Bankless - Memecoins: Good or Evil with Ledger & Stephen Cesaro

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

Today on the show we have two guests debating the merits and costs of crypto memecoins. Ledger (Brian Krogsgard) from the UpOnly podcast thinks that memecoins are financial nihilism that creates room for bad actors and grifters. Stephen Cesaro, from the Alfalfa Podcast, thinks memecoins are something to appreciate and celebrate. Which side are you on? ------ 🥩PRIMESTAKED | MINT primeETH NOW https://bankless.cc/Origin-pod   ------ 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24  https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2    ⁠  🔗CELO | CEL2 COMING SOON https://bankless.cc/Celo    🗣️TOKU | CRYPTO EMPLOYMENT SOLUTION https://bankless.cc/toku    🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle  💸 CRYPTO TAX CALCULATOR | USE CODE BANK30 https://bankless.cc/CTC  🦄 UNISWAP | SWAP SMARTER https://bankless.cc/uniswap  ------ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Intro 8:35 Ledger’s Memecoin Arc 11:53 Stephen’s Memecoin Arc 13:20 $DOGE vs. $BTC 18:38 Tokenization of Memes 22:28 Memecoin Intent & Transparency  33:24 Memecoin Theory & Practice  44:30 Investing in Brands 51:55 Reframing Memecoins 56:27 Memecoins vs. Scams 1:09:01 Closing & Disclaimers ------ RESOURCES Ledger https://twitter.com/ledgerstatus  Stephen https://twitter.com/0xmagiclines  ------ See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures 

Are meme coins better or worse than the attempts at legitimacy that scams or accidental frauds have been? Ledger, that's a question to you. Welcome to Bankless, where we explore the frontier of internet money and internet finance. And today on Bankless, we explore the frontier of meme coins. You can't seem to go anywhere in crypto these days without stepping in a meme coin. Whether you're on Twitter and you're seeing D's post about Book of Mem or you're on Farcaster, hearing about Dgen, or you're on literally any other chain trying to incubate its own meme coin ecosystem, meme coins have dominated on-chain activity in the last month or so.

Is this all the future of finance is good for? Are we destined to discover even more degenerate levels of financial speculation? Is the only thing that we can muster as an industry, new types of on-chain PVP in hopes of getting rich? Or is there something to celebrate in meme coins? Are meme coins just a bad name and maybe we should call them culture coins instead? Are they a big F.U to the man to VCs. Welcome to Bankless, where we explore the frontier of internet money and internet finance. And today on Bankless, we explore the frontier of meme coins. You can't seem to go anywhere in crypto these days without stepping in a meme coin.

Whether you're on Twitter and you're seeing D's post about Book of Mem, or you're on Farcaster hearing about Dgen, or you're on literally any other chain trying to incubate its own meme coin ecosystem, meme coins have dominated on-chain activity in the last month or so. Is this all the future of finance? is good for? Are we destined to discover even more degenerate levels of financial speculation? Is the only thing that we can muster as an industry, new types of on-chain PVP in hopes of getting rich? Or is there something to celebrate in meme coins? Are meme coins just a bad name? And maybe we should call them culture coins instead? Are they a big FU to the man to VCs and a logical

reaction to the world of private sales and investor accreditation laws? Is there something to be celebrated in meme coin culture? Most importantly, are meme coin is going to be the thing that brings back retail into crypto. So far, things look like they're heading that way. So what's next? Before we answer these questions and talk about who is on the episode today, a message from our friends and sponsors over at Prime Staked. Prime Staked is a liquid restaking token that provides liquidity for assets that have been deposited into eigenlayer by converting StakedEth into PrimeEath. Users can capture the Ethereum Protocol staking yield, eigenlayer points, and the Prime ETH XP points all while remaining liquid. So if you want to catch up on your eigenlayer point farming, you can get

156 bonus eigenlayer points per ETH deposited into prime staked. There is a link in the show notes to get started with prime staked today. Today on the show, we have two guests debating the merits and costs of meme coins in crypto. Ledger from the up only podcast thinks that meme coins are financial nihilism that creates room for bad actors and grifters. Steven Sizarro from the Elfalfa podcast think that meme coins are something to appreciate and celebrate. I think there's something to both sides of the debate. I think both have valid points and both bring some solid wisdom into the conversation and ultimately, in my opinion, how meme coins will be remembered will be determined by the types of people who create and shepherd them, which means I personally don't have very high

hopes for the optics and conclusions of meme coin mania. But bankless nation, I'll let you draw your own conclusions after listening to Stephen and Ledger hash it out here on the podcast today. But first, I'm only to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible, including my preferred place to trade meme coins for the one meme coin that I own. And that place, of course, is Cracking. If you do not have an account with Cracken, consider clicking the links in the show That's getting started with Cracken today. If you want a crypto trading experience backed by world-class security and award-winning support teams, then head over to Cracken, one of the longest-standing and most secure crypto platforms in the world.

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Generally speaking on the pro meme coin side, Stephen, welcome to Bankless. Thanks for having me, David. Cheers. And of course, Brian Crosgard, aka Ledger from Up Only Fame, also Ledger cast, also his own project, Flip.X.Z. And also, the only crypto person who lives in the state of Alabama. Ledger, welcome back to Bankless. Hey, that's not true, actually. There's a pretty strong crowd here.

Name three more. I'm not docks and people. Docks three more. There's, y'all remember Messi from, he's gone private over the recent, over recent years, but he's in Alabama and there's several more,

but I'm not, I won't go any deeper. All right, guys, we're going to talk about meme coins today. Ledger, you were putting out some tweets the last couple weeks talking about how you just can't,

can't get on board meme coin train. I was listening to Steven here on his podcast Alpha Alpha talking about like the merits of meme coin. And I kind of want to just like put these two conversations, uh, together on the same podcast. I've got a little preamble that I want to run with to kind of start this thing out. Um, meme coins in crypto are nothing new. They've been a part of the inside of crypto since they were in septed in Dogecoin in 2013. Uh, now in 2020, we have the members of the dog with hat community crowdsourcing $650,000 to put a dog with hat image on the Vegas sphere. In 2014, we had Dogecoin funding the travel of the Jamaican bobsled team to go to Sochi Russia to compete in the Olympic Games with the Dogecoin on the bobslet, of course.

