The Wolf Of All Streets - Are Memecoins The Next Big Thing? w/ @ben_dog_ | Crypto Town Hall

Episode Date: March 11, 2024

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I'm waiting and praying that the other co-hosts are going to show up today because you couldn't find a topic that's less out of my wheelhouse or that confuses my brain more than meme coins. I don't know who PennDog is either, but I'm excited to find out. Looks like we got Rodney and Plasma on stage. I've done a superficial view of the market and apparently things like Joe Bowden and Elizabeth Horan are pumping and what the is going on? No idea. So we're going to get into that. Apparently, I would be more interested in talking about why Bitcoin is pushing through $72,000 today. But instead, apparently, we're going to do dogs, frogs, and names of slutty politicians.

So, Godspeed. Mario, thank fucking God you're here. I so wanted to leave you hanging. I'm like, this is cruel. How are you, man? How's your weekend? I'm well. Doing good. No complaints. It's still in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China. I'm now in a different foreign country because I hate, you know,

I've gone to the Rand school of thinking and I try to get out of the United States as much as possible. I'm just kidding. But I do travel a lot, obviously. I hope he's joining us too, because he I do travel a lot, obviously. Um, I hope he's joining us too because he probably knows what the hell an Elizabeth Horan is. Yeah. So yeah, he should, because he did it. So I did a space as well. So me and Ryan kind of started it. I don't know how, has Ryan been talking about meme coins for a while? Has he just started for the first time?

I think just started because he, I think, you know, in the past, we would talk about it and he was on the, these are the most damaging thing to the space and what are we doing? And nobody's going to take us seriously thing. But I think now that we got Larry Fink talking about a flight to quality, we can just Elizabeth Horan our ways right into mainstream society. Yeah. So I'm going to, let me bring up a project. So I've, I've done the same. So I've, i was on the same boat as ran in the last market the one before uh yeah i've just never touched meme coins it's

just something i'm like it's impossible almost impossible to predict they're not a space i want to get into you know too risky and this is no value there But my perception is changing. I did a space. So we invested in a project called Canine Finance. And they're building the Lido for meme coins, essentially building DeFi within a meme coin ecosystem, focusing on Shibarium. And it's a fascinating concept. And that was our first investment into a project. It's not an actual meme coin, but at least building utility within the meme coin ecosystem. Now, what you consider utility, what others consider utility, obviously, that's up for debate. But my perception has been changing.

I still don't own any meme coins. I think we now own the one we're going to talk about today, which is Ben the Dog later today. But it's something that still scares the shit out of me because you just don't know if it's going to rug or not. Is it going to end up being like a great community, like Shiba Inu, and have a whole ecosystem being built on it? Or is it going to be just something else that rugs and you're like, shit. I just want to say something really quick so i'm obviously extremely dismissive of uh the new wave of meme coin culture but i've told this story countless times i you know i came into crypto in 2016 i came as a trader i only cared about

making dollars i didn't give a shit about bitcoin i I wasn't orange pilled. And the thing that really roped me in was trading Doge in sats back then. So, you know, you used to have this Doge cycle, the original meme. But the thing was, at that point, like, we weren't talking about the Dallas Mavericks adopting Doge or Elon Musk saying it was the global currency of the future. We knew it was a joke, which maybe is fair in these cases, too. But we knew it was a joke. and you knew that, by the way, there was no tether. So we were trading in Bitcoin pairs. So you knew it would go down to 12 to 24 sats and then you would hold it for three months or so. And it would go up to 120 or 180 or 210. You'd sell it. It would go all the way back down. You'd buy it again. We made a ton of money doing it. So like, I'm not dismissive of meme coin culture.

I think it actually is what got me very interested as a trader in coming into crypto. The problem is for me is that at this point, you know, the environment has changed. So we've become a serious asset class and it's just like a joke, but Hey, listen, I I'm, I'm here for anything that makes people money. I just believe that 99% of people who touch these, even if they make paper gains, end up riding it to the bottom and to zero. Before we kick off the discussion on meme coins, I do want to talk about the markets.

