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- $TRUMP, Memecoins, Grift, and Financial Nihlism.
$TRUMP, Memecoins, Grift, and Financial Nihlism.
A now sitting US President just turned a meme into $60bn of market cap. It's simultaneously a masterclass in attention economics, a warning sign for finance, and a glimpse of what's coming. You need to understand why.
I've spent 48 hours watching a sitting US President launch a memecoin that hit $60bn in value. Part of me is horrified. Part of me sees this as inevitable. All of me knows this changes everything for our industry. Understanding it is going to be key to understanding what comes next.
Within hours of a new administration, we had $TRUMP and now $MELANIA memecoins. It’s an obvious grift, get-rich-quick, cash-grab. With a massive risk that retail consumers who try to buy will lose out and these coins go to 0.
Yet, we’ve crossed a rubicon. Crypto infrastructure is ready for scale, Stablecoins are mainstream, and we will get regulation in the next 18 months.
The Official $TRUMP meme contract address
Confused by all of this? Let’s explain.
(Regular readers: I know I rarely hit send mid-week, but I had to)
What happened?
The President of the United States launched a Memecoin.
Launched at the Crypto Ball
11,844% gain in 24 hours
Reaching a peak of over $60bn FDV
It traded with more volume than most Fortune 500 stocks see monthly
Here's what this memecoin is REALLY communicating:
"Trump is back"
"Crypto will thrive under my administration"
"I still control the narrative"
Welcome to 2025.
Why does this work? Because we live in an attention economy where:
Engagement = Value
Memes = Power
Controversy = Currency
It's simultaneously a penny stock, a marketing campaign, and a political statement.
Trump Coin will now be tracked on CNBC financial shows, in newspapers, the price will be a reflection of the underlying tone of American society and the American project. Everyone will have a point of view trying to read the tea leaves and understand the significance of daily price movements as an expression of the Zeitgeist.
The Consequences and Aftermath.
Any geopolitical adversary could buy a token to curry favor with a sitting US president.
Every celebrity will launch a memecoin. The rumors are that Mr Beast is working on a memecoin. If he has any sense, he won’t. (Remember, Kim Kardashian paid $1.26m to the SEC for a “pump and dump” scheme)
Retail will rush in and get crushed (“buy Crypto” search trend is already at an all-time high)
There will be no Federal Enforcement or push back. The Democrats had 4 years to pass legislation for Crypto and instead chose to regulate by enforcement. That has unequivocally failed.
But we will see lawsuits and State-level action. Whenever people lose money, litigation follows.
We’re entering a 1980s-style “buyer beware” era of capitalism. This is a new normal and you’ll need to adjust accordingly.
Crypto became 1000x more divisive politically. If you hate this grift, it’s tough to see Crypto as anything other than toxic. Want optimism? Keep reading…
We need Crypto regulation ASAP. The Republican administration and Congress as a whole now have an opportunity to pass something and let sense prevail.
🔥 TODAY: Google search volumes for the terms “buy crypto” and “buy Solana” have surged amid the $TRUMP memecoin frenzy.
— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph)
3:45 AM • Jan 20, 2025
Look, I'll be honest: part of me finds this whole thing gross.
It's basically unregulated penny stocks on steroids.
Seems I’m not alone. The Crypto grown-ups generally seem to be feeling the same.
But if this is the financial system we've built - where manipulation is the feature, not the bug - maybe we need to ask harder questions
Yes, it's gross.
But it's also a symptom of decades of policy that killed traditional paths to wealth.
We have to understand memecoins, and the new capital market being built that the US is now firmly at the center of.
A Memecoin is many things at once.
It is simultaneously
A joke with finance attached
Incredibly volatile, subject to scams, rug pulls, and out-right fraud
An idea with a price attached, where the price reflects the strength of the idea
An incredibly efficient tool for forming large sums of capital for a cause
Dangerous for most consumers in its current form
An expression of a social movement (financial nihilism).
The OG memecoin was Dogecoin ($DOGE).
It is based on a skeptical-looking dog and intended by its creator to mock the Crypto industry. In a twist of irony, the internet’s fringe found it ironic to buy the “useless coin.”
$TRUMP, Gamestop and DOGE are a symptom of something deeper.
Financial Nihilism.