This was a very heartwarming story, I would say. The Jamaican two-man bobsled team faced financial hurdles in their quest to go to Sochi Russia in which they've got overwhelming response from $184,000 from Dogecoin supporters in 2014. It was a pretty cool story. The best part of this Dogecoin story, I think, is the story of his founder. Jackson Palmer, who intended to satirize what he saw as the speculative degeneracy in the crypto space. So he abandoned the Dogecoin project, stating that he no longer wants to be associated with cryptocurrencies and having sold all of his Doge long before it ascended to what it is known today. So we have a dog-themed crypto coin fundamentally that does nothing

unique with a founder that abandoned it and a community that stepped into support it for the laws and is now a top 10 crypto asset by market cap $23.3 billion dollars, crazily followed enough by Shib at a $17 billion market cap. And so this is kind of where I think meme coins as a whole got incepted into the crypto industry with Dogecoin. Dogecoin was the first thing in the crypto world. It's like, hey, we can make financial assets that are also jokes. And also look at it, it's got like over $10, $20 billion market cap.

And so this has spawned many debates about what should we do in this crypto industry with this newfound power that we have, which is the freedom to make. make financial assets for any reason whatsoever. And so I kind of want to just maybe start this conversation here, not really even talking about pros, cons, not even beginning a debate or anything, but maybe just bring in your own guys' perspective about like how you see the role of meme coins in the crypto industry. And then maybe we can go into more aside-specific conversations. But, Leisure, I think you've been in the industry longer than all of us. Just kind of start this conversation off for us about your long arc of relationship with meme coins,

of coins, shit coins, as it relates to the crypto industry, and kind of just what you've been thinking about them over the arc of time. Yeah, I guess that, you know, crypto's been an experiment forever. And so, you know, the vast majority of coins do begin as some form of experiment. And sometimes with a degree of pointlessness. However, I think when we've seen the most success with coins, there's been quick, like, community gravitation towards, like, something slightly larger of an idea. But even if you take the Dogecoin example, like, it's this general positivity around, like, the dog is cute.

And then, like, Jackson kind of codified it by abandoning it, like, kind of a Satoshi-esque moment by going away. it turned it into a truly kind of community-driven thing. And I'm not against that. I'm against when you can't establish like any form of justification for existence beyond dumping on others in a PVP environment. And in 2013 and in 2023 and in 2024, 99 plus percent of these are for the purpose of dumping on others. and, you know, nobody's truly standing behind anything with some form of conviction.

I'm not like anti-community by any means. I think, you know, and people will say, like, Bitcoin itself is a meme coin. And that's true, but it's got a mission statement. And it's got, there's an understanding. But it does build, and I've said this forever, like, Bitcoin's value is by network effects, you know, between the provenance of time and the network effects. It's not different from a code perspective from Bitcoin Cash or Bitcoin SV or, you know, whatever, all the, like, thousands of Bitcoin forks from the 2010s. Like, it's not different in that way.

It's different because of network effects and because of its idea and because of the story of Satoshi and the early believers and the method of governance that it's taken over those years. And those are the things that you need. And yes, you do need to develop them. But there's been very little demand by, let's say, the customer base, the people that are willing to buy these, to shill these. There's been very little demand for any story if they think there's any potential for number go up for them to say, like, let's put it on our timeline. So that's really where my beef comes from is the very PVP nature and kind of this open nihilism, more than the idea of a meme coin. So I guess that's why I'm the bad guy today. Stephen, did that stoke any thoughts, wouldn't you?

Yeah, a lot of thoughts. I mean, I feel like I used to be like Ledger, for sure. Like when I first entered this space, maybe like 11 years ago now, I guess, as like an investor, you know, I thought my job was to be really smart, right? And like, oh, my God, there's going to be this stuff that will change the world. And if I just think about the stuff that's actually going to change the world and buy it before other people do, then I will enrich myself with my huge big, beautiful brain. And then this cycle continued for one or two more cycles where I kept trying to be

smart and impose my own idea of what I thought the market should be on the market and sort of ignoring what the market was actually telling me. And now here in cycle number four, I guess, I am really, really a self-admitted trying to hit myself over the head with a frying pan. lower my IQ, you know, like trader. You know, I'm trying to see at what the market is telling me and make money by following the market, not saying what the market should do. The market, undeniably loves the memes, right?

And I think Ledger probably wouldn't even disagree with that. I think the thing he takes exception with is the nihilism, the fact that there's not something deeper going on. here, I guess, but I would say that even with like something like Doge, all the stuff you described about Bitcoin, it's not really that different from Doge, right? Like, it's not like Bitcoin has any specific utility or cash flows, right? It is literally, as you said, yourself, an idea, a meme. But you're basically like, well, the purpose of this meme is better than the Doge meme, right?

But that's just a very subjective sort of thought. Now, not entirely. There's a scarcity element to Bitcoin, which is part of the idea. And so one element is it's a better idea. And the market cap proves it. The capitalist environment proves it. When you look at one market cap versus the other, the forever supply or relatively forever supply of Doge coin has been a limiter to some degree on Doge's potential to usurp Bitcoin over the last 10-year period,

which it had an opportunity to do so for a decade. That's a long time to be able to make up that network effect. And it couldn't. And that's because Bitcoin's idea was stronger. I would probably make the exact opposite argument, to be honest. I think one of the downsides of these sort of Bitcoin like scarcity thing. I mean, I object to this idea that scarcity just makes something inherently valuable anyway. But like even assuming it does, what it does is it creates an incentive for like hoarding.