I don't think we've spoken since we broke all-time highs, at least not on Spaces. So maybe it's just a good idea. And I know you did a few Spaces since. Would you have – and whoever's unmuted, yeah, Jesse, it's you. You've got background noise. Just tell us about the markets. I've been, I'll just tell you on my front, it's been insane, Scott. Like I haven't, this is the same, it reminds me of the bull market, last bull market, where you're not getting any sleep.

There's no life anymore. I'm not going biohacking. You know, I went to sleep at what, 10 a.m. yesterday. I just woke up 10 minutes 15 minutes ago um just looked at the price now we're above 70 i think like a touch 72k um you've done a few spaces on the markets last week just give them honestly it's a selfish question but also for the audience give us an overview what are the markets doing what are people's predictions um some of the important news in the last few days first i'd like to say that i'm really sad for you because you haven't been able to spend 17 000 hours in a bio chamber to save 14 minutes of

your life at the end so i'm very sad for you and i'm sorry that the bull market has taken away that 14 minutes of your life um but uh yes i mean obviously the market has been relatively insane and in my opinion for the first time in history we don't have to debate cycles and look at lines on charts. We can see exactly what's happening fundamentally behind the scenes. And that's clearly ETF inflows and buying of ETFs. So we have a nascent market, a relatively small market cap asset class, and you have massive flows coming in on a daily basis. And what I've found interesting and surprising personally is that the numbers we're seeing, I mean, we're at like 60, 60 million now, I think, 60 billion, excuse me, in the ETFs, which is a relatively astounding number. And I think we were talking about five or 10 in new flows would be great for the entire year, right? So this is wildly exceeded expectations. And while it's wildly exceeded expectations, we also don't even have it unlocked to everyone. And what we all talked about as a negative at the beginning was, you know, yes, they're going to approve these things, but RIAs won't have them. Vanguard doesn't have them. Merrill Lynch doesn't have them has turned out to be a huge boon because

it gives us these slow and progressive unlocks of new capital that's been waiting. It gives pent up demand. They start buying and it's just this sort of flywheel effect of new buyers that are steadily giving access instead of opening the fire hose from the first day. So I think that that's sort of been driving it. And so, you know, breaking through all time highs, pushing this, this hard, we have a very, very clear explanation for this. Can that reverse? Can those inflows end? Sure. Right. So now I think it remains to be seen what happens cyclically. Uh, in the past we always had sort of the Bitcoin to Ethereum trade, by the way, I'm a huge, huge, huge for trade Ethereum bull and have been for eight or nine months. And then you kind of trickle down to mid cap, small cap meme coins. What we have

interesting this time is we've gone straight to because Bitcoin is pumping so hard and we have the ETF approval straight to the shit coin, the bottom of the shit coin casino. Like, you know, there's the Las Vegas strip. We're like seven miles off the strip with a bunch of homeless dudes putting money in the slots while everything's popping off at the Bellagio. Right. So, and I think it's been a really interesting sort of change in the cycle that we've had, but listen, markets are bullish. Prove me otherwise, you know, we can listen to the bears and the recessions and the depressions that are coming. Maybe they will, but right now you ride it till the wheels fall off.

Yeah, I've just got a few more questions and appreciate the panel being here. We're going to get into the discussion and open up the panel. But I'm just going through the news. So you talk about the ETF inflows. The outflows have been still slowing from GBTC. Yeah, GBTC outflows have been slowing. I'm not looking at my dashboard right now. But interestingly, GBTC was at $27 billion or so before the ETFs were approved. And I think it's above $27 billion right now. A lot of people have pointed that as surprising, but they have to understand that's just because the price of Bitcoin is up 60%, 70%. So when you talk about

the dollar value of the assets under management, if your Bitcoin's worth 60 or 70 more percent, that covers the outflows. Right. But yeah, it's been a slow trickle out of GBTC. They're even trying to launch new products. You know, I think anyone who was in that huge discount trade is out. I think anyone who was really eager to get away from their 1.5% fee is out. So now I think we're turning on the tap more to the organic demand and people choosing which one they want to be in. I'm also looking through the inflows for today.

