Will We Ever Get Another Memecoin Supercycle?

Introduction

Many people attribute the reason we didn't get an alt season last cycle to memecoins. Rather than PvE on dino coins, the market went PvP on new pairs. At the peak of memecoin season, we were getting a new $100M runner every day. Everyone and their mother was launching coins. The culmination of this was when Trump launched TRUMP coin, followed shortly after by MELANIA.

There were many more runners after TRUMP, but the market euphoria was never the same. We've seen Base, Binance, and now Robinhood all have their trench moment, but none captured the mainstream popularity of the original memecoin season. In fairness, how could they? What's bigger than the President of the United States launching a memecoin? Nothing.

Furthermore, the meme market is a very different landscape than it was a few years ago. Trenching is a problem that has largely been solved. It's now easy to trade across dozens of wallets and gain supply control. The average hold time on new pairs continues to decline. Autodeployers use algorithms to rug once certain thresholds are met. In short, HODLing is now more likely to get you killed than make you generational wealth.

The question is, will memecoins ever come back to their former glory, or will hopeful trenchers join the countless bag holders still waiting for their narrative to return (NFTs, crypto gaming, DePIN, SocialFi, etc.)? I'll steelman both sides of the argument, and then you can decide what you think.

Before we get into it, let's define what we're actually talking about.

What is a memecoin?

Memecoins are virality measured in dollars.

People will try to convince you they're far more complicated than that, but at the end of the day, everything comes back to virality measured in dollars.

The allure of memecoins is that the market is essentially the world's most degenerate casino with the longest tail outcomes. If you bet on one number in roulette, you can win 35x your money. If you hold the right memecoin long enough, you could make 10,000x your investment.

Memecoins won't come back

Memecoins had their run. They were extractive and burned retail. The marginal buyer doesn't exist anymore. The market became too efficient and no longer allowed for passive play. You either had to be online 16 hours a day or lose your money to someone who was.

Bundlers and autodeployers made the market toxic and no longer fun. Just like NFTs, memecoins had their moment, overextracted, and next cycle liquidity will rotate to the next shiny product.

Online gambling is also much more accessible in the U.S. Memecoins were a proxy for gambling, so why not go straight to the source? Sure, the upside can be much larger in the trenches, but the rules are unclear and insiders have a significant advantage. At least casinos have established rules where the house edge is known.

Prediction markets are also here to stay and are arguably more fun than memecoins.

Memecoins will come back

The rules have already been established. Memecoins move higher when viral events occur.

There will be more viral moments in the future, and deployers will launch tokens to keep the game going. When large caps rally, interest in the trenches will return. People will have more money to speculate with, and what better place to do it than the casino with the longest tail outcomes?

NFTs had a liquidity problem that memecoins solved. There is still no better place to gamble onchain.

Conclusion

What do you think? Will memecoins come back, or will they become a relic of the last cycle?

Let us know on X by tweeting @heybeluga!