Memecoins: Dead or Just Getting Started?

Transcript

Here we are. Uh another bull market. And we're talking about meme coins again. I didn't believe that this bull market would be driven by meme coins. And I think the the topic is like are we just getting started or is it dead? I think the the big the place to start is how has meme coin investing changed? And Sam, I remember you were here 2 years ago, WIF was at couple of billion dollar market cap and you told us it was a play on attention. Is that what it is today?

>> WIF or meme coins in general? >> Meme coins in general. >> Yeah, I mean meme coins are purely attention driven assets. I think the reason that they're interesting is that all assets, stocks, crypto, everything have some form of intangible value attached to them that's purely driven off what collective belief people have in this asset. And stocks obviously have revenue attached to them. Meme coins don't have any revenue attached to them, but the attention behind the people investing in these things drives um a lot of the returns. And meme coins specifically are fully um attention driven markets.

>> I I remember meme coins being much more of a cult, much more of a community, much more It feels to me like it's not the same anymore. It feels to me like it's like multiple launches, launch, launch, launch. >> way there's a lot more now than there were a few years ago. I mean in 2023 the beginning of that cycle, that was before uh pump fun um and like when Pepe ran to I think 10 billion market cap in in 2023, there weren't 30,000 new coins launching every day. And now there's 30,000 plus new meme coins launching every day. And so the attention is definitely a lot more fragmented now than it was back then. I think that kind of makes it difficult for things to go as high. You really need a a core differentiating factor for

your meme coin to be different from all the other animal coins. >> Murad, what do you think? Like if you want to get another run up to 10, 20, 30 billion, is that going to happen? >> Uh you said billion, right? >> Yes. >> I think we're going to see a meme coin at a trillion eventually. >> Tell me >> Now, and I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why. So, I agree with Ansem that the space is bifurcating. And I think on the one extreme you have essentially hyper gambling. And my prediction is that on kind of that side of the meme coin space, you're going to see millions more coins.

You're going to see smaller average trade sizes. You're going to see lower hold times. And generally speaking, you're going to see lower median ceilings. Now, I'm a big proponent and supporter of the other end of the extreme, which is when you try to push extreme um community building. Almost to the point of cult building or movement building, like you said. And I think that we will see a coin that is going to be several times bigger than Doge. I think it's only a matter of time.

I think that um in the next 5 years, wealth inequality is going to become the single biggest problem in the world everywhere. And I think that people are essentially going to be banding together and um hardcore diamond hand some of these coins. And I think essentially the most lucrative thing to do is to either find or join what you think is going to be the next GME, the next GameStop. And I think that essentially that is the future of meme coins on the movement coin side.

>> When I buy that meme coin, what am I buying into? I understand the the speculation. I'm buying into who can I sell it to and how quickly can I sell it. But what am I buying into when I buy into the this this community? What what am I buying into? >> So, this is a great question. Right now, you're seeing a massive wave of tokenization. People have tokenized gold, silver, wine, stocks, etc. And a lot of people in the world, bloggers, ex-funders, VC analysts, when they talk about tokenization, they stop at these physical buildings, you know, yield-bearing assets, stocks.

I think that hyperfinancialization and tokenization are powerful forces that are going to continue much deeper. And I think that the actual lucrative play is not tokenizing the tangibles, but actually tokenizing the intangibles. And I think tokenizing communities, tokenizing brands, I think tokenizing attention is just the first step. I think your next 200 billion, 300 billion type meme coin is going to be an extremely hardcore tokenized ideology, tokenized movement.