We got the Bitcoin inflows were 230 million. They're just not slowing. And then the outflows. Okay, today the outflows were 300 million. So single day net inflow hold on how's the net and minus should be 130 million outflows okay yeah so so today i think it should be a net outflow day but in i just look at the the the social value numbers um but just another another couple of questions scott um how are the are we seeing that rotation into meme coins?

Again, I haven't had a chance to look at the meme coins, not meme coins, the altcoin market. And then I want to mention our announcement as well, Scott, before we kick off the panel, something we haven't publicly announced. We're just talking about it behind the scenes. But before that, yes, how has that rotation started? I don't know that it's a rotation.

I think we have a more unique situation now, which is, and by the way, my base premise for crypto in general has always been, I said this even on Yachting with Finance last week, but two years ago, that there's Bitcoin and there's everything else, right? So you have the Bitcoin market, and then you have a large market of speculative VC investments, which is not a bad thing, right? But it's like a bunch of high beta tech stocks. Some will survive, some won't. And that's how you should treat it. And I think we have the Bitcoin ETF spot, you know, driving a lot of volume into spot Bitcoin. And then we have all the crypto degens because, you know, they have the wealth effect. Everybody's

feeling better. Their portfolios are rising, having fun, doing the D-Gen casino on the other side. But I don't think it's the same money. It's obvious that money that's flowing into Bitcoin spot ETFs is not making its way into Elizabeth Horne. Okay, so I'll pass it over to Elizabeth Horne. Would you have Bitcoin's market cap, just for the audience, to give you an idea of where we're at? It's bigger than silver's market cap.

Silver's at 1 point. It's under 1.4. Bitcoin's above 1.4 as of today. So still a fair way from gold, though. Gold's at, what, 14 trillion. And Bitcoin's at 1.4. So to beat gold, there's still a 10x for Bitcoin alone. What I'm seeing in the markets, and then we could just kind of mention a little announcement, Scott, and then kick off the discussion.

But what we're seeing is as incubators and private investors, we're at peak bull market. And the last question I have for you, Scott, is whether panelists are still saying this is going to be a short to bull market considering how fast things are moving. But the things are just crazy. You're looking at project launches that are doing, let me just go to the numbers here, that are doing 20x, 30x, 50x. So we have Corporate, for example, project. I'm just going to let you go through the list. Corporate project, we launched, we did a whole launch space for them.

They're sitting at like 20x private price, 22x private price a few days ago. It's a great game. Weave 6 is sitting at 7x, 10x. They've got Binance projects. Obviously, Pixels is sitting at 100 and something else, 170x. Yeah, the bull market is when they're at 1,000x, by the way, but yes. Shit, yeah, if you compare the last bull market. it's starting to heat up you're seeing projects launched every day and now in the last bull market the peak you see projects doing a 10x on a daily basis now it's it's almost every day you're seeing a 10x and but in the last bull market the peak was like multiple 10xs every day now just for the record two things i want to say it's very very

important because everyone's seeing all that money uh that's being made when the market correct most of those will literally go to zero and nobody has their tokens there's a lock-up period so some have unlocks the good thing though is the only thing i've been telling my team scott is that when it's early in the bull market because remember when we're investing in those projects when we're at the end of a bull market, we get annihilated. VCs get annihilated. When you're early on, you've got a whole bull market. That's why I go to your next question, Scott, where you can actually invest in projects that end up doing well and getting a good return for you. So being early in a bull market allows you the cycle to be able to see the unlocks come in and get a return.