Like people want to buy Bitcoin buried in the. backyard, give it to their kids, and then not share it with anybody, right? So one of the nice things about having a supply that does inflate a little bit more is that you have distribution. The coin gets into the hands of more people. People want to spend it, use it as money, maybe buy a Tesla with it someday. So I think there are a lot of positives to getting the coins in people's hands. And the network effects of that, you know, go towards like a long-term value add. You just made the exact argument

of a Fed inflationist for targeting 2% inflation or whatever, like some minimal inflation to encourage capital endeavors essentially to beat inflation. And I don't disagree with that except for in this scenario,

like there's not a significant market for Dogecoin or other highly inflationary, you know, created assets. to create those capitalistic environments, like to create the things on top. And there are some things that can do that. That's the whole point of the dollar, I guess,

so like challenging people through the inflation of the dollar and for the Fed's targets for how the dollar should work to do the same thing. Like if inflation's 2%, figure out a way to go earn 7 or 8 or 10%. Go do something with those dollars because if you just hoard them, they'll become inherently less valuable over time.

and Bitcoin and other deflationary hedges are, they're a counter to that. Now, they can be limited by that for sure. Like, creating economic activity on top of something is good. That's why David and I, for example, like really like the Ethereum Network, because you're creating economic activity, programmatic activity on top of a blockchain, using the truthfulness of the chain. And in that scenario, thanks to the way ETH Mechanic, work, it both burns

ETH and creates an environment for economic activity on top of it. So I think you can make those arguments, but like Doge, for example, is not exactly like going, going a route of do something on top. It's just inflating. So you just need more people to buy into the idea to outpace

the inflation, which is fine. But I just don't think it's as powerful as Bitcoin's like certainty of 21 million coins, which does inspire hoarding. Which does inspire hoarding. and that's why you'll never have just Bitcoin.

You need the other side of the equation, right? You need the deflationary technically, but like the known level of inflation and limited supply of Bitcoin and then the other side of it is the other stuff. And that's why gambling and coin creation has been so popular for so long. And I'm not trying to say it's like terrible.

I'm just saying most of it's going to zero. and people need to understand that. Like, don't marry your bags, even your whiff bags. Most of everything in this space is going to zero, right? Like, if it's going to zero is a justification for, like, why something is generally, like, a bad idea for you to invest in, then this whole space is going to fall apart, right? Like, how many of the, like, even the top 500 alt coins, do you want to buy and then go into a coma for 15 years and then wake up with, you know, maybe half of your net worth in like,

like two? Yeah, yeah. And that's, that's kind of my point. And that's, that's for things that have a productive component or things that don't, like, but for things that clearly do not. They don't know what they stand for other than here's a funny thing that I thought of 15 minutes ago. Wait, why is that not something that's great to stand for, though? Like, what is, what is better to stand for than me? are amazing. Sure, there are some things that are better to stand for than memes, but memes are a pretty good thing.

Like the internet frickin' loves memes. There's an entire like three generations now of people on planet earth who love memes and communicate and memes and share memes. And like memes are a sense of social currency to them, right? There is value and being the first person to sort of like find and spread a meme, right? You get credit amongst your peers, right? It's it's an obvious like next step that we would sort of financialize that to some degree because like there is like a market value there, even though it's not a value that the sort of traditional boomer world of finance can sort of put in some sort of box. It's a new kind of thing, much like crypto is a new kind of thing, much like Bitcoin was

a new kind of thing. And much like Ethereum especially was even like a new kind of thing within crypto. Does that resonate? There's a line from Jacob from Zora that I resonated. with, which was that meme coins will just be called memes in the future, which I think he's just kind of implying, like, the actual instantiation of a token, a financial asset that goes, you know, alongside an actual meme that we know of, like an internet JPEG. He's saying that these are actually just becoming the same things. And so the token itself is the meme. And so in the

year of 2024, in the year of the crypto age, memes are tokens, is a take that he, that he had. I think that's stupid. Like to say here's here's token now let's try to meme it so our bag doesn't go to zero. Like I'm okay with the idea of here's a meme that should be tokenized. Like create a viral event and then there's an economic value that can be associated to that. I think that's actually very interesting and I think we will see that's kind of the tokenization of everything. But like on the flip side of that, trying to create the everything, that's the everything thingization of a token is stupid. Like, tokenize things that exist.

Don't try to turn, like, create something to exist because you have a token. Like, it's just stupid. It's, you need, I think you need a baseline idea. You need a baseline concept that you're trying to establish economic value for, whether it's a meme, whether it's inflationary or deflationary, whether it's utility, have something then tokenize. Don't say, here's token. Let's create something.

I think that's just the backwards way of doing it. Okay, so wait, so what you're saying is like the Doge meme was already a meme on the internet, and then the Doge blockchain came about. And you're saying that that is a normal, expected. Yeah, it was the tokenization of a thing versus, yeah. What about Geo Bowden, who Joe Biden already existed and was already, you know, having meme power in of itself? And now there's Geo Bowden. Like, where does that land on your, on your, like, viability spectrum? It could be okay.

And there is this like the survival of the fittest, you know, there might be a thousand memes based on Joe Biden and Donald Trump or the election. And only one survives because, you know, 999 die. And I understand that. And that's where a lot of this, like everything goes to zero stuff comes from. But still, it's based on an idea, a mockery of our political system, right? And I can get down with that. That's not what I'm trying to be against. I'm just, yeah.

I think the vast majority of people, they don't care about any of that. Like, they're just pretending the idea matters. All they want, all they want is the nihilistic idea of, I'm going to take Stevens money before he takes my money. And I don't really like that idea. So there's this concept out there that, like, this idea that meme coins are more honest than actual real projects in crypto. Because you can, you know, talk shit about all the meme coins that you want. but like there is just a graveyard of attempted legitimate project that the founders had every intent to rug at the end of the day. Like Doquan, for example, made three failed, like two or three failed Algo stable coins before he made Terra Luna, right?

