Meme Coin Trader The ten meme coins you bought may all be from me

Authors: Mia, ChainCatcher
Translated by: Marco, ChainCatcher
When discussing the release of Memes with ChainCatcher, Old Mike (pseudonym) used an old joke: how many steps does it take to put an elephant in the fridge?
To Old Mike, a Meme project is just like “putting an elephant in the fridge”, it only requires three steps: preheating the currency release, managing market value, and maintaining the community.
During Meme Summer, ChainCatcher interviewed several Meme coin operators, who either actively followed hot trends to release Meme coins and operate projects, or wholesale issued Meme coins, creating a lot and constantly shifting hotspots, or bought Meme coins and turned themselves into “shareholders”, becoming project operators.
In this wealth-building movement, human emotions are not mutually understood.
According to The Block Pro data, in May of this year, approximately 455,000 tokens were created on the Solana blockchain, 177,000 on the Base chain, and 39,000 on the BNB Chain, not including 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 over 100,000 tokens are generated on the chain every day, creating an environment for easy token issuance, becoming a paradise for the monetization of Meme culture.
Perhaps behind every explosive trend you think of buying a lot of Meme coins, there is the same team doing bulk issuance.
However, this celebration currently seems to show no signs of ending, as many institutions are joining in.
Project teams are working
Recently, Xiao Xi (pseudonym) placed advertisements for a Meme coin with several media outlets, announcing their collaboration with a film and television company to create a film series based on the Meme series.
Xiao Xi introduced that he has always been active in various “dog” communities, many Meme projects are not well prepared and haven’t thought about what to do, they just suddenly latch onto a hot topic, gain popularity and traffic, and the project team quickly publishes the payment address and finalizes the coin release time.
His project is one such case.
The project team, which originally intended to develop slowly, jumped on the Meme trend and hastily released the coin. Without any concept or product support, the project gained success.
“This success may be more attributed to market hype. Now, whether Meme projects are done or not depends on market hype,” Xiao Xi said.
Meme projects endorsed by celebrities are more likely to soar.
Caitlyn Jenner’s Meme coin, $Jenner, from Pump.fun to the secondary market, has risen significantly.
Musk’s endorsement of Dogecoin became the representative of the last bull market’s surge.
Former U.S. President Trump, although not personally endorsing Meme, has many tokens named after him in the market, which occasionally skyrocket or plummet due to his news.
However, most “grassroots” Meme projects lack influence and IP endorsements, and project traffic mostly comes from market hotspots.
If the project team captures the hot spot and successfully launches pre-sales, bringing liquidity and initial capital to the project, some projects will start to take action.
“To be honest, we had nothing at the beginning, but users thought we were ‘keeping the project progress secret’,” Xiao Xi said. It was only after having funds that they started building the project.
When asked if this approach is a bit crazy and if users are not worried about the team running away, Xiao Xi said, “This coin issuance process has become the norm in the Meme market today. I can’t confirm whether other ‘dog’ projects will run away, but at least we won’t.”
Like Xiao Xi said, most Meme coins stem from a hot spot or market trend. Once funding is in place, the project team will start researching concepts, routes, and future plans.
As for “running away,” for the “10U War God” who choose to invest in Meme dogs, it is more like gambling, making the Meme market more chaotic.
Veteran Meme player R Zi (pseudonym) said, “Anything in the early stages will be chaotic, just like the A-share market in the 1980s, the Meme environment is much better compared to the previous bull market.”
Meme coins are now forming an industry chain.
Meme Coin Industry Chain
From celebrities issuing coins to various animated characters, and even “emoji packs” issuing coins, all Meme coins are not accidental.
Old Mike has been involved in the issuance of multiple Meme projects. In his view, managing a mature Meme project is like “putting an elephant in the fridge”, it only requires three steps: preheating the currency release, managing market value, and maintaining the community.
This mature operating matrix involves the entire crypto industry chain.
The currency issuance begins with preheating. Meme matrix researcher Ghost (pseudonym) told ChainCatcher that preheating can be done through self-fermentation of Meme IPs, such as “pepe” and “doge” IPs, which already have traffic, resonating with the public to gain mass traffic. Alternatively, it can be done through crazy promotion by crypto KOLs, community leaders, and industry media.
Old Mike believes that promotion is necessary for Meme projects. If expectations are too high, it may be difficult for retail investors and whales to get involved.
Once the hype reaches a certain peak, coins can be issued. The current issuance methods include project pre-sale and fair launch pumping.
Regarding market value management of Meme, some project teams choose to involve market makers, while others choose to build with the community.
Ghost believes that if a project team focuses too much on promotion in the early stages of Meme, excessively high initial market value may cause participants in pre-sale, airdrop participants, or even the project team itself, to lose control and abandon the ecosystem.