But doing it at the end of a bull market is bloody as hell. It is. But the caveat there is what I saw at the end of the last bull market was that projects, maybe anticipating that, literally started to give 100% unlocks on day one to incentivize people. Oh, yeah. Which, by the way, helps massively crash the market because all the investors see that and they dump

everything immediately and bye-bye. Of course, yes. That's why probably the big unlocks were at the end of the last bull market because people knew that the market was coming to an end. So you see projects giving massive unlock. Now you have projects, obviously some give a big unlock at the beginning, 10%, 15%. But there's others, for example, I mentioned Pixels, we're invested in Pixels, Portal, et cetera. Portal had a 4% unlock. Pixels, yeah, four-year linear and then one-year cliff. So that means for one year, it has zero unlocks. They're sitting at 150, 170x.

It is a long-term investment. You know, they're like the Axie of this bull market. You know, love the game, love the team. But there is a massive cliff. Last question I have for you, Scott, and then we'll kick it off to the panel. And I actually want to go get Joe to give us an overview on meme coins. He's the expert, he's the analyst, and we have an announcement to make with Joe. Last question I have for you, Scott. Our panelists and all the analysts, the great minds that we have on stage,

are they saying this bull market is likely going to be shorter than others or not? Everybody has an opinion and opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one. All classic statement. Nobody knows what the fuck's happening. We've never had this level of flow into the market transparently. And we've never seen all time highs continuing to push all time highs in advance of the having. So I think that, you know, it's fun to speculate and to see what happens, but I don't think anything right now is indicative of a shorter market. And, and Mario, you know, you know, it's fun to speculate and to see what happens, but I don't think anything right now is indicative of a shorter market and,

and Mario, you know, you know, me, we, we talked to, we've been talking about this for a year. There's never been a day where I didn't say that humans are going to human and that each cycle is going to be bigger and crazier than the last. So, and like now, as you said, anecdotally, you're seeing these flows, uh, you're seeing the deal flow. It's insane. I mean, I'm assuming the announcement you're getting at too. I literally had to hire your team to handle,

to just start handling my Twitter DMs and Telegram and stuff because I don't really vet projects or do any of that stuff. And there's so many people hitting me with Elizabeth Horan and such that I literally don't know what to do with myself. And I have a life and a family and a job. So, yeah, before that, I'd say to the audience, this is the craziest bull market we've been through. I didn't expect it to be. More than 2021 peak already and we haven't even theoretically started.

It's ridiculous what we're going through in this bull market and the speed at which things are changing. I was just on a call with the team. We're making mistakes here and there. And there was a project that we, just because we're not keeping up, we had an allocation, we're supposed to invest. It was meant to go through the process and somewhere slipped up.

Literally before this call, I woke up to it. And my, Bob, you know Bob, he's like, Mario, fuck this. I'm not going to talk to HR and finance anymore. I'm just going to hire like crazy. And I just hired five five people today and that was the call i had with bob about 20 minutes ago so things are pretty crazy and and you know scott is a different beast so scott doesn't scott doesn't give a shit about money as much as you think he's just he's just he's like he was in i don't know which i can't know if i can say the country as bitcoin was hitting all-time highs

he was chilling somewhere in the world. You're like, do a show. And I'm like, I'm in Japan. I mean, I'm a pretty stocky dude. I don't care. This is Scott. But yeah, so our team, we did partner with Scott. We're partners on his show to do more shows together on his platform,

to do more spaces together, to grow his podcast. He's got probably the channel. Him and Rand are two of the best channels in crypto. And it's a pleasure to have my team help do the thing Scott can't be fucked doing. Also, we do have Joe on the panel. And Joe's also

partnering with us, working with us. Joe from Lunar Crush. With all his analytics, he's launching a new show I think starting this week. Starting tomorrow night on my channel it's gonna be the first time in history on my youtube channel thank god that somebody else is gonna do some heavy listing and run a show so joe's gonna be doing a heavy alpha show uh effectively on social metrics and using them in real time to predict what tokens are about to pop

up next maybe joe you could just tell us. What's up guys. Yeah, no, I'm super excited. Scott, Mario, thank you guys for inviting me to be a part of what you guys have been building. It's been awesome. The timing couldn't be better going into this bull market and yeah, some of the things I'm looking at, you know, the, the meme coins, I saw the title. So I hopped in here this morning, pretty serendipitously, but something like Floki is still running, you know, the meme coins, I saw the title, so I hopped in here this morning pretty serendipitously. But something like Floki is still running, you know, up 23% in the last 24 hours.

