryptocurrencies and the relative ease of creating new digital currencies. Many meme coins have gained attention through clever branding and incorporating popular culture references, resulting in a frenzy of buying and selling as investors try to capitalize on the hype and volatility of these highly speculative assets.

Here are a few meme coins that have made waves recently:

AiDoge: This meme coin positions itself as a new web3 platform for AI-driven meme creation and sharing. Its presale reportedly raised over $5.5 million, showcasing significant attention from investors.

Ordi: Ordi is a meme coin that pays homage to the Ordinals protocol, which currently holds the largest value among meme coins, reaching $400 million.

BOB: BOB is an AI bot that provides tweet summaries to Twitter users who reply with “@ExplainThisBob.” It has gained a large following, with Elon Musk himself praising BOB’s automatic responses to his tweets.

MONG: MONG is a recently launched meme cryptocurrency project associated with an established NFT collection called MONGS NFT. Each NFT in the collection features a distinct mungo (mongoose) artwork, adding uniqueness to the project.

TURBO: TURBO is an innovative cryptocurrency aiming to become the meme coin of the future. It stands out by relying heavily on ChatGPT development.

LADYS: LADYS is the native token of Milady Meme Coin and can be used for online transactions. The token gained attention after Elon Musk tweeted about the Milady NFT meme, and its market capitalization has exceeded $100 million.

WOJAK: WOJAK is a new ERC-20 token inspired by the famous Wojak meme. Since its inception, the token has experienced significant momentum, with a surge of over 1000% at its peak.

Floki: Floki started as a meme coin inspired by Elon Musk’s dog but has evolved into a complete Web3 ecosystem. It now includes NFTs, DeFi, a metaverse, and even prepaid gift cards for Visa and Mastercard. The project gained attention after being listed on Binance.

XRdoge: XRdoge is a meme coin on the XRP ledger, aiming to bring fun to the Ripple ecosystem. It adds a playful element to the XRP community.

While these newer meme coins try to ride the PEPE wave, others like BIBI, BOBO, PEPO, and PIPI are striving to find their own unique niche. Additionally, Chinese-themed coins such as Pogai and LowB are attempting to gather Mandarin-speaking communities to join in the fun. For coins like Cate, SquidGrow, TSUKA, and Renewable, which are not part of the frog or dog craze, they must patiently await their turn to shine.

It’s important to note that while newer meme coins have gained significant popularity recently, older meme coins such as Doge, Shiba Inu, Pitbull, RichQuack, Saitama, Baby Doge, and Safemoon continue to thrive by actively engaging with their communities and progressing their projects. This commitment to longevity and a steadfast presence in the ever-changing world of cryptocurrencies suggests that some of these coins may have staying power beyond mere hype cycles. The continued relevance and demand for these older meme coins highlight their ability to maintain a loyal following and leave a lasting impact, even amidst emerging trends and market fluctuations.

In conclusion, it’s crucial to recognize that meme coins primarily thrive due to their robust online communities driven by hype and speculation, often lacking significant real-world use cases or underlying technology. As I’ve expressed on Twitter, popular meme coins can explore utility, payment systems, games, and more, while less popular ones must focus on providing entertainment value. Community engagement and having fun together remain pivotal for a meme coin’s survival. If a meme coin can navigate the early stages successfully and gain support from its community, its games, NFTs, metaverse, and other revenue streams have a higher chance of success, enabling survival even in bear markets and beyond.

While the allure of quick wealth may be tempting, it’s crucial to carefully consider the risks and rewards of any investment opportunity.

Source: https://www.securities.io/meme-coins-the-next-jackpot-or-just-a-gamble/

Anndy Lian

Anndy Lian is an early blockchain adopter and experienced serial entrepreneur who is known for his work in the government sector. He is a best selling book author- “NFT: From Zero to Hero” and “Blockchain Revolution 2030”.

Currently, he is appointed as the Chief Digital Advisor at Mongolia Productivity Organization, championing national digitization. Prior to his current appointments, he was the Chairman of BigONE Exchange, a global top 30 ranked crypto spot exchange and was also the Advisory Board Member for Hyundai DAC, the blockchain arm of South Korea’s largest car manufacturer Hyundai Motor Group. Lian played a pivotal role as the Blockchain Advisor for Asian Productivity Organisation (APO), an intergovernmental organization committed to improving productivity in the Asia-Pacific region.

An avid supporter of incubating start-ups, Anndy has also been a private investor for the past eight years. With a growth investment mindset, Anndy strategically demonstrates this in the companies he chooses to be involved with. He believes that what he is doing through blockchain technology currently will revolutionise and redefine traditional businesses. He also believes that the blockchain industry has to be “redecentralised”.

www.anndy.com

j j j

September 29th, 2022

XRP, ADA, Meme Coins Become Object of Interest for Author of Bestselling NFT Book, Anndy Lian

Anndy Lian, international blockchain expert who positions himself as a thought leader on social media platforms and is the author of a book called “NFT: from Zero to Hero,” has taken to Twitter to pick its followers’ brains about whether he should invest in altcoins such as XRP, ADA and IOTA. Judging from his tweet, Lian is already a holder of meme cryptocurrencies.

