Original Author: MATTI
Original translation: Deep Tide TechFlow
In the past bull market, meme coins, especially Doge, emerged as a true type of cryptocurrency. But it's not just meme coins that are affected by the meme premium. In fact, every successful token is influenced by it. I even believe that every product packaged in a brand contains a meme premium.
The godfather of Doge
The meme premium is a phenomenon where people assign a higher value to an idea for the following reasons:
Seeing others also value an idea
Expecting more people to value the idea
The meme premium is an ongoing beauty contest of imitation. It is a purely speculative form that has existed before humans even knew what financial speculation was. As Plato told us through Durant:
"Men quickly tire of what they possess, longing for what they do not have, and seldom desiring anything unless it belongs to someone else."
In a world dominated by social media, speculation has become a new form of consumption. Serious things have become entertainment, while entertainment has become serious. We pollute entertainment with politics, turning wars or inflation into spectacles to be watched. Cryptocurrency is a part of this cultural shift.
In the previous cycle, crypto degens were portrayed as the dark and fringes of the crypto world, yet they achieved that cycle. NFT small images, meme coins, and yield ponzi schemes became entertainment. Even the collapses and scapegoating of Three Arrows Capital, Do Kwon, and SBF were widely consumed with a sense of enjoyment.
And while the "most serious" crypto investors talk about crypto infrastructure SaaS, the crypto degens have grown, and I believe we are in the most spectacular degenerate phase in crypto history. We are doubling down on madness, whether it's meme coins, SocialFi, GameFi, or re-staking.
Compared to the previous cycle, the meme premium is more implicit, but in this cycle, it will become completely explicit. Cryptocurrencies will be more Degen than ever before. This may mean that you don't have to buy Doge to invest in Memes. You can buy any coin because the truth has been revealed, and every coin is a memecoin.
Analysis of (3, 3)
As I previously explained, besides brand and subsequent customer demand, Coca-Cola's stock has no fundamentals. I propose that trading coins is a form of consumption, just like drinking sugary drinks. Coca-Cola's stock is just a sticky Lollapalooza (RIP Charlie Munger).
Munger was not a loyal fan of cryptocurrencies, referring to them as "cryptoshit" and "cryptocrapo". Although his infinite wisdom will be deeply missed, his outdated views on what can be bought and sold are not so memorable. Anyway, I believe if Munger was in his 20s or 30s, there would be a chapter in his "Poor Charlie's Almanack" on the meme premium.
I am just suggesting using these experimental constructs worth trillions of dollars today to update some outdated wisdom. They may be small in scale and have a slim chance of individual success, but they are growing. Instead of normatively rejecting them, skeptics should try to better understand them. After all, technology is the foundation of societal development, not the other way around.
Let's strive to understand cryptocurrencies as a form of consumption rather than consistently opposing their consumption patterns. Capitalism is driven by the market, and the market is driven by consumption.
Speculation is also a form of consumption. Every brand in the world relies on a meme premium. The (3, 3) narrative that ruled OlympusDAO in 2021 clearly expresses the meme premium.
This is where we find ourselves on the adoption curve of cryptocurrencies: the transition from memes for the sake of memes to memes with utility (also known as SocialFi). I hope at this point we can agree that to a large extent, all of our tokens depend on the meme premium - there's nothing wrong with that.
In this cycle, memes will be directly monetized, reducing the demand for investing in meme coins. Memes, as a coordination tool, price themselves in a social game. I wouldn't be surprised to see the value of dumb meme coins shifting towards smaller coordination experiments with unlimited upside potential.
Our DeFi summer equivalent may be a meme summer wrapped in SocialFi narratives (for now, the Blast season seems like a Shillen point). Instead of investing in an overplayed single meme like Doge and its replicas, people may engage in various small games with a certain purpose.
After all, money is a coordination game, and prices are signals. OlympusDAO's (3, 3) showcases a meme with everything: GameFi, SocialFi, and a serious attempt at utility. It's a true meme coin, even more significant than Doge. Because if you treat a meme coin merely as a meme coin, the magic of this group of idiots is bound to be short-lived.
Learning how to price memes has always been the alchemy of finance. The age of market wizards differs when it comes to memes. From the invention of derivatives to meme coins, finance has evolved as the market spreads into the limitless digital world.
Harnessing the power of encryption means understanding reflexivity, not in the form of price increases or decreases, but in the form of price-transforming fundamentals. The world can change with market fluctuations. Meme premium is a potential energy that can be converted into momentum.
The late 2020s and 2030s may be the golden age for meme-value-oriented crypto hedge funds, which embrace the inherent reflexivity of digital assets. Cryptocurrencies may have been in denial for some time, but only when we accept their true nature can we unleash their real value.