Most “dead” Meme projects on the chain show a trend of high opening and low closing, either due to selling by pre-sale investors or due to bad project teams “one wave” of fundraising and running away.
Regarding this, Old Mike said, “Market value management should involve market makers, as whales continuously arbitrage in a Meme, making it difficult to achieve a steady increase. Most so-called ‘project control’ is mostly small orders matching, ensuring ‘eternal profits’ for the project team.” (Match: Refers to a commonly used manipulation technique where the main force exchanges positions with themselves from left to right.)
As for project maintenance, R Zi’s experience is to “promote during peaks and plan during valleys.”
During market highs, more promotion should be done to expand the market. When the market faces lows, it is necessary to brew the next plan and optimize the team.
As Meme develops in the later stages, Old Mike admits, “Going public is the only way out.”
Going public means going out of the circle, but very few Meme projects can survive to the secondary market, as the primary market is the main battlefield for Meme.
Going public also entrusts some of the life and death of Meme to exchanges because “with average liquidity, Meme coins face the risk of being delisted by exchanges.”
Therefore, when the going public effect is positive, project teams will also cooperate with listing promotions to boost prices. At this point, Meme coin prices may reach new heights.
This height may become a new starting point or a final destination.
“Now going public will face a lot of selling pressure,” Old Mike said. Currently, most Meme speculators will sell when the positive effect is complete, “they don’t care about selling high, after all, selling high is profitable.”
Speculators are the main audience in the Meme race, and how to maintain this wave of speculators is the most headache-inducing problem for project teams in the development of Meme coins.
Bull or Community Consensus
Whether successful in getting rich or hindered by Memes, the real active force behind each project has always been grassroots users in the crypto community.
R Zi explained, “In the early stages, retail investors who enjoy quick trading may become more united over time.”
Meme coins can be understood as symbols of decentralization, and communities are the embodiment of decentralized collective consciousness. When collective consciousness turns into consensus, the decentralization of Meme coins can become complete.
Taking over the community (CTO) is common in the Meme field, and R Zi is one of them.
When faced with early team malicious exits, R Zi and a group of like-minded community OGs, KOLs, began voluntarily taking on the entire operation of the Meme project.
“We have a strong team and KOLs, and the subsequent glory is achieved by the current long-term team,” R Zi said.
To R Zi, rescuing a project from a malicious team is the power of community consensus, breathing life and vitality into Meme projects.
Currently, each Meme project comes with official TG and Discord groups, as well as official administrators to foster an active atmosphere and answer user questions.
Most mature Meme projects conduct regular AMA events, showcasing the project’s development progress and answering user questions, as well as allowing the community to provide feedback.
Compared to the centralization of mainstream coins, the top-down interconnectedness established by the Meme community is more decentralized.
Excessive decentralization – Meme becoming a speculative casino
As Meme coins develop decentralization to the extreme, speculation also grows wild.
For Old Mike, he never thought he would issue coins at first, but the profit-driven and speculative nature of Memes attracted him here.
The public transparency and decentralization on the chain make it a natural breeding ground for speculation.
Here, Old Mike has witnessed the appearance and disappearance of many Meme projects.
“For me, projects are like pets. I don’t have high expectations for them. I see their entire lives from birth,” he said.
Few projects can truly break out of the circle, with most projects being born and cut off, starting over again, but perhaps with the same team behind them.
Old Mike defends himself, saying, “I never consider myself a big loser. In the Meme race, most are speculators, with losses and gains inherent.”
In the Meme casino, human desires are magnified infinitely in high multiple gains, and more and more profit-seeking speculators are entering.
Ghost believes, “There are many ‘one-night stands’ on the Meme market, where people frenzy to profit. But afterward, only trapped speculators and exhausted liquidity remain.”
“Take a gamble, turn a bicycle into a motorcycle,” is a phrase that often appears in the Meme circle. For most players who buy Meme coins every day, buying coins is more like buying a lottery ticket.
“I buy ten popular Memes every day, one of them will bring surprises,” but in most cases, all ten tokens end up empty.
As an investor and “Builder,” R Zi interprets Memes from an investment perspective. “Now many Meme coins have certain use cases and are beginning to move towards good long-term development. As long as the investment is reasonable, I am still confident in this area.”
In each market cycle, Meme tokens will appear hand in hand. A group of investors keen on a specific Meme will gather, rapidly driving up the price of a certain asset in a short period, a strategy that has become prevalent in the crypto field. By boosting token prices, the entire ecosystem is revitalized.
From Solana, to Base, and now to Ton, Meme coins are leading this bull market, with more and more traditional institutions setting their sights on Meme, Avalanche, and even establishing dedicated Meme token funds.