Judging from his tweet, Lian is already a holder of meme cryptocurrencies.

Which coin should I buy now? #XRP #ADA #NEAR #IOTA #CRO or should I stay with #meme?

— Anndy Lian (@anndylian) September 29, 2022

“XRP, ADA, IOTA or should I stay with #meme?”

From his tweet, Anndy Lian is considering making a purchase of some leading altcoins, including top 10 XRP and ADA, as well as IOTA, CRO and NEAR.

He also says that he could stay with the meme; however, he does not specify exactly which meme coins he holds – DOGE, SHIB, FLOKI, BabyDoge or some canine coins with smaller capitalizations.

From his earlier tweets posted in September, it is clear that Lian has been following the main events in the crypto industry, such as Cardano’s Vasil and Ethereum’s Merge hard forks.

He has not disclosed which cryptocurrencies he holds.

“NFT: from Zero to Hero” is Lian’s second book, according to his LinkedIn page. In 2019, he also co-authored a book titled “Blockchain Revolution 2030.” By now, 8,000 copies of the former have been sold.

This crypto influencer considers buying SHIB

Crypto influencer David Gokhshtein, former U.S. congressional candidate who founded Gokhshtein Media, has tweeted that yesterday he nearly purchased meme token Shiba Inu.

Gokhshtein has been bullish on the second largest meme token throughout the year, praising its model and its metaverse. He holds both Dogecoin and SHIB. Recently, he tweeted that it is okay to hold both, while some in the armies of both tokens find it hard to find a mutual understanding.

On Wednesday, Gokhshtein also shared that he had been considering buying more XRP tokens to expand his XRP bag. He believes that if Ripple wins the current legal battle against the SEC that has been going on since 2020, it will become a major driver not only for Ripple and XRP but for the entire crypto industry too.

As part of his challenge, he also considers buying some LUNC.

I was close to buying more $SHIB tonight.

I’m also back and forth still on $LUNC. (Strictly for that challenge)

— David Gokhshtein (@davidgokhshtein) September 29, 2022

Anndy Lian

www.anndy.com

j j j

December 9th, 2021

Will We Ever Use Meme Coins for Payment in the Metaverse?

The rise of meme coins has been a surprise not only in terms of the growth of their collective market value, but also their utility. The leading meme coin Dogecoin was originally launched as a joke by its co-founders in 2013 had reached a market cap of over $65 billion in May. Maybe the clue to its later success is in its origination, as a fork of Lucky Coin, itself a fork of Litecoin, which was a fork of Bitcoin! While its original creators never intended it to become so popular, or to rise in value to such stratospheric levels, it’s clearly ‘taken on a life of its own’ to coin a phrase. Now there’s a new twist in the Dogecoin’s tale, with the backing of celebrities like Tesla’s Elon Musk and Shark Tank’s Mark Cuban, it’s now being used for payment. So how seriously should we take this latest chapter in the development of meme coins, as a form of payment?

While it’s tempting to see the use of Dogecoin for payment as one more inexplicable jump in its unlikely evolution, its brief history shows what’s a consistent driving force behind this – its community. Just two weeks after its launch in 2013 the Reddit forum r/Dogecoin had over 19k members. It’s this community that drove the first real use of the coin, when in 2014 it quickly raised $30,000 to send the Jamaican bobsled team to the Winter Olympics, in a real-life version of the comedy sports movie ‘Cool Runnings’.

And without a PR agency to spread the news, the story was picked up by media outlets, broadcasting the meme coin to the world. Dogecoin’s fun meme-driven community backing and simplicity to use are key to its popular success. Maybe it found a market by accident rather than design, but that also underlines the power of memes to spread ideas and grow products.

It’s perhaps not surprising that Shark Tank star and billionaire owner of the NBA team Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban, told US-broadcaster CNBC recently that not only is Dogecoin “a medium that can be used for the acquisition of goods and services,” but that also “the community for doge is the strongest when it comes to using it as a medium of exchange”. This was in turn endorsed by Elon Musk, who tweeted: “I’ve been saying this for a while.” So how did Musk, with his Tesla and SpaceX commitments, get so involved with Doge?

Apparently, his first contact was in 2018 when Musk asked Doge co-founder, Jackson Palmer, to help him with Twitter scam bots. The next year in 2019, he tweeted that, “Dogecoin might be my fav cryptocurrency. It’s pretty cool.” His follow-up tweets in 2020 only served to inflate the prices of Doge, including in January 2021 when Musk helped send Dogecoin prices up 800%.

So how is Musk ‘putting his money where his mouth is’ and going from meme to payment promoter? The answer lies in his SpaceX business. In the first quarter of 2022 SpaceX will accept Dogecoin as full payment for a payload on the officially titled ‘DOGE-1 mission to the Moon’. DOGE-1 will fly a 40-kilogram cube satellite as a payload on a Falcon 9 rocket, with a hi-tech payload. SpaceX also confirmed that the DOGE-1 mission would adopt Dogecoin to set the standard for “interplanetary commerce”. Musk sees the meme coin as having a future in payments that’s not simply confined to planet Earth!