And really, I think that is going to be the plays that return the highest level of investment returns. >> So, if I'm walking in a supermarket and I meet you in a supermarket and you say to me, "Hey, you should buy this stock." You can quite quickly explain to me why. "Hey, you should buy this stock because it has a great yield and it pays a great dividend." If you If I'm walking in a supermarket and you bump into me and you try and show me this this this multi-billion-dollar coin, what's the pitch? >> Yeah, that's a great question. I think of these as wealth redistribution assets. Um Bitcoin does not produce any revenues, but it has managed to absorb 2 trillion of uh wealth from fiat and other assets, right? Um I think when GME

went to 36 billion, and when Doge went to 89 billion, they didn't do it because of some utility or financial premium. They did it because essentially people wanted to band together and reabsorb wealth from traditional asset classes. I think you're going to see similar things on a much bigger scale. >> So, it's almost like religion, so to speak. And they I use that that term quite loosely, where you're buying into a culture or a movement or something bigger than just a culture or movement. >> I I I definitely agree with you. I think that investing and spirituality are going to merge into one. And I think that the smartest investors, that's where they're going to be finding the next 1000X.

>> Paul, I want to come to you because I think your platform has actually changed the fundamentals of meme coin investing. I think maybe before FOMO, people were incentivized to launch as many coins as possible, to run them up, and to make them drop again. FOMO basically shows people's wallets, holdings, etc., etc. And maybe encourages people not to pump and dump, so to speak. I mean, is Was that by design? >> Yeah, absolutely. I think the fundamental fabric and in every decision calculus we make, it's how do we get and promote a platform where people can hold longer. And I think a lot of what >> Murat said is actually spot-on.

>> Um like having your average hold time, the creator rewards, which he did $15 million in payouts in September alone, are used to incentivize hold down the platform. And a lot of other platforms are tied to launchpads, where the way they make revenue is buying and selling as fast as possible. And this is the other side of what Murat originally talked about. But if you can encourage holding, then as you transition to longer-term assets, whether it's equities, RWAs, etc., you could build this underlying social graph, where communities can start on any of these things. And I think it's really exciting. I think a good analogy is like you think about autonomous vehicles, and I think a lot of these a lot of the native the asset issuances will happen natively on chain. But right now we're in the highest friction period, cuz we

got to bring the off-chain assets on chain. And obviously we're working with New York Stock Exchange, and there's a lot of partners doing a lot of these different ways to tokenize assets. But autonomous vehicles, when every car is autonomous, it's really easy. All the cars talk to each other, it's the same as when all native assets are issued on chain. But right now the highest friction period is actually bringing these assets on chain. Um and then the other piece is the community piece here. I think one thing we started to explore recently is Robinhood, they launched in 2012 and then up until 2020 they had 5 million funded accounts. Then on the back of COVID you saw this tailwind of this new investor class and actually in that one year they doubled two years in a row. So they quadrupled their user base to over 22 to over 22 million users

in two years, IPO'd and now today they sit at about 28 million funded accounts in the US. So think about that. This community gathered around AMC and GameStop on Wall Street Bets in the separate forum and they brought this community, all of them infiltrated Robinhood, joined and then built a community around it. So now imagine a platform where all of that can natively happen in one place. >> Murad, I want to go back to you. We were speaking about the incentive to pump and dump or to buy and hold and sell quickly versus the incentive to hold. You very famously had your wallets tracked right from the time you bought and you went all the way up to I think the peak was over a hundred million dollars.

And you couldn't or didn't sell any coins. Was it a couldn't or was it a didn't? And the reason why I said that for people don't know is everyone was tracking Murad's wallets and everyone had the fear that if he sold one of the holdings and the coin would dump because Murad um wasn't a wasn't a believer anymore. >> Yeah, so two things here. Um I believe that because there are so many coins out there in the market right now and tens of thousands are getting created every day, um you really have to stand above the pack.

I believe that in order to build something that's going to be bigger than Dogecoin, um you have to achieve extreme levels of diamond handedness, extreme levels of hodl culture, extreme levels of belief. And um first of all, I have to lead by example. And second of all, my targets are so much higher than what we saw in 2025 that I plan on holding for another 6 7 8 years. >> How much did you round trip? I mean, what was the wallet at the top of its value? >> Uh it went from 90 to 9. >> 90 to 9?