And like maybe Tara Luna even was a legitimate attempt at something. But then it's still ending up in the same graveyard right next to all the scams with like less than desirable founders who were just coming into. crypto making an alt layer one just to get rich, right? Like, look, look, I can, I can name so many names with, like, people in this graveyard. So, like, the whole idea here is, like, memes, meme coins, don't pretend to do anything. And they're, like, actually democratizing in terms of just, like, how the retail little guy and their access to information can play in the arena that is crypto. And so, like, we can just, like, take off the, the emperor can just take off their clothes. And we can just, like, deal with everything just this totally nays.

naked and honest and transparent. Now, I have, like, qualms with that because I think that's fake transparency or it can be fake transparency. But Stephen, maybe you can continue this, like, line of reasoning, this, this thought and, like, what you see in that corner of the meme, world. Yeah, I mean, this is my favorite thing about memes is that they sort of, like, rip the mask off and say, like, this is, this is what's happening, right? There's an authenticity about them. There's an honesty about them that's kind of refreshing in the space. And You know, first we created alt coins and they stole people's Bitcoin and then we created ICOs and they stole people's EVE and then we evolved coins with complex Ponziomics and layers

of weird defy elements to lock up your money while people dumped on you and you couldn't understand what was happening. And then we created pictures and got people to burn thousands of dollars in gas just to mint them and we rake them over the coals with like 10% royalty fees and all sorts of transaction fees only to completely rug them when they discovered like the concept of liquidity and how it works in the opposite direction when you're you're trying to get out. And then of course we have like the new favorite scam now, which is like the FDV scam, where you just issue all of these tokens to early insiders, you control the float.

And then you hire these market makers to brilliantly like inflate the price of your token during market euphoria and distributed on unsuspecting retail only to have it crash. 97% under the weight of all the unsustainable token inflation, right? Like, this is, this is all nonsense. And I think memes are a reaction to that. Like, much in the same way that the, like, every younger generation rebels against some of the ways of the older generation's world, right? They try to impose this world on them, this set of rules.

This is how you have to think. This is how you have to behave. And they go, no, we don't want to do that. Now, oftentimes, like a large part of that. rebellion is very misguided and it goes awry. But within that rebellion, there are these like amazing seeds that are planted that grow into something great. And I don't think memes are some panacea and they're all like awesome, but there's there's something good here, right? And I think one of the things people will come to realize is that one of the scarcest things in the world, right,

is attention. Like having attention, I think is more important than building a good product. I I think it's actually way more important to get attention first and then build the product. Like a lot of people build products and they never get used. They never have attention. Uh, worse, uh, attention.

Worst products gain traction in the world. It happens like all the time. So for now, these things are just these kind of weird little idiosyncrasies that we trade back and forth. But I think you're already seeing the seeds of how this can work in the opposite direction. Like, I'm pretty sure this is what Jordy is planning with like,

have you heard a puff? Mm-hmm. So I'm pretty sure. Puff is like doing the kind of, this is going to be like a real project. We're actually going to start it with the meme. And we're going to use the attention to funnel the people into the real product. Like we're going to use that attention for good. And I think we're going to see memes like evolve.

So Puff is a meme coin on mantle. Yes. And it's being like bootstrapped by like the mantle community, the mantle thought leaders, people like Jordi. And then the ideas like that actually will turn into something with a team. with good intentions with a with a north star and they will build something but there's just starting with a meme first is what you're saying yeah and and i and i think it's i think it's brilliant and i look forward to like more experimentation in that regard like using these memes for for good yeah this is

an impossible argument for me to win because it's a really good one because your argument is really good no it's just like there's obviously going to be you know good like some good things that come out of it but i don't think that that's a reason to celebrate the overall idea right like i think that i i'm not going to celebrate like this idea that all is futile so like live now dump on others you know you know kind of this sodoman gomorra lifestyle like everything everything is pointless um so screw it i'm gonna i'm gonna live for the now that's just not my mindset right so like yes there is there is uh there are there are things in there there are like little bits of light amongst you know fire and and and uh darkness you know

like there's a little there's there's good that can come out of it but the overwhelming majority just sucks right and like i think the intent of man to like live and do well should matter and I'm not I don't like a fair distribution is fine like what you just talked about with that meme coin and what their purpose is

but for everyone there's unsuspecting retail that like the same people that are behind the high FDV scams are like all also I'm sure creating and doing pump and dump meme coin stuff and so like you have the same victims essentially just different

methods and And even those are, they're, it's always people trying to figure out a way around whatever exists. And you talked earlier about people being upset. You know, you kind of have the revolution and then something comes out of that. But like there's also just the people in the revolution that just want to take advantage of the revolution, right? There was no, there was no real idea. It was, again, that nihilism. And that's what I'm against.

I've just, I believe that we live for something and we can choose to live for something. and I will personally choose to participate in a way that I believe in. And so I'm just not going to be the guy shilling a $150,000 market cap piece of crap scam coin that just popped up because I bought it early and now I'm going to tell other people about it because that, you know, it's just just unethical behavior in my perspective. And so I think what we're doing is we're excusing whether it's the high FDV scam that. it's got the suit on, or whether it's the one that comes out of like a telegram and you and your buddies, you know, Unibot sniped it. It's just unethical behavior. And I think if you fail to call that out, then you're going to burn the whole thing to the ground. And so I think that like we need to set a standard for ourselves to live a little bit higher. That's all I'm asking for is just live a

little bit higher. Like have a little bit of ethics in our, in our lifestyles. And like, I think will some people get really, really rich doing unethical things, sure. But that's like, that's not all there is to life, I guess. Mantle, formerly known as BitDAO is the first Dow led Web3 ecosystem, all built on top of Mantle's first core product, the Mantle network, a brand new high-performance Ethereum Layer 2 built using the OP stack, but uses Eigenlayer's data availability solution instead of the expensive Ethereum Layer 1. Not only does this reduce Mantle Network's gas fees by 80%, but it also reduces gas fee volatility, providing a more stable foundation for Mantle's applications. The Mantle treasury is one of the biggest Dow-owned treasuries, which is seeding an ecosystem of

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But as we've seen with every single cycle, like the cycles that Stephen was talking about with the ICOs. Like what was the first ICO? Oh, it was Ethereum. What was the second? ICO, Auger, a legitimate project that the product itself didn't work out, but like no one really felt scammed about that because it was a good attempt. And then everyone realized that like, oh, you could do this ICO thing. You can attract a bunch of ETH. And then like the euthanasia roller coaster was kickstarted. And then we ended up in like the ICO shit coin waterfall that was 2017. And you can repeat that for D-Sy summer. Like who started D-Fi summer? Compound. Robert Leshner. Great. Governance tokens. We needed all of that. kicked off the governance revolution.