A latecomer to the meme coin payment party, entrepreneur, and star of Shark Tank Mark Cuban, is altogether more down to earth with his meme coin payment proposals. Cuban’s basketball team, the Dallas Mavericks, is rolling out the coin for payment with the help of BitPay, which is providing it as a payment option for its merchants and consumers. The blockchain payments company confirmed that, “Mavs Fans for Life (MFFLs) can now use Dogecoin to buy tickets and merchandise online, making Mavs merchandise more accessible to MFFLs everywhere, a decentralized, peer-to-peer digital currency, Dogecoin enables customers to easily send money online with very low transaction fees and fast transaction times.” Commenting on the Doge-related deal Cuban admitted they provided Dogecoin “because we can!”. He added that for fans who wanted to know more, “we strongly encourage you to talk to your teenagers who are on tik tok and ask them about it”.

So, what makes the meme token so attractive for payments, beyond its popularity? BitPay said Dogecoin’s large supply and low price facilitated ‘efficient micro-tipping content’. “It has an advantage Bitcoin or Ethereum doesn’t necessarily have at this time: Dogecoin has low fees. And when you combine a strong community with low fees, that’s a great recipe. I expect it to continue to grow, and that utility will get greater,” said a BitPay spokesperson. The well-known crypto exchange Coinbase that it’s e-commerce platform ‘Coinbase Commerce’ has begun accepting Dogecoin for payments, allowing its merchants to start accepting the meme token.

Talking of e-commerce, it may be a little ambitious to believe the giant online retailer Amazon will take up Dogecoin for payment purposes, but that hasn’t stopped a petition titled ‘Doge4Amazon’ from picking up strong support in 2021. Started three years ago with 20k supporters, in the last 6 months its jumped from 75k, to 100k, and now to close to 250K signatures. The petition reads: “Amazon.com, being a leader in innovation, should accept Dogecoin as a form of payment. Dogecoin is fast, cheap, and stable. It is stable in value, has the lowest transaction fee of other major coins, has a huge supply of coins, and has a very large, active community with ongoing development.”

At the other end of the e-commerce scale from Amazon, it’s reported that SamandZoey.com, a company that produces custom textile designs said they are accepting Dogecoin. “Accepting cryptocurrency, including Dogecoin, seemed like a natural next step for us—we have a history of listening to what our customers want. I’m surprised other eCommerce stores aren’t doing the same,” a spokesman said. Dogecoin may dominate the meme coin landscape but that’s also starting to change, as the demand continues to grow. In July it was reported that Baby Doge, in a bid to follow in Dogecoin’s footsteps, is also moving into e-commerce as a payment option. It’s teamed up with Coin Payments, allowing the meme coin to be used with over 5 million e-commerce businesses worldwide.

For aficionados of meme coins, Dogecoin isn’t the only popular crypto coin that was created in 2013, with a fun animal identity and with strong community backing. MONA was launched in 2013 as part of the MonaCoin Project and is based on the meme of a cat-like figure. It was designed by an anonymous developer who goes by Mr.Watanabe, who like Bitcoin’s anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto has never been officially identified. The meme token, which in March had a market value of around $134 million, is mainly used in Japan which may explain why it’s not more widely known. Its key practical use is as a currency in several stores (both online and on the high street), and according to Investopedia the currency can also be used through Monappy, “an online platform where MonaCoin holders can exchange coins for digital assets, such as coupons, electronics, and other items”. While its success for use in payments was helped by Japan’s Financial Services Agency approval in 2017, the cat-like currency is still dwarfed by Dogecoin in terms of popularity.

Clearly, despite their fun-filled origins meme coins are here to stay and rising in global popularity. Led by Dogecoin, especially in the US, and with celebrity backing from Musk and Cuban, it’s not difficult to see the advantages of its payment-friendly features in terms of low fees and infinite supply. If a major retailer like Amazon jumps on the meme coin bandwagon, it will become a major payment option for consumers. Indeed, you can already see innovation within the mobile meme-coin-led consumer space with DogeCola, a token designed to keep the price stable and avoid Whale speculation, while also offering its own soft drink cola later this year.

It’s also not hard to see meme coins use in related sectors such as music and gaming, as a cross-proprietary platform currency to enable the vision of the ‘multiverse’. In a recent report, UK-based blockchain VC Outlier Ventures sees the need to have a crypto decentralized core, with its own payment system as key: “The defining characteristic of a true Metaverse is that it needs its own economy and currencies native to it, where value can be earnt, spent, lent, borrowed or invested interchangeably in both a physical or virtual sense and most importantly without the need for a government.”

Whether it will be used seriously for business-to-business payments, apart from one-offs like SpaceX’s use for promotional purposes, remains to be seen. After all, stablecoins such as Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC) are also viable commercial options for digital payments that are fast and low cost and have been expanding rapidly in 2021. But one thing’s for sure about the meme coins, the sky’s the limit when it comes to future payment options for consumers keen to be able to use their favorite cryptocurrency.