- Extra memes are crossing the billion-dollar valuation marks.
- Key crypto figures blame the SEC and TradFi for the meme frenzy.
Memecoins, particularly inside the Solana [SOL] ecosystem, recorded explosive development in Q1 2024. On the time of writing, the community-driven Dogwifhat [WIF] was up 30% on the weekly chart.
It briefly touched $4 and flipped Pepe [Pepe] to grow to be the third largest memecoin by market cap. WIF, which began as a Solana native meme, is now value $3.6 billion in market cap.
The ecosystem now boasts two unicorn memes, WIF and Bonk [BONK], with over $1 billion in market cap. Out of the $67 billion memecoin whole market, the Solana ecosystem accounts for $8 billion, translating to about $12% stake.
Memecoin rally: Did the SEC/TradFi affect it?
Memecoins at the moment are billion-dollar gems to seasoned speculators. Reacting to the loopy billions within the meme sub-sector, Messari Co-Founder Dan McArdle quipped,
“The SEC makes it unlawful for individuals who aren’t already wealthy to attempt to get wealthy from early-stage firms & tasks.
End result: memecoins to billions.”
Arthur Hayes, founder and former CEO of BitMEX change, had related observations. In a February newsletter championing the “Factors System” for crypto tasks, Hayes underscored how retailers get uncooked offers in conventional markets.
“However with no hungry hoard of retail consumers who’re excluded from investing earlier at less expensive costs, there can be no shopping for stress to create a profitable IPO. That’s the reason retail participation have to be saved for the tip and never the start of the fundraising lifecycle.”
Retailers are excluded from discounted costs in order that firms can dump shares at them through the IPOs (Preliminary Public Choices).
Quite the opposite, crypto permits any retailer to affix early, like through the Ethereum ICO (Preliminary Coin Providing), yield farming, factors, and many others.
On memecoins, Hayes not too long ago said that buying and selling Slerf [SLERF] and BOME is “extra enjoyable” than “negatively yielding bonds.”
Nevertheless, one other person had a contrarian stance: “Meme cash are actually simply communities of merchants which have agreed to compete to take one another’s cash utilizing worth motion.”
Regardless of what drives them, memes at the moment are billion-dollar gems and have outperformed some legacy tasks in Q1. Nevertheless, they want nice due diligence as a result of they aren’t risk-free.