>> So you round tripped 81 million dollars. >> And you called it? >> Yeah, totally. Because uh I think those wallets are going to be in the billions eventually. >> Wow. Okay. So I think what everyone here wants to know from you guys is um when you're meme coin investing, what's the skill? Like what do you need to build? What do you need to become good at? If you're valuing a token, you have to become good at understanding revenue generation, how it gives it back to the token holders as a function of the number of tokens in circulation. When you're investing in meme coins, what are you good at? What's the skill?

And so maybe let let's let's go to you. >> Yeah, I mean it's it's a few different things. I I think as we know meme coins are are driven by attention and community. Um so in the early stages, you kind of have to see that community form and how they respond to price action. So as you know, uh meme coins are extremely volatile. All of them that go up at time come down minus 70 minus 80%. I think the ones that perform the best when they're in those down trends and down trends, you'll see the community actually posting more and spreading more and doing more in public and and online and everywhere else. Um almost to the point they're not even looking at the price action. And so when you have a community of people that's die hard um and focus on one mission in that way, um

that's like the core reason I would say. But I think you also need to think through how the meme coin differentiates itself from the rest of the market. And I think one of the reasons that Doge did so well in 2020 is because it had Elon at the top of it pushing it non-stop, which just threw it on the planet. Um and it's why I'm so convicted in the social token thesis as a part of meme coins because there's never been any meme corner coin that didn't have like somebody very popular at the top or a group of people that are very popular at the top that were leading by example and were creating more distribution for the coin. So, I think that's another key factor.

Um and yeah, I I you you you don't want to be a copy of something else. Like whenever you're a copy of something else that existed before, uh your ceiling is always going to be capped by whatever that previous coin was. >> Let's talk about communities that you feel are resilient relative to price. So, when the price went down, they were posting more. Can you name one or two communities for maybe people to go and look at those coins without shilling the coin, but you're shilling the the strength of the community? >> [laughter] >> Um >> Just watch the chart of the coin video. >> Let me think right now.

>> Don't say anything. >> Is this >> is this like a trap question? Um yeah, I think I'm going to give my own social token. So, answer them is my my social token, which I have attached my name to. I think that people have a relationship with me just because I've been trading crypto for years now and a lot of people have retired from the plays that I've given them in markets like Solana in 2023, Solana in 2021. Um and a lot of the rotational plays that I put my own money into and gave to my exits. And so, the attention piece of meme coins is the most important. And for me, my account has grown from like 5K, I think 6 years ago to like 1.4 million now. And so, there's a continuous amount of

attention on me and on my brand and I think that's going to continue to grow and will continue to to grow as this social trading and social tokens thesis gets more popular. >> Is it not pressure every day to have a >> association with your name? >> is. No, it definitely is. Like I I I didn't have to do this by any means. I didn't have to see >> Did you know what you were getting yourself into like >> not planned at all. I mean, I knew I obviously know that the game like I've talked about meme coins all the time. >> But did you know that you would have to appease hundreds of thousands of token holders every morning when you wake up? >> For sure.

>> Well, a lot of pressure. >> A lot of pressure. >> Yeah. >> Um Paul, what do you think? Like people that are investing in meme coins like what's the skill? What what should they do? >> Yeah, I think the best example this it actually crap crosses market classes like Chris Camillo, right? And he's an equity trader, but he trades off of societal trends, right? Like in a podcast uh he was on Counterparty recently and or a few months ago. I thought that interview was amazing. He talked about how Sweetgreen now has these wraps, right? And he's like, "Okay, so Sweetgreen's going to become part of culture. I see this cultural trend. People are going to be walking around the street holding Sweetgreen wrappers eating the wraps.

