Meme coin trader: The ten Meme coins you bought may have been issued by me

Author: Mia, ChainCatcher

Editor: Marco, ChainCatcher

When talking to ChainCatcher about the issuance of Meme, Lao Mai (pseudonym) used an old joke: How many steps does it take to put an elephant into a refrigerator?

To Lao Mai, a Meme project is like “putting an elephant into a refrigerator,” just three steps: preheating issuance, market value management, and community maintenance.

On the occasion of Meme Summer, ChainCatcher interviewed many Meme coin operators, who either actively followed the hot trend and operated the project by issuing Meme coins, or wholesaled and issued a bunch of Meme coins, constantly converting hot trends, or became ‘shareholders’ by buying Meme coins and became project operators.

In this wealth creation movement, the joy and sorrow of mankind are not the same.

According to The Block Pro data, in May this year, Solana created approximately 455,000 tokens on-chain, while Base chain had 177,000, and there were 39,000 tokens on BNB Chain. This doesn’t even include other public chains.

Most of the tokens created on Solana are Meme Tokens, partly due to the popularity of Pump.fun.

It is estimated that at least 100,000 tokens are generated on-chain every day, and the environment for issuing tokens with one click has become a paradise for Meme culture monetization.

Maybe when you think about buying a bunch of meme coins, there is always one that will break out, and the same team is doing batch issuance.

However, it seems that this carnival currently shows no sign of ending, and many institutions are joining in succession.

The project team is working

Recently, Xiao Xi (pseudonym) has placed advertisements about a Meme coin with multiple media outlets, announcing their collaboration with a film and television company to create a film and television series based on this Meme series.

Xiao Xi introduced that he has also been active in various ‘meme tokens’ groups. Many meme projects are actually not well-prepared and have not figured out what to do. They just suddenly jumped on a certain hot topic and gained popularity and traffic. The project team quickly released the address for receiving funds and set the time for coin issuance.

The project he is in is like this.

The project party, which originally wanted to build slowly, rubbed on the meme boom, and hurriedly issued coins. With little concept and no product to support, the project was a success.

“This success may be more attributed to the market’s enthusiasm. Now, whether many meme projects are done or not depends on the market’s enthusiasm,” Xiao Xi said.

Meme projects with celebrity endorsements are more likely to become popular.

The stepfather of the famous American internet celebrities, the Kardashian sisters, Caitlyn Jenner’s Meme coin $Jenner, has surged thousands of times from Pump.fun to the Secondary Market.

Musk’s platform DOGE has become a representative of the pump in the last round of Bull Market.

Former U.S. President Trump, although not personally endorsing any Meme, there are many tokens named after him in the market, which occasionally experience big pumps and dumps due to his news.

However, most ‘grassroots’ Meme projects do not have the influence and IP endorsement, and the project’s traffic mostly comes from market hotspots.

If the project team seizes the hot spot, successfully starts the pre-sale, brings liquidity and initial funds to the project, some projects will start to work.

“Frankly, we didn’t have anything at first, but users thought we were keeping the progress of the project ‘secret’.” Konishi said that the project construction will only be carried out after there is money in the later stage.

Just as Xiao Xi said, most Meme coins originate from a certain hotspot or market trend. Only after the funds are in place will the project party begin to study concepts, routes, and future plans.

Senior Meme player R (pseudonym) said, “Anything in the early stages will be messy, just like the A-share market in the 1990s, everyone was skeptical. Currently, the Meme environment is much better than the previous bull market.”

The meme coin is emerging with an industrial chain.

From celebrities launching coins, to various animated characters and even “internet memes” launching coins, all Meme coins are not accidental.

LaoMai has participated in the issuance of multiple Meme projects. In his opinion, running a mature Meme project is like “putting an elephant in the fridge”, only three steps are needed: pre-heating issuance, market capitalization management, and community maintenance.

This mature operating matrix involves the entire encryption industry chain.

The currency issuance starts with a warm-up. Ghost, a meme matrix researcher (alias), expressed to ChainCatcher that one type of warm-up is the self-fermentation of Meme IP, such as ‘pepe’ and ‘doge’, which have their own traffic and resonate with the public to gain traffic. The other type is through the crazy promotion of encrypted KOLs, community leaders, and some industry media.

Lao Mai believes that promotion is necessary for Meme, and high expectations may make it difficult for both retail investors and whales to get involved.

When the popularity reaches a certain high point, coins can be issued. The current issuance methods are divided into project pre-sales and fair pump launches.

Regarding the market cap management of Meme, some project parties choose to involve market makers, while others choose to build it together with the community.

Ghost believes that if a project focuses too much on promotion in the early stages of Meme’s unreleased issuance, the initial excessive market capitalization may lead to the inability of pre-sale participants, airdrop recipients, or the project team themselves to hold on and thus abandon this ecosystem.

