Back in 2017, crypto was basically the Wild West of speculative investing. If you jumped on Twitter or Reddit at the time, you'd see endless debates about whitepapers, founders' backgrounds, and roadmaps promising huge future returns. People talked about tokens exactly like you'd talk about early-stage startup, only with less regulation and way more hype.

The value proposition was always tied, at least somewhat, to the potential utility these tokens promised. Maybe it was a decentralized storage network, a new type of financial exchange, or some ambitious "Ethereum-killer" blockchain. But the common thread was this idea of betting on something tangible - well, conceptually tangible - that might someday actually become a thriving business.

It's worth stating that almost all of it was nonsense. Everything from DentaCoin that was going to somehow revolutionize the world of dentistry (and was at one time a top 30 crypto with almost $2B valuation), to people talking about crypto powered drones moving people throughout major US cities.

And honestly, for a moment, it almost made sense. Sure, people were investing based on ideas that were mostly vaporware, but at least there was the pretense of utility. The market pretended to care about whether projects could actually deliver. It wasn't just "number go up" - it was "number go up because this might change the world."

But as we will see, that facade of rationality didn't last long. Crypto was about to discover a whole new way to think about value, and it had very little to do with utility.

Then something changed.

The year was 2021, and NFTs exploded into mainstream consciousness. Suddenly, people weren't even pretending they were investing in companies or tech - they were explicitly investing in images, memes, and promises. It wasn't about traditional utility or revenue models anymore. Instead, value was wrapped up in the perception of exclusivity, scarcity, and hype.

Bored Ape Yacht Club became the poster child for this shift. The narrative went like this: buy an Ape, and you'd become part of an exclusive club, a community with special access to merch drops, events, and some ambiguous future benefits. Essentially, people were betting on brand IP—hoping their Ape would be the next Mickey Mouse or Hello Kitty. In theory, owning one of these NFTs granted you some intangible but real share in future cultural significance.

In practice, though, this didn't really happen. Thousands of NFT projects launched with flashy promises, sold millions worth of tokens, and then fizzled out quietly when the buzz faded. Everyone was claiming they'd be "the next Disney," but almost nobody actually built anything meaningful.

Except Pudgy Penguins. They actually delivered - at least, they're trying to. Pudgy Penguins didn't double down on trying to build traditional "business" utility. Instead, they're relentlessly pursuing attention, distribution, and cultural relevance.

They understand one crucial insight: money follows attention.

If Pudgy Penguins can become the single most recognizable brand in crypto culture, their $PENGU token has a legitimate shot at becoming the next $DOGE.

This marked a subtle but powerful shift. Crypto projects were no longer trying to build conventional businesses—they were competing in a raw battle for cultural dominance. And once this insight clicked, it set the stage for the next evolution: pure memes.

Fast forward to 2024, and things took an even wilder turn. The era of NFTs had already weakened the link between value and utility, but now that connection was completely severed.

Enter: pure memes.

Millions of meme coins started popping up with literally zero promises attached. No utility. No roadmap. No whitepaper. Just vibes, memes, and relentless attention-seeking. Coins like PEPE surged to absurd market caps, fueled entirely by Twitter trends, viral jokes, and influencer shoutouts.

And here's the kicker: nobody even pretended to care about whether these tokens had a "use case." In fact, insisting on utility started feeling almost quaint - a sign you were still stuck in the old paradigm.

Yet, interestingly enough, a lot of people were - and still are - uncomfortable with this reality. They're still clinging to the idea that founders have a lifelong obligation to their meme coins. They're still demanding teams "build utility," as if consumer behavior actually incentivizes it.

But the market speaks loudly: consumers reward attention above all else.

The clear takeaway from this meme-coin era is simple yet profound: Attention itself has become the primary driver of value. We're witnessing a full-on shift into an attention-first economy, and crypto just happens to be the clearest mirror reflecting this global change.

Companies aren't fighting to become profitable businesses - they're fighting to become culturally relevant. Money, after all, always follows attention, not the other way around.

If 2024 was the year memes fully took over crypto, 2025 is shaping up as the year this trend reaches critical mass. At this point, the question isn't "What can we tokenize?" It's quickly becoming, "What can’t we tokenize?"

Right now, meme coin launchpads are popping up faster than Starbucks locations. It is an endless churn - attention is fleeting, but that’s precisely the point. Catch the wave and move on to the next.

And it doesn't stop there. We're also starting to see something even more intriguing: the tokenization of social posts themselves. Imagine posting a meme, a tweet, or a TikTok... and turning that directly into a tradable token.

People aren’t just sharing content: they're literally trading attention in real-time markets.

Your viral tweet might have actual market value within minutes, or your TikTok dance video could spike in value after a shoutout from someone famous.

The idea seems wild, but it's already being tested. Experiments like friend.tech opened the door, and now the floodgates are wide open. Every form of online engagement - likes, reposts, comments, views - is being reframed as a tradable asset.

Attention isn't just a vague metric tracked in analytics tools; it's becoming a tangible currency.

This evolution forces us to reconsider what "value" even means. We’ve moved from betting on hypothetical companies, to betting on brands, to betting purely on memes - and now, we're betting directly on the moment-to-moment shifts in human attention itself.

And honestly, there's no going back. The shift is irreversible, and we're just at the beginning of understanding its full implications.