So, their stock's going to go up." And he'll make the bed and the bed will work out. And I think there's like a lot of understanding of cultural norms, figuring out when events will happen. people when people say things, I think uh and that's why you got to be careful on stage, but I think like there's these things that happen in pop culture. If you have a really good sense of pop culture, I think it's idealistic for now because especially cuz there's all these vamps and all these things happening on chain, but if you could attach attention and value to actually a thing like early on one of my friends like in 2017 introduced me to Rufus Du Sol like and we went to a concert when they were like just small like the small stage. If she somehow was able to invest in that,

right? And it becomes a big part of pop culture and attention. Ideally, that's where this heads. Right now, that's a a little idealistic, um but attention and culture and societal trends do actually attach to a lot of these coins. >> Are the people that are coming to trade meme coins on your platform? Are they crypto investors or are they culture people that are finding crypto for the first time on the platform? >> Yeah, I mean both, but a lot of the latter. So, we have 3 million users. We added about 2 and 1/2 million in the past 3 months, um which is pretty insane. And a lot of these people it's the first time they're ever interacting with on chain, right?

>> up 2 and 1/2 million in 3 months. >> That's right, yeah. >> And you picked up 500,000 in the 18 months preceding that, those 15 >> Uh we're only about 15 months old, so about like a year before that, yeah. >> Wow. >> But these things are exponential, right? Like we're adding Yeah, it's just exponentiating every week. >> Just before I move to Murad, if I were to speak to you next year this time on this stage, what's the number? >> Um a year from now, uh 50 50 million, at least, hopefully. >> Okay, we're going to remember that. We'll be back here next >> Maybe 100.

Wow. Okay. Gross. Murad, um you're the guy that's all about this cult, this movement. A new meme coin launches. What What's the thing you look for to determine whether this meme coin is the one that's the potential cult? Like what are the What's the check boxes? >> Yeah, for sure. Um there's kind of the autistic answer, and there's also the hippie answer. And I think you want both to intersect. Um the hippie answer is you want to have a high EQ.

And essentially, you want to have a good gut feel about what people will resonate with. And I think it has to do with analyzing kind of global and social trends outside of crypto. That's why I'm so into kind of like wealth redistribution assets, as I call them, because I think that's going to be a huge issue in the next 10 years. And any kind of tokenized movement that's even partially or indirectly trying to address that, I think it's going to get huge. >> That's the autistic answer. >> That's the hippie answer. >> Yeah, yeah. Now let me get the autistic answer.

>> Essentially, you want to have a good tap on the culture and you want to correctly emotionally predict what other people will be feeling and thinking. The autistic answer is meme coins have fundamentals of their own. If you think of them as tokenized movements, then there's a ton of on-chain research that you can do. There is full portedness, there is diamond handedness, there is median holding times. There is a bunch of sort of nitty-gritty metrics like this that you can study and analyze sort of a token's power, so to speak, right?

Without any financial advice, of course. Personally, obviously, I'm a huge supporter of SBX 6900. It's a coin that is trying to flip the entire stock market, right? And when you hear this, of course, the first thing you think is this is absolutely insane, this is never going to happen, etc., right? But first of all, if we even get 1% of the way there, that's going to be a trillion dollars. And frankly, many of our community members believe that we can actually go all the way. >> And that's the that's the cult, so to speak.

>> That's that's the movement. Wow, okay. let's move on to AI. We've got a few minutes left. We're moving into a world where there's a lot of AI, there's a lot more content. It's it's a lot more AI generated content. What does AI do for meme coins? Does it make them more investable, less investable? Like what's the AI play here? >> Yeah, I'm I'm really happy that you asked that because AI is a very big part of my thesis. Um I think in the next three or four years, you're going to see over a billion AI agents, any of which are smarter than human beings, um enter the world of not just the internet, but blockchain as well. And they're not just going to be holding

crypto assets, they're going to be aggressively trading them, they're going to be scamming human beings, they're going to be scamming each other, they're going to be launching meme coins, they're going to be bundling meme coins, sniping meme coins. Everything that humans are doing today, agents are going to be doing 100 times faster and 100 times better. Now, you have to ask yourself, in a world where there is 8 billion humans and a trillion agents, um how will, assuming that humans don't get killed, right, and they still have some kind of power left, uh what will human culture and human trading and investing look like? And I strongly believe that essentially trading of any kind under one-month time frames is essentially going to be an increasingly solved game by AIs that are going to be 250 IQ. Essentially,