We're watching a generation that:
Doesn't trust traditional finance
Sees memecoins as valid as stocks
Embraces chaos as a strategy
Turns skepticism into profit
Take DOGE. The higher the price went the funnier the joke became. It was making a point that the economy is broken and pointless. That the global economy is a ponzi scheme, where the boomers have taken all of the capital and there is no path to wealth, just debt.
Over the next 4 years expect the financialization of everything…
Over the next four years, the only thing that will have a greater economic impact than AI will be the financialization of everything, the effective legalization of gambling, and the elimination of all securities laws.
— Nikita Bier (@nikitabier)
9:15 PM • Jan 19, 2025
Memecoins can be used for good - We need more of this!
Memecoins are funding cancer research.
The story of Siqi Chen is as beautiful as it is heartbreaking.
His 5-year-old daughter was diagnosed with a rare cancer, with severe complications if they operate. After sleepless nights looking for better options, he found very little funding had been given because it’s relatively rare and survivable. After donating to several foundations, and starting a Go Fund Me, several requests came for a Crypto address appeared.
What happened next was unprecedented.
A Solana community member created a memecoin called $MIRA, which has already sent $1,000,000 in donations to the Hankinson Lab.
This “memecoin” appeared, dramatically increased in value, and brought the worlds attention to a good cause. If you can concentrate attention, you can concentrate capital and allocate it to good causes.
The trick is using the attention-grabbing techniques the grifters have figured out to do something better. Like funding science, research, and socially useful projects. Imagine if instead of being Grift, $TRUMP did this:
Trump sells 10% of $TRUMP and donates to rebuild LA
Shows power of crypto rails- raise $6bn for LA in 24h
Private sector ftw; kickstart DOGE
Huge political win in CAPrice doubles, do it again
H/t @perkinscr97
— Seth Ginns (@sethginns)
1:30 PM • Jan 19, 2025
There’s so much potential.
One of the biggest users of Stablecoins is the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR)
There’s a whole movement called DeSci (Decentralized Science) to fund things like medicine. Imagine 1,000 $MIRA tokens for 1,000 diseases.
DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure) to build projects that open source doesn’t fund, like Helium used by T-mobile and others to extend coverage.
More of those, please.
And lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
If every global citizen could have a wallet, and we had internet-native money and financial markets, that would be an unlock like anything we’ve seen in financial services.
If we want nice things, we have work to do.
What we have to get done ASAP
If events like the last 48 hours make you feel like Crypto is toxic I have two thoughts for you.
Me too, but it’s promise is so worth it, don’t give up yet.
It’s not going anywhere in the next 4 years. The geinie is out of the bottle. You need to get on the front foot asap.
Whether you're a junior analyst or a CEO, here's what you need to do now
Policy: Pass FIT21. The last congress had a bill, FIT21, which passed through the House of Representatives but stalled in the Senate. We have to unlock this if we want consumer protections and clarity over which regulator gets to fine people when ugly things happen.
Policy: Find paths to wealth for the mass market. Our basic social contract is broken. We cannot expect someone to work until 60, and be ok being worse off than their parents. What’s the better version of Memecoins with social utility?
Understand memecoins: If all you see is the grift, you’re missing the shift that’s coming, and will continue to happen in the next decade.
Build the risk assessment: If memecoin isn’t “official” or doesn’t have strong links to known persons, it’s probably worth avoiding.
Customer protections: Trying to identify possible money laundering gangs with a batch process in a legacy system isn’t going to cut it. This is our bread and butter at Sardine.
Share data on Crypto and financial risk: No single Fintech or bank can do this alone. Initatives like Sonar help with intelligence sharing. It helped a tier 1 bank predict 43% of scams in a back-test sharing data between Crypto exchanges and banks.
I founded an industry non-profit for Crypto in 2017 because I knew the ICO bubble would get ugly, and I wanted the industry to be better.
I joined Sardine in 2022 because I saw how good the tech was at predicting scams and crime in Crypto.
I’m not telling you this for flowers or the promotion.
I’m telling you because I have high conviction this is where you should spend your time if you care about the future of finance, or heck, our species.
We have work to do.
ST.
That's all, folks. 👋
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(1) All content and views expressed here are the authors' personal opinions and do not reflect the views of any of their employers or employees.
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(4) A team of researchers has not rigorously fact-checked this. Please don't take it as gospel—strong opinions weakly held
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