How did it end? Like 1,000 APY pool twos. And so like meme coins are taking kind of the same arc where like it may be meme coins are taking the same arc where we start with Dogecoin. But then we end with like this PVP. I just created a meme coin. Now everyone buy it and I'm going to sell it tomorrow. And the result has been the same in all of these pretty much where liquidity gets spread out like way out to a point to where you kind of have this house of cards on the market that needs to correct and go back to the things that do carry. something like to carry some about and and yeah maybe mean there are some memes that survive um and

there's some there's some you know suit coins that survive but like there's a lot of death as well and i think you're just creating a perpetual cycle you're just doing like a different version of the same crap where you're fracturing liquidity over and over again and um you know i don't i just don't really buy into the idea that like it's it's purer than before because you're just, you know, not pretending anymore because they're very, there's very real projects, but it's not the only thing you can get rich in. That's not my point. Like, I, and I'm all for people having opportunity to elevate themselves in a capitalistic way. I think they're, even in that, there's different ways to do it. If you say, I'm going to launch a meme coin and

it's, I'm going to like purposefully pump and dump this thing so I can make a buck because, you know, I live in this nihilistic environment and screw this guy and all these other people, screw them. I'm going to collect mine. Like, that's just as bad, right? Like, but if there's an open market and you're not trying to personally manipulate that market and you're making a trade in that environment, then fine, whatever. Like, you're just one of the market participants.

Like, I think that's a truer expression of how to go about this in an honorable way, if you will. And I just refuse to live in a world where we have to throw all that aside and it's just the Wild West forever. And there are no morals or ethics or anything. Like I just, that's not my world. And that's my, that's my whole point about it. And I just see a lot of that as you see this escalation, if you will, of meme coin culture. In the same way that you saw it with ICOs and pre-s and everything else, like, and NFTs and all the, all the other. Like as it goes further and further out, like, it gets worse and worse to agree that it just needs to explode and have like a jubilee of the coins you know like just like just make it all go away and start over again from you know the phoenix

from the ashes type of the environment i i kind of object to this whole painting of everything is this is just financial nihilism right like we have we have a meme coin channel in our discord and nobody in there is nihilist everybody's like viving and having like an amazingly fun time. And the idea that never before in human history that everybody get together with their friends and try to make a bunch of money and get rich quick, like that didn't exist. And that's just a product of like, uh, zoomer nihilism or something. I'm not saying it didn't exist. I'm just saying it's always fun while you're winning and then it's not. Sure, of course. And like, I think there is a much higher sort of self-realization in the people trading memes that what they are doing is like a very

zero-sum game. I think in previous cycle, I think in previous cycle, people were buying these alt-cloth, they literally thought they were going to do something and make them money. It's very hard for anybody with an IQ above 60 to convince themselves that they're really going to buy Bauden and hold it for 10 years and become like a, be worth like $30 million, right? So there's like an element of like self-awareness and in honesty and what is happening. I would argue that like an element of the Bitcoin vision is kind of like a little more like nihilistic or like dystopian, right? Like this idea that crypto is going to succeed because we all just buy this coin and it just goes up as like the rest of the world buys. We don't even do anything with it. We just watch the number go up.

Now we don't even buy it on chain. We buy it in like an ETF, right? I think it's less. I think it is dystopian, but it's not nihilus. Sure. All right. Cool. It's dystopian.

You can choose your dystopia, right? I mean, David, you're a big advocate. You love crypto, right? You think crypto is going to be a thing and change the world. Does crypto become a thing because a bunch of people buy Bitcoin and their Coinbase account and look at the number go up? Or does crypto become a thing because users start using the chain and using the products? Like, what better way to bootstrap people into this ecosystem has there ever been than like this meme coin frenzy? Like people can't go on Coinbase and like trade Popcat or whatever the meme of the day is, right?

They have to be like, how do I use a wallet? How do I use Jupiter? How do I do all these things, right? And although, yes, a lot of these people are going to get burned in a particular way, I think that five years from now, 10 years from now, when crypto is like a big thing, right? And you talk to people, you talk to like the next Van Spencer, if you will, like 20 years from now, right, whatever. And you're like, how did you get involved in crypto?

Everybody has the same story when they get involved in crypto. They heard about something. They thought it was cool. They bought something and then they got burned. But in the process, an idea went off in their head and they became hooked and then they sort of climbed that wall and became like a user, an advocate and get everybody else in the space. Like I think the same thing is going to happen here. Yeah.

And like when I got into crypto, I was very much. illusioned by the ICO mania, I thought substratum was going to change the face of the internet, right? I thought basic attention token was going to meaningfully change our relationship with advertisers. And it really wasn't until like 2018. I was like, oh,

I just like paid a very expensive lesson. But that's how I thought about it. It was like I paid for a free lesson in like real markets and incentives and human behavior and all that kind of stuff. And maybe to Stevens point, to the meme coin point is like, you very much are aware of what you. you are doing when you buy like doge with hat dog with hat like you know exactly like you're like

I am not being disillusioned by the founder of substratum who thinks he's going to like change the structure of the internet I'm literally buying a dog with a hat so I can appreciate that and but like I think there's also inside of this debate between meme coins good or bad is also a time frame difference I saw this uh this classic bell curve tweet whereas like in the center you have the middle of the curve and the guy's like no you need fundamentals you can't invest in dogs with hats like you must The meme coins are two nihilistic, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then on the left and the right side, it's like, I don't, I'm having fun and I'm getting rich. That's the two lines.

