Crypto has gone through many trends over the years. Hodling to the moon, seizing the memes of production, WAGMI, believe in something, and outright trench warfare. We’re in a near constant battle between what’s real and what’s not. Along the way influencers have come and gone, some with more integrity than others. It’s easy to romanticize earlier crypto cycles and influencers. Survivorship bias plays a role in elevating the legend of Andreas Antonopoulos, Cobie, GCR. For every one of them there are dozens of Jason Derulos, Dave Portnoys, Frank DeGods and other creatures lurking in wait to steal your money. Degradation of crypto culture has played a large role in elevating bad actors and hurting the performance of tokens and the industry.

How did we get here?

Crypto has historically gone through trends/metas/seasons. The ICO era, DeFi summer, NFT season, most recently memecoins have been the chosen way to “make it” (plus smaller trends like AI, gambling tokens, gaming, etc). The past four years have been a nightmare for any developer trying to advance crypto in the US. Operation chokepoint 2.0 made being a legitimate crypto firm with banking needs very difficult. The SEC’s “crackdown” on crypto meant legitimate teams getting brought in and shaken down by the regulatory apparatus despite said apparatus having provided no guidance on how the industry should legally operate. This backdrop provided a perfect storm for memecoins and parasitic players to take center stage.

Crypto advancements can feel slow, but technology has unquestionably improved. Solana has given builders options on how to best launch and position their tokens. High throughput L2’s on Ethereum have been effective at bringing down barriers of using the Ethereum ecosystem. Mobile wallets and UX have drastically improved. Combining the effects of increased efficiency, Western government’s crypto witch hunt, and a jaded user base has pushed traders/investors to take a much more nihilistic, PvP approach. The trend is exacerbated by poor culture from our “bluechip” blockchains.

Base tweeted “Just Build It” on 2/12 a slogan that perfectly characterizes “copy cat” culture on Base chain; copied NFTs, copied tokens, and copied slogans all while preaching about building a better future onchain. Solana culture hasn’t been any better. Presale token launches dominated mid-late last year and more recently endless pump.fun massacres – perfect ways for investors to incinerate their capital and enrich bad actors. 

Cause for concern

In the past month we’ve seen Donald Trump launch his own memecoin $TRUMP a day before Inauguration – insiders aggressively realized profits. The following day his wife, First Lady Melania Trump (under some of the worst advisement imaginable) launched her own memecoin further fragmenting liquidity and sending the memecoin market into turmoil. Dave Portnoy has lined his pockets on memecoin pump-and-dumps. Everybody’s second favorite former Crypto CEO criminal Changpeng “CZ” Zhao known better to some as inmate number 88087-510 decided to get in on the memecoin fun and instigate the BSC community (if that’s a thing) to make a memecoin of his dog. Begging people to do so via tweets, pictures, and explicit directions and later playing dumb as traders lost en masse across several rugged memecoin launches. On Friday night the President of Argentina endorsed a token from his X account, hours later he deleted the original tweet and clarified it was a private endeavor within Argentina (which reportedly netted ~$100M). These are not people interested in what’s best for crypto, they’re here to steal our money.

Cabal vs Community

A cabal in crypto is a group of people knowingly manipulating asset prices for their own financial gain. With the number of tokens being launched the reality is that most will end up being a rug or outright worthless. There are cabals roaming everywhere. Some are highly coordinated like $trump and $libra. Most are organized smaller groups in “the trenches.” The exception to the rule is tokens with a true community behind them – not to be confused with dopamine addicts coming together to celebrate number going up. If we look back at nearly every successful project in crypto there has been a rabid community to evangelize the asset and defend it from detractors.

Where do we go from here?

No one is coming to save crypto. Quite the opposite, grifters have been given the green light to extract from the industry. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying altcoins, nfts, memecoins, microcaps, etc. Given the status of recent memecoin extractions ($trump, $car, $libra) this all appears to be “fair game” in the new US regulatory world. Even if there’s short term gain for some traders, these types of memecoins end up being a net loss for crypto as they inevitably sell their tokens to cash and burn holders. As crypto natives we need to use good judgment and be vigilant. Especially as we help our less experienced friends navigate a difficult industry. 

Not investment advice 

I’m having a hard time envisioning another memecoin renaissance anytime soon. There will be lots of losers and some winners, likely in the form of consolidation. After the President of the United States launches and soft rugs a memecoin, attention seems to have peaked, and trust is eroded. The hot ball of money chasing memecoins gets reduced with every extractive launch. Over the last month hundreds of millions of dollars (or Billions) extracted from crypto that will likely never return. Despite this, I still think we are in a bullish environment. We have a new pro-crypto administration that hasn’t been in office for a month with crypto initiatives on the docket. President Trump has made it clear to Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell that he expects interest rates to come down. There’s plenty of risk for investors to weigh and arguments to be made about the ideal portfolio construction. Take risks where you see fit—I’m looking at productive alts in the Solana ecosystem (I have a position in $JUP) while maintaining majors and taking ad hoc positions in the Base/Ethereum ecosystems. Crypto is being ingrained into the lives of billions of people. We’ve seen art, communities, defi, memecoins, nfts, and more flourish on blockchains. We don’t need to follow every trend, along the way enriching parasites. Believe in something real.

*Everything written above is the opinion of the author and should not be taken as financial advice