everybody is going to have an Albert Einstein in their pocket, and mega corporate AI agents are going to be 1,000 times better even. So, I think trading is essentially going if it's 93% unprofitable for humans today, eventually it's going to be 99.9% unprofitable. And I think that humans are going to uh essentially trading and investing as done by humans is going to shift towards uh community building, uh ritual design, experience design, and at its best, movement building. Not because people want to, but because they simply will have no choice. And um actually, the higher GDP goes, and the more abundance that we have, um when agriculture got automated, it actually became a smaller uh part of the

economy. And if you kind of extrapolate this logic, then if the human body was what was valuable about us 1,000 years ago, and right now it's your mind, in the future, it's going to be your soul and your spirit. And I think this implies that relational economy, things that deal with status, emotions, and dignity is actually going to be the biggest chunk of the economy. And if this is true, then if you extrapolate this logic to its extreme, then I believe that the biggest crypto asset in the future is not going to be one that relies on cash flows or utility. It's going to be the one that relies purely on the social premium and the levels of belief.

>> So, I mean, yeah, big round of applause. >> [applause] >> Paul, we were speaking in the speakers lounge about the fact that when AI comes in, people are going to the only well, one of the big forms of entertainment is going to be people trading meme coins. And we said that they'll probably do it on social trading platforms like FOMO. Is that part of the thesis? >> Like >> Yeah, absolutely. And I think if it's less even for entertainment value, I think there is a lot of validity to that. But if you think about in a world of AI, what happens is that information becomes commoditized cuz anyone could have a deep fake of any form of media that you could post that I was in Ibiza whatever on Instagram or anyone can come out with

an intelligent statement by drafting a few messages with it with an LLM. And in that case, when ideas are commoditized, when media's commoditized, the only thing that's left is actually where you're holding dollars, right? Cuz that's your actual belief and that's unreplicable. So, in a world where everything else is commoditized and the only thing that's left is where your dollars are, the future social media and social graph is an informational one about what people are holding. And there's this platform has never existed. I think people historically have looked at WeBull and eToro and all these platforms, but they've always been obfuscated by the actual truth cuz you're only posting the things that you want to post, right? But if you actually can have a full transparency to see what they do and this is the beautiful thing that the blockchain enables that maybe

that's the future kind of media and information graph of the world. >> Are you looking to onboard AI agents onto your platform as as users? >> Uh, no. >> No. >> I don't think so. I just think because if you think of what a social platform is, it's about forming communities, right? It's about transparently seeing what other people are doing and humans empathetically learn by following what other people are doing, right? LLMs might be able to aggregate information about DCs and average hold times, but they don't really care about that individual. Like your emotional bond with that individual.

Um I also think like a lot of people are thinking about agentic trading and I don't really see the appeal necessarily. I think the edge gets kind of eaten out if everyone has the same information and I think that for example, like if you can have a beautiful UX where you can easily see what other people are holding, etc. It's better than whatever an LLM returns. However, I think AI is going to be very significant as a research tool. So, why not instead of having your user have to do prompt engineering and figure out the right answer, you preempt whatever that response is and you automatically include that as part of the application.

So, AI-generated token descriptions or AI-generated grouping and and uh preference of certain thesis on the platform. Um and I think that's kind of where we're heading and how you can utilize AI to build an amazing discovery platform within the app. >> Ansem, what do you think? AI and meme coins, does it >> Yeah, I mean, I think there's going to be a premium on individuals. I think we've seen over the past few years how popular um like social media has gotten with people attaching themselves to influencers and streamers and all these different things. And I think in a world of AI, when there's a ton of these agents online and you don't know what's real, you do know the people that you have had relationships with and have built your social graph with over the years. There's going to be a premium on

those people and their opinion and where they're putting their money. >> Amazing. Guys, we are out of time. Uh thank you very much. Been a great panel. Thank you very much, guys.