Like, I'm having fun, getting rich. And those two sides of the left and right of the curve work when number goes up. But when number goes down, you really want fundamentals. Like this whole concept of like interest rates is like anti-memecoin concept. the higher interest rates are in the world, the less meme coins will exist. Because when interest rates are super high, you need systems that produce cash flows that can pay for the interest rates. And so, like, a lot of this stuff, I think, was really contained inside of one cycle. And it only works while people make money.

And as soon as people stop making money, as soon as, like, inflation picks up, as soon as we're thinking about, like, okay, what is my, like, retirement plan? What is my 10 plus year time horizon thesis? Like as soon as people think in longer terms and what they need to start thinking about fundamentals and all of a sudden the air goes out of the meme coin balloon. And so like I think that a lot of the debates is like our meme coins are good or bad also kind of needs to be framed in like the time frame. Like meme coins are good in the short term. But can they be good in the long term? I think is where a ledger will say like no, they literally cannot. It's structurally impossible for them to be good in the long term.

For the most part. Yeah. Like when you take it holistically, there will be success. stories, but like I think it's a, maybe it's a more efficient lottery, right? Like, and I don't really like the lottery. I certainly don't like the concept of a state run lottery and let's send kids to college because we took money from poor people who had very little hope. So they just did this thing instead. Like, I'm just going to go buy some scratchoffs at the gas station with the last 20 bucks I got because I have no other hope. And so I'm just going to do this. And that

sends somebody that makes like 200 grand a year to the University of Georgia full time. You know, like that's highly dystopian and I don't like that at all. And so a lot of times when people talk about like why they're opting in to just gambling on meme coins, it's the same kind of thing. Like how else are we going to make it, bro? You know? And I get that. Maybe it's more efficient than that lottery.

And I just don't like it. Like I'm allowed to just not like something. And that's all I really said when I got trolled for this tweet is I just don't like it. I don't like the concept of that. I choose. I would rather. believe in something, both that I'm investing in, trading, whatever else. Like, I've always said this, David, I don't even know how many times I've talked to you

personally about this. Like, if I'm going to hold something, I want it to be something I can sleep at night and realize, like, I'm okay with this. And every now and then, will I go participate in the trade, like the overwhelming, like, size of the wave that's crashing? Like, is it just one that I'll tack on to? Sure. But at the end of the day, like, I would rather hold something invest in something where I have some fundamental belief about what that thing is and why I hold it and why I'm participating. And I think for a market to be functional, you need a reasonable number of people and a reasonable volume of dollars that are thinking that way or else the whole thing's going to look dumber than the tulip bull mania of the 1600s that everybody makes fun of us for.

Do you invest in art? Do you invest in NFTs? Do you believe those things are, investment of vehicles to a degree or at least like high probability speculative assets. High probability? No, I wouldn't do high, say high probability, but fine art you don't think is? If it's already been established, right? Like that's the, but then your upside is lower. It's more of a traditional investment vehicle. Like the difference between me buying a Picasso and buying a piece of like Class A, real estate, like, might be pretty much the same type of returns. See, like, I don't think there's much of a difference at all between, like, buying Dogecoin and buying, you know, fine NFTs.

I don't think there's that much of a difference between buying Dogecoin and, like, buying shares of, like, LVMH, right? Like, sure, LVMH makes widgets and people buy them, right? But, like, underneath all of that is just, an idea. Like, the thing just has value because, like, it has been memed into value. Like, I'm not, I'm not, I, I've talked about the network effects of a blockchain forever. Like, that I'm not disagreeing with you on that. But if, if you think that it's, like, a legitimate investment to invest in brands, like brands, like LVMH, for example, is investing in Doge, not the

same thing as investing in any brand? It's an idea that you think has traction that is growing, and it is growing at a rate that will let you get a return on your capital. I've yet to say anything negative about Doge. You keep saying I'm like anti-Doge. I've never said anything negative about Doge. Sure, but if you accept Doge and you accept the idea of brands, then you have to accept the idea that there won't just be one brand. There will be many downstream brands.

No, that's like saying, well, if you believe in Nike, you should believe in Shmikey because I made it. No, it's not. It's like saying if you believe in Nike, when Nike made shoes, you had to believe in the idea that somebody would also create like Aditi's shoes and then Conver's shoes. would be like like the I think that's not the same at all I think the vast majority of what's created looks a lot more like schmike than Adidas like I don't think very many of of the what very many of the things that we see out there and that end up like um shilled by people with significant followings are truly a different take on a similar concept and instead they're just like a

me too pump and up and of course that's true but if what you were saying if the opposite of what you were saying was true that was like, oh yeah, I look in the meme space and I see all these really great brands that are the next doge, then there wouldn't be any returns there because the market would already see that. Like, you can't have one without the other. And people acknowledge this. People acknowledge it's a high risk game. But there's also some purpose in establishing accountability in that ecosystem. Like, that is important. And when there's zero consequence for creating like a thousand schmikis, then

that's, you're gonna self destruct the thing that was good in the first place. But that's why I like crypto, we just like fast run all the stuff in the real world and just blow everything up and we learn all the lessons ourselves and redo everything and like super super compressed time frames, right? And you're already seeing

the market adapt to some of this. Like we have like these token checkers now, for example, where now like even people who are like amateur crypto people know like, okay, there's a meme coin, I got to run through the token checker. I got to see if there's a white list. I got to see if like the dev minted himself all the tokens

is the liquidity locked, right? And this is going to keep evolving, right? Like this is just a crypto thing. There are no guardrails. Do you think there should be any accountability like for the person who's creating all the ones that are not like a real attempt at

