The meme coin madness has become one of the most unpredictable patterns to ever unfold in the crypto space. As much as we can prepare and study for the next storm; utter shock has continued to be the inevitable outcome felt amongst even the most prepared investors. Now that the dust has settled and some semblance of normalcy has returned to the market, I wanted to break down some of the chaos to make sense of what just happened with crypto memes.
What The F**K Just Happened?
Retail teen traders outperformed investors who have logged thousands of hours trying to understand the market.
Billion-dollar wallets surfaced from HODLing meme tokens. Literally.
My “normie” acquaintances were smart enough to cash out are buying homes on profits from trading dog coins.
For those who missed it, a knock-off dog token, Shiba Inu, temporarily overthrew the original dog token, Doge.
Shiba Inu is worth more than most banks.
A Shiba Inu billboard popped up in Times Square.
Elon Musk is still moving the markets through his Twitter account.
Doge and Shiba were Google’s top searched coins in 30/50 states in the U.S.
If this isn’t proof that LITERALLY, anything can happen, then I don’t know what is. How do we make sense of this phenomenon? And is this a bad thing?
Making Sense Of Crypto Memes
Whether you are new here or a seasoned investor, you are aware that emotions can run high when hype kicks in, and equally high when things turn around and despair begins to flourish. FOMO is one hell of a drug! When Doge first found its way into the top 10 cryptocurrencies, investors were in absolute shock. The community once again fell into shock, but nothing has changed – we just have a new asset doing the same old thing. Many here are probably banging their heads against the wall, dreaming of the millions that they could have made by simply buying and holding $SHIB.
We all can relate, but this mentality is nonsense.
It’s ok if you “missed” a massive and irrational meme coin pump, just like it’s ok if you “missed” buying the winning lottery ticket. The odds of catching them and riding them are about equal – extremely low.
Comparing your portfolio to the best-performing asset is irrational and guaranteed to leave you rekt or depressed. Something is pumping in some market every day, which has absolutely nothing to do with you. This isn’t Pokémon, you don’t have to catch ‘em all. And what is the most irrational part of regret and FOMO in traders during one of these meme pumps? The assumption that even if they had bought the best performing asset, they would have traded it perfectly.
Nonsense.
If you had bought $1000 worth of Shiba, you would have probably sold happily when you had $2000, knowing that you had hit the lottery on a scratch-off ticket and that things could easily go the other way. Very few held because there was no fundamental reason to. Those who did hold are equally likely to ride it to the bottom as well.
Despite the small size of our market, between $2 and $3 trillion, hype is alive and well. Our market pails in comparison to the global real estate market at $10 trillion and the global equities market worth over $100 trillion. For the time being, FOMO may overpower fundamentals but as our market grows, fewer and fewer events like this will take place.
Criticisms And Critiques of Crypto Memes
The two largest criticisms of the dog coins are their “lack of utility” and “pump and dump behavior.” Doge in particular has performed well over time. It does tend to “pump and dump” but has always found its way to new highs. Assuming history tends to repeat, this is unlikely to change before the bull market ends. If you happen to hold Doge and bought near the highs, there’s a decent chance that you will be okay. That said, the 70 cent highs were the most gratuitous and obvious local “top” that I have ever seen in markets.
As far as the criticism about Doge not having utility? I think, at this point, that this is false, but that it has a different type of utility than other cryptos. Doge is a gateway drug to crypto, often the first stop that new retail traders and investors take because of its welcoming community, cheap price, and brilliant marketing. The “utility” is that Doge is simultaneously easy to adopt and simple to grasp. Doge is a huge magnet for newcomers. Of course, Doge only scratches the surface of the true importance of crypto.
I am not a huge fan of meme tokens stealing the spotlight, but that’s the hand we have been dealt and could be viewed as a net positive as it brings more retail into the fold. We all probably look insane to mainstream investors, but those of us who have been here understand that this is part of the game. This is familiar territory, and not just in crypto. There were plenty of ridiculous websites that exploded in value during the Dot-com bubble, only to go bankrupt about a year later. Pets.com is, ironically, the most famous example of this. The original dog meme!
This is a marathon, not a sprint. There will always be lottery tickets, but few will manage to cash them in. As disciplined investors who believe in the long-term potential of crypto, we should have a plan and stick to it, come hell or high water. As the market matures, the dog meme madness will eventually subside, but I doubt it will end any time soon. There are too many investors involved and more flooding into the market each day. That being said, practice extreme caution with these coins, because we all know that the music eventually stops and that you may be the one left without a chair.
If you are sick of exposing your portfolio to crypto memes, maybe consider this blog on Bitcoin Exposure 101.