Most of the “dead” meme projects on the on-chain have shown a trend of opening high and going low, either being sold by pre-sale investors or Rug pulling by the “wave flow” of bad project parties.

In this regard, Lao Mai said, ‘Market capitalization management should involve market makers, after all, whales continue to arbitrage in a Meme, it is difficult to achieve a curve pump. As for the so-called ‘project party control the market trend’, most of them are small-scale knockouts, which is a ‘permanent profit’ for the project party.’ (Knockout: refers to a commonly used manipulation technique where the market maker uses their left hand to trade with their right hand.)

When the market is booming, more publicity should be done to expand the market; when the market is at a low ebb, it is necessary to brew the next plan and optimize the team.

As Meme develops, Lao Mai admits, “Going to top exchanges is the only way out.”

Going to the top exchanges means going mainstream, but very few Meme projects can survive to the secondary market, the primary market is the main battlefield for Meme.

The Shanghai Exchange also handed over part of the life and death of the meme to the exchange, because “the Liquidity is mediocre and cannot generate tariffs”, and the Meme coin will face the risk of being exchange delisting.

So when the favorable information effect of the top exchanges is activated, the project party will also cooperate with the currency promotion to pump the price. At this time, the price of Meme coin will reach a new height.

This height may be the new starting point or the end point.

“Now there will be a large amount of selling on the exchange,” said Lao Mai. Currently, Meme speculators basically sell when favorable information is completed. “They don’t care about selling high, after all, selling high always makes a profit.”

Speculators are the main audience of the Meme track, and how to maintain this wave of speculators is also the most headache for the project side in the development of Meme coin.

Dumb Buyer or Community Consensus

Whether it’s getting rich or being hindered by memes, the true active force behind every project has always been the grassroots users in the crypto world.

Meme coin can be understood as a symbol of decentralization, and the community is also the manifestation of decentralized collective consciousness. When collective consciousness becomes consensus, the decentralization of Meme coin can become complete.

Successful Meme coins are not only driven by project parties, but also by the collective consciousness of the community’s carnival.

Community takeover (CTO) is common in the Meme field, and R is also one of them.

When faced with the malicious rug pull of the early team, R Zai and a group of like-minded community OGs and KOLs began voluntarily taking on the operation of the entire Meme project.

In R’s view, rescuing a project from a malicious team is the power of community consensus, and it also brings vitality and vitality to Meme projects by community consensus.

Currently, each Meme project comes with an official TG group and Discord group. In addition, official administrators will be appointed to maintain an active atmosphere and answer some user questions.

Most mature Meme projects will conduct regular AMA activities, presenting the latest development and answering user questions to the public. The community can also provide suggestions to the project.

Compared to the centralization of mainstream tokens, the Meme community has established a more decentralized top-down connection.

Excessive Decentralization - Meme Becomes a Speculative Casino

While Meme coin takes decentralization to the extreme, speculation is also growing wildly within it.

As far as Old Mai is concerned, he never thought of issuing coins at the beginning. The profit-seeking and speculative nature of Meme attracted him here.

The openness, transparency, and decentralization on-chain make it a natural hotbed for speculation.

Here, Lao Mai has witnessed the emergence and disappearance of too many Meme projects.

“The project, for me, is like a pet. I don’t have high expectations for it, and I’ve watched its entire life since its birth.”

Few projects can truly break through, and more are born and slump by 50%, repeating the cycle, but perhaps with the same team behind them.

In the casino of Meme, human desires are infinitely magnified in high leveraged gains, and more and more profit-seeking speculators are starting to flood in.

Ghost believes: “In the meme market, there are many ‘one-night stands’, where people are crazily arbitraging. But afterwards, only trapped speculators and depleted liquidity are left.”

“Fight for it. The bicycle becomes a motorcycle.” This is a phrase often seen in the Meme community. For most players who buy Meme coins every day, buying coins is more like buying lottery tickets.

“I buy ten hot Meme tokens every day, and there is always one that brings surprises,” but in most cases, all ten tokens are in vain.

As an investor and ‘Builder’ R, I view Meme from an investment perspective. ‘Nowadays, many Meme coins have certain application scenarios and are gradually moving towards good long-term development. As long as the investment is reasonable, I still have confidence in this area.’

In every market cycle, Meme Tokens are always present like a shadow. A group of investors passionate about a particular Meme will gather together, driving up the price of a certain asset in a short period of time. This strategy has become popular in the encryption field, revitalizing the entire ecosystem while boosting token prices.

From Solana, to Base, and now Ton, Meme coins are leading this bull market, and more and more traditional institutions are also turning their attention to Meme. Avalanche even created a dedicated Meme token fund.