establishing meme value like or whatever? Like, no, I think if you fair deploy a token with no attempts to like defraud people like we have we have laws in the real world right against certain financial crimes just because you commit that financial crime in crypto doesn't mean like you you're not responsible for that financial crime right so like i'm all for holding people in the crypto world responsible for committing like fraud or anything that could be perceived as fraud right but if

everybody is just mass launching means with like fair token distributions right i don't i don't have a problem with that. Like, I don't have a problem with, with, with people playing that, that game. I, I, I, I, I created, if I created a coin and I called it okay grandma or whatever, like somebody's done these with, that's already created now, by the way. Yeah, I'm sure. But like, if I, if I, if I create one, essentially meming myself for being a freaking old boomer, like, let's call it the Bama Boomer coin, okay? And so we got the Bama Boomer coin. And I say, listen, I'm going to go, I'm going to create the Bama Boomer coin. It's worthless. But if you guys want to make fun of me, just buy this coin at this contract address and,

you know, off a go. But I am disclosing naturally that I think it's valueless, but if you think the Bama Boomer meme is valuable, you don't think that, like, there's a responsibility that I have to limit the way that I go about things and say things because I'm essentially established, I'm creating the cliff for someone to jump off of where I know they're going to fall and break their bones, you know, like that's all that's really happening there. Like some clever people are going to win off of it and they probably will just because I said that. Like somebody's going to go create it because they see this podcast. Somebody's going to make a couple thousand bucks off

of it or whatever. And there's going to be somebody that's like, well, I guess I'm just going to jump off this cliff. Maybe I'll make it because Bamabomber is a good coin. And this is a funny idea and it's going to be me and then they break their legs. Like, am I responsible if I'm the creator of that for establishing that arena where that occurred. Like, I just don't think it doesn't carry real value. And please don't, somebody will make Bamaboober. Don't buy it. It's stupid.

It's stupid. Okay, so two things there. Like, one, no, of course you're not responsible. And then I, I don't know. Like, people, sure, there are people in the world who want, like, they're the Elizabeth Warren types and they think we should throw you in jail for that. Like, I'm not that person. Do it.

If you're being transparent and you're saying, like, here's a. a cliff but like don't jump off of it and somebody jumps off the cliff right like that's that's not your problem right uh the second part is like i just view memes as like a in a fundamentally different way than you do like you're like there's no purpose it has no value but like in my mind these are these are just speculative marketplaces for attention right once again not said memes don't have value like you said well you said bam boomer doesn't have any that has no value but it does have value because you as this like you've said it the love Like a more time's like,

Rammah entity with like clout on crypto Twitter. You have attention. So stuff you put into the world like has attention. And when people are buying meme coins, they're buying a piece of that attention or speculating on like how much attention that will actually have. Like that's what's actually kind of happening here at like a base level with meme coins. And I think it's more and more people realize that this is just sort of like a speculative

like attention marketplace. Like you can kind of view it through maybe a different lens because we all agree that attention is a very valuable thing in this crazy world we live in. So one of the reasons, like fundamentals in a token, for example, like MakerDAO has had some of the best fundamentals in crypto over the longest amount of time, and it's one of the most ignored, generally speaking, ignored coins until finally just like the fundamentals became so strong that like even VCs had to like pick up on it. And now it's, its revenue is its attention. Even the biggest actors in this picture.

Always the last one to the party. Well, on public markets, yeah. Yeah. The fundamentals were so attention-grabbing that all of a sudden they showed up in the market price of MKR finally. And so, like, maybe, like, to kind of reframe what meme coins are, they're like, they're not equities, right? They're not trying to produce fundamentals.

They're not trying to produce cash flows. They're commodities on attention in a particular flavor, in a particular arena. And so, like, like, doge with hat. is capturing the attention that whatever Doge with hat can produce. That one's a little self-recursive. There are other meme coins that are, like, running in parallel to, like, in real world, like, non-crypto stuff. And so, like, as the attention, like, Taylor Swift coin, for example,

Taylor Swift gets big. Taylor Swift coin would also get big because it is this, like, community-supported unofficial commodity that is commoditizing the attention around Taylor Swift. And commodities are inherently zero-sum. because, like, oil does not produce dividends. It is a commodity. It gets consumed once, right? And so there is no cash flows to oil.

There is no cash flows to gold. And so, like, maybe this is why we were talking about when gold is, like, perhaps inherently nihilistic because you don't think that you can produce anything new out of it. And so maybe this is, like, reframing of meme coins as, like, pseudo-attention commodities. Does that make you feel any better or worse, Ledger? I guess I'm indifferent.

I mean, I told you, I was going to, like, is this? is going to be hard for me to win because it's mostly me saying what I'm not that very willing to participate in because I don't value many of these segments of the attention market, if you will. And I do believe in the attention market. That's not my point at all. I don't believe in the gambleification of that attention market. And there's just many things with regards to gambling and attention, I guess, that I choose not to participate in. It's not to say I think something should be illegal necessarily. I wish that there was a little more market accountability for market accountability,

meaning by participants' choices not to be there, right? Like, then there is. And I was thinking about this one, like the, do you ever see that article where it was something like this one guy sends like 15% of the world spam emails or something like that? And somehow he was like somebody. figured out how to block a lot of his stuff and he just, it stopped happening. And so an example is, I'm not saying email is bad. I'm not saying email marketing is bad.

I'm saying, can we call this guy bad? Like, this douchebag that's sending the same spam to, you know, tens of millions of people every day. Like, that's not, that's, I just don't like that, you know. And there's, and what we're saying is for all the people that are creating that, we're not, we're not just willing to say that's stupid or that's bad. Like, they were like, well, maybe he's going to make a buck off of it. And I got to receive, you know, 50,000 spam emails every, every month because of it.

And like, I don't, I don't like that. That's my point. I mean, if your point is that memes as a whole are actually really good and just this segment of like meme coinery is bad, if you want to say like a fraudster profit maxi spammer, sure, I won't, I won't argue with you. And that's been my whole point. But there's a high ratio of that in this current meme coin iteration, right? Like it's because we're just like yolo, everything is fine, we're enabling so much more of that. And we're tolerating, for example, people that I think are making your responsible decision. It's like, bro, bamab boomers, the future, you know, you need to invest.

