The Origin and Evolution of Meme Coins and the Crypto Assets Market

The movie "Gambling Everything" which exposes telecom fraud features some elements from the Crypto Assets circle, such as "coin" and KOTAB coin. With the release of the movie, KOTAB coin was quickly issued in the crypto market. Currently, there are trading pairs of KOTAB coin on multiple blockchains, mainly concentrated on Ethereum, BSC, and Base chains. Among them, the liquidity on Uniswap v2 on the Ethereum chain is the largest. After the movie's premiere on August 5, the price of KOTAB coin skyrocketed by more than 3000 times in just two days. However, the good times didn't last long, as the price began to drop on August 8 and almost returned to the issuance price by the 19th.

Kusama coin belongs to a category known as "Meme coins" in the Crypto Assets.

Definition and Development of Meme

The concept of Meme can be traced back to Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" published in 1976, where it is defined as a cultural factor similar to genes that can be passed down and spread at the level of human thought. For the average person, the common form of Meme is the funny images on the internet that satirize or mock current events, such as meme images. These meme images carry interesting information, are easy to replicate and spread, and ultimately form a cultural consensus among a wide audience.

The Combination of Meme and Crypto Assets

The most famous combination of memes and crypto assets is Dogecoin. In 2013, Jackson Palmer sarcastically combined the Doge meme with crypto assets and tweeted, "Investing in Dogecoin, I'm pretty sure it's the next big thing." Software engineer Billy Markus then forked the Bitcoin code, creating 1 billion Dogecoins and launching it. Dogecoin quickly became popular on Reddit, gaining initial use cases through tipping bots. In December 2020, Musk began tweeting about Dogecoin, and each time he mentioned the crypto asset, the price of Dogecoin would rise. In early May 2021, Dogecoin peaked at $0.74, and Musk became the most influential figure in the Dogecoin community.

The Development History of Meme Coins

The success of Dogecoin has drawn significant attention in the encryption world. From 2013 to 2017, many Meme coins based on Dogecoin emerged in the market, most of which were derivatives based on specific cultural or media materials.

From 2017 to 2020, Meme coins began to choose a grander narrative as their foundation. Some Meme coins raised funds through ICOs, such as BAT(Basic Attention Token). During this stage, Meme coins were also exploring more use cases and trying to build active ecosystems.

In 2021, with the DeFi craze driving the bull market and the rotation of the crypto ecosystem, Musk used Twitter to promote Dogecoin, which saw a surge. After Shib was listed on centralized exchanges, it quickly topped Weibo's hot search, completely breaking into the mainstream. With the consecutive surges of Dogecoin and Shib, "animal-themed" Meme coins dominated the market.

After the bull market entered a deep bear market, the Meme coin market welcomed a small wave of excitement. ArbDoge AI, driven by the airdrop on Arbitrum, combines AI with Doge and employs the "mining" concept to incentivize user participation. Pepe has become the biggest dark horse in this wave, with over 1.5 million transactions and more than 200,000 holders.

The Current Situation and Issues of Meme Coins

The current Meme coin behind the Meme can no longer represent its original meaning. A Meme can be as simple as just a story, or it may even have no story at all. Unlike conventional Web3 projects, the price increase of Meme coins purely arises from the panic sentiment of investors.

As liquidity exits the crypto market, the new generation of popular Memes hardly take the time to genuinely explore building active communities or developing future plans. Most are backed by centralized teams colluding with various vested interests to create market focal points. For speculators, they are no longer concerned with whether there are interesting stories and trendy cultures behind Meme coins; the wealth myths of early participants seem to be more appealing than anything else.

Due to the anonymity of the Meme project team, it is easy for them to cut ties with the project, take the funds and leave without any burden, so maintaining the project is no longer an obligation for the team.

Future Outlook of Meme Coins

The development of Meme coins is increasingly leaning towards "short, flat, and fast". It is precisely because the market is not lacking in stories that Meme coins also have fertile ground for development. If we delve deeper, Bitcoin itself also carries Meme attributes. Meme coins are destined to be closely tied to the crypto market. However, for the current market where stablecoins are flowing out in large quantities, cautious investment and avoiding emotional investments that involve risk may be the wiser choice.