Speaking at BUIDL Asia in Seoul on Thursday, Maartje Bus, vice president of research at cryptocurrency data aggregator Messari, said Memecoin will remain an important part of the cryptocurrency market and could potentially establish itself as a new asset class.
“Crypto is often criticized for not having a use case for the average Joe, and that’s fair,” Bus said. “But Memecoin has been successful and consistently successful at actually connecting people to the chain.”
As Bus described as a “full-blown memecoin mania” fueled by the bullish cycle following the approval of a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund, meme tokens have a variety of appeal factors for investors beyond the mild fun factor.
Buss called memes a way to monetize attention, which could easily be turned into prediction markets in the case of tokens based on U.S. election candidates. According to Bus, Memecoin can also be viewed as a “long-tail speculation service,” like lotteries or penny stocks.
With such appeal, Mimcoin “unintentionally” introduces Web3 newcomers to cryptocurrency concepts such as decentralization and cryptocurrency wallets, calling Mimcoin a “Trojan horse” for the next era of cryptocurrency-based consumer applications.
Meanwhile, Bus, the convergence of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency, DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network), and EIP-4844 scaling were mentioned as new trends in the cryptocurrency field along with MEMCOIN.
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About the author
Danny Park is The Block’s East Asia reporter, writing about topics including Web3 development and cryptocurrency regulation in the region. He previously worked as a reporter for Forkast.News, where he actively covered the fall of Terra-Luna and FTX. Based in Seoul, Danny previously produced written and video content for media companies in Korea, Hong Kong and China. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Business Marketing from the University of Hong Kong.