I got a freaking bag when it was cheap. I'm up 10x. I'm going to be up 10x more after I shill it to 250,000 people. people and a bunch of people that just want the lotto tickets are chasing it. And the next thing you do is dump on their face. Like that person is the one that needs to be held accountable. And it takes human beings to hold them accountable. I think this is really kind of drilling down into the heart of this whole crux,

which is we talked about how like shady and terrible crypto has been in its history, the graveyards of scams that have come and gone and made very few people very rich to the cost of retail. are meme coins better or worse than the attempts at legitimacy that scams or accidental frauds have been? Ledger, that's a question to you. I think they're worse, but they're not that much worse than what we've been forced into with real projects because the government has been the one that has forced us into non-fair distributions of real projects. So I can get back to blaming the government about their approach to regulatory. regulation in crypto is what's the real culprit here because if we had a cleaner path towards

equitable distribution of real projects and you had a real pathway for bringing real stuff to market, then you could bring real stuff to market to everyday people and that would be better. So this is the response. It's just the, it's like a rubber band response. It's the wrong one, in my opinion. Steven, thoughts. Yeah, I mean, my generalized thoughts on this is just that ideas are powerful ideas have value.

We've been focused a lot on crypto as like building, you know, quote unquote projects that that do things, but, but ideas and things that have mind share, undeniably have value, right? And you can envision an end state of this cycle where virtually every single zoomer who touches crypto has like dog with hat in their wallet, right? What, what does a world look like where there are just millions upon, millions of people who have this coin, the coin is worth hundreds of billions of dollars, right? Like, we already saw like yesterday, right, they raised $650,000 to put the hat on the sphere, right?

What can a coin like that do when it has the attention of a thousand times as many people as it already has as those people are like way wealthier than they are now, right? Like there's like interesting stuff, I think that could be done and come of that. And there's undeniably some value there. it's not valueless. Like every other thing in crypto, right? In the sort of phase one, we take an idea and we run way too far with it and we jump off the ledge and people fall down and break a leg and get hurt.

And yeah, that's obviously going to happen here. Obviously. My position is it's a little more transparent at least this time around. It's like when you have like a kid and, you know, he wants to climb a tree and you know he's going to climb the tree, but you're like, all right, well, you're going to fall and hurt yourself. but you'll learn the hard way. That's a better thing for me than like pretending there's something there that there's not. And then somebody gets hurt.

And then they feel like very disillusioned like they were lied to in a way. And that kind of creates like lasting impact. So I think this is a, it's the same thing we've done over and over again. It's a slightly better version of it. But like the previous experiments we ran, there was a really good nugget of truth to them. And in later cycles, those things blossomed into really, really good projects, really, really good ideas. Same thing's going to happen.

You have a good example of one where it turned into something productive. Like, because I think the in-state of what you're saying here is I hope dog with hat is just like Doge coin again. Like, and same with Shiba Inu. But have we seen anything really of like with any real productivity or like anything of these creative ideas that blossomed with, even with Doge? Like, and I like and I like Doge. And I think if you're, if you own Doge because you like Doge, that's fine. But like, have we seen economic activity or like real stuff happen beyond, I think, like, or is the maximum of that Elon Musk brought extra attention to it so that on SNL or

whatever, like, people bought the top of it? Like, uh, or like maybe that onboarded some people into crypto and like they went, they went deeper down the rabbit hole in some capacity. Like, what else, what else do you think has come of that when these things have gone to where you want them to previously? Like, we've had things. worth tens of billions of dollars. And what have they done so far? Well, I don't think anything in crypto is really done much so far, right? Like if you want to take a step back and think about it, right?

So there's sort of like a benchmark. Like, yes, we've created some cool products and Ethereum land. Like, yeah, Bitcoin could get an ETA. Like, but the main thing we started crypto for Bitcoin is still not doing anything it said it wanted to do. Like it was supposed to be a peer-to-peer cash thing, right? in the original white paper. And nobody really uses it for that.

So Doge is kind of like similar to Bitcoin in that regard. Like it's like this thing that people invest in as a speculative asset. Oh, by the way, it has NFTs, right? But like I think I can see a world in the not so distant future where Doge is transacted with in like a day-to-day currency and used to purchase goods more than Bitcoin is. Like I can definitely see that world. And it won't invalidate Bitcoin. But like I can for sure see that world on the not so distant horizon.

That would be pretty funny. But I guess I would like to see some evidence of it. It is a little tiresome in crypto to like however, how long have seven, eight years or whatever, like in the space. And you're just like, you're you're you're you keep saying like, okay, when is some of this stuff going to come into fruition? And at some point, I think the industry, like you do need to shift. or get off the pot a little bit and like do something or else this like nihilistic view of meme coins does end up being kind of like the final hurrah and and crypto just kind of gets sent to a corner of the world where there's like not that much economic impact I don't actually

think that's true I think there are things that are being created there's real stuff happening there's real things and then as a result you have this like massively long tail of of speculative you know me too stuff and and that's just part of it but I would like to see some of these things make their way to the real world. For example, like I got interested in NFTs, not because I love the dog pictures or what, you know, like monkey pigs or whatever. But I think that the inherent underlying technology of a non-fungible token has the opportunity to have incredible utility in the world.

I think a lot of the things, we're going to put it all on the blockchain, they are possible to put those things, real-world things on the blockchain, because they are singular, like they're identifiable versus like the interchangeable parts of your doge and my doge are the same doge, right? Like they're all just, you know, the ERC 20, the tradable token versus the independent one of like, you know, this is my pudgy penguin or whatever, but not just this is my pudgy penguin, but this is how like title in real estate works and let's put it on the blockchain. Like I'm ready for that, I guess, is my point.

I'm kind of stubbornly waiting.