Meme Coin: From DOGE to KTC's big pump and big dump

"All In" is a movie that exposes telecom fraud and features some elements from the cryptocurrency world, such as "coin" and Ketaicoin. With the release of the movie, Ketaicoin was quickly issued in the crypto market. Currently, there are trading pairs of Ketaicoin with the same name on multiple blockchains, primarily concentrated on Ethereum, BSC, and the recently popular Base chain. Among them, a certain DEX on the Ethereum chain has the largest liquidity.

The price of KTC skyrocketed with the movie screening, rising by more than 3000 times within two days. But less than 24 hours later, it began to fall, almost dropping back to the issue price by August 19. This type of coin is more broadly referred to as a Meme coin.

The term "meme" first appeared in Richard Dawkins' 1976 book "The Selfish Gene," defined as a cultural factor that can be spread at the level of human thought. For most people, the common form of a meme is humorous images on the internet that satirize current events, such as reaction images. These reaction images carry interesting information, are easy to replicate and spread, and ultimately form a cultural consensus among a wide audience.

The most famous combination of memes and cryptocurrency is DOGE. In 2013, Jackson Palmer combined the Doge meme with cryptocurrency to satirize the cryptocurrency hype, tweeting, "Investing in DOGE, I'm pretty sure it's the next big thing." Subsequently, software engineer Billy Markus forked Bitcoin's code to create DOGE. DOGE quickly rose through social platforms, gaining its initial use case in tipping bots.

In December 2020, a well-known entrepreneur began posting information related to DOGE on social media platforms, and since then, every time he posted cryptocurrency content, it would trigger a rise in DOGE prices. In early May 2021, DOGE peaked at $0.74, and the entrepreneur became the most influential figure in the DOGE community.

The success of DOGE has attracted attention in the crypto world, and many meme coins imitating DOGE emerged between 2013 and 2017. These meme coins are often based on internet cultural materials for secondary creation and applied to cryptocurrencies. As they developed, meme coins began to choose grand narratives as the basis for their stories, such as a certain attention token obtaining funding through ICO and attempting to construct broader use cases.

In May 2021, a certain Shiba Inu coin quickly became popular after being listed on exchanges. In the early days, the coin also staged a performance art piece, sending half of its initial total supply to the founder of Ethereum. With DOGE and Shiba Inu coin experiencing big pumps one after another, the animal theme became mainstream for Meme coins.

Recently, projects that combine artificial intelligence with DOGE and adopt the concept of "mining" have sparked heated discussions under the favorable wind of airdrops on a certain Layer 2 network. Another frog-themed token has become a dark horse, with both trading volume and number of holders reaching new highs.

The "meme" behind the current Meme coins is hard to represent its original meaning. A meme can simply be a story, or it may not have any story at all. Unlike conventional Web3 projects, the price increase of Meme coins mainly comes from the investors' fear of missing out and panic selling psychology.

As market liquidity decreases, the new generation of popular Meme coins is almost no longer focused on building active communities or constructing future blueprints. Most of them are centralized teams colluding with stakeholders to create market focus. For speculators, the wealth myth of early participants is more attractive than any story.

Taking a certain bald-themed token as an example, its price once experienced a big pump of 450% within 24 hours. Subsequently, the deployer injected a large amount of liquidity, attracting market attention and much speculation. However, shortly after, the deployer significantly withdrew liquidity and stated that they had never sold any tokens. Ultimately, the deployer removed all liquidity and transferred the profits to a certain centralized exchange.

Due to the anonymity of most Meme project teams, it is easy for them to cut ties with the project and take away profits, resulting in insufficient motivation to maintain the project. The development of Meme coins is increasingly leaning towards "short and quick" strategies, but they will still remain closely linked to the cryptocurrency market. In the current market environment where stablecoins are flowing out in large quantities, cautious investment seems to be wiser.