It's really interesting, you know, up until, you know, John, you know, my co-founder at Lunar Crush and I have been looking. I sent him a note last week. I said, you know, year to date, I said, tell me on Friday, go guess how much Avalanche is up, right? We're talking about ultimate bull euphoria you guys are just talking about. It was flat until today. It's up 15%. It was flat year to date. And we're talking about ultimate bull euphoria. And there's laggards, right?

There's a class of tokens that are completely missing out on what's going on. And a lot of this stuff is focused on meme coins. So what we're going to be doing on this show is really looking for that alpha. At Lunar Crush, we've been around for five years now, six years now in the market, actually. And we've been ranking everything from a social perspective. What do the communities look like across all these tokens? What's moving? What's not moving? Why is it moving? And a lot of this is driven by the community. And so i'm going to be doing a deep dive into our metrics into the data um to try and explain you know why something

like a floki would move um and i'm really excited to uh to be working out with you guys and scott hopefully we'll be putting together an awesome and epic show on youtube i don't know how to pronounce floki even at this point in the cycle so you can tell how stupid I am on meme coins. Yeah, I want to, and we do have two lawyers on stage, so I'd love some legal opinions on meme coins in a bit. Joe, I want to get your thoughts on the ecosystem. Before I do that,

let me give a shout out to the first meme coin project I ever shout out in the history of humanity. So I'm actually pretty comfortable with that one, Scott, and I could tell you I don't know if I'm allowed to mention who's behind it publicly but i met the team and i had no idea they have a meme coin so the team is a is one of the they launch a lot of projects the incredible team one of the team members was an ex-employee of mine in the last ball market um so we're working together on things unrelated to meme coins and they're like mario we actually have a meme coin

as well um and you know i was pretty impressed it's listed on gate m-e-x-e and i'm just going through some of the points here and they're on stage so they can fill the gaps the volume is about nine million and they're listed they've got a partnership with got bit uh they're number one trending on dex tools number one trending on dex screener number one trending on solana and they've got a community of 15 000 on x 30 000 on telegram holder base of 7 000 plus backers include zero stage and got bit so they they put their name zero stage is the the incubator that i'm talking about um incredible incubator incredible team um that's i think their only meme coin but they work with some incredible projects so you can

google them by the way zero stage.io and they've got a pretty damn good portfolio and one of the up-and-coming incubators in this bull run um so very impressed by the team but they've got a list of other ambassadors uh eric crypto man ctm not easy now a lot of these ambassadors i don't know because i'm not too deep in the meme coin community but I'm sure anyone deep in that ecosystem would understand them. So we'll talk to Ben the dog in a bit. Ben, just before, I know we're going to chat to you in a bit, but any other gaps to fill? Did I give you justice talking about what you guys stand for

and what makes you a good project, a good community? Mr. Dog, are you there? Yes. Okay. mr dog are you there yes okay anything else any any other any other guys to fill we're gonna chat to you in a bit uh later in the show we're gonna have a chat back and forth but just telling the audience in a minute what ben the dog is for sure yeah yeah thank you for the introduction uh i'm actually ben's assistant uh he can only say yes or no so his answers are limited i'm here when we need to expand on certain things but yeah you pretty much you pretty much And I'm actually Ben's assistant. He can only say yes or no, so his answers are limited. I'm here when we need to expand on certain things.

But yeah, you pretty much gave most of it. We've launched, we've been around in the sphere for a very long time. And we've been watching the meme market very, very carefully and for an opportunity to to enter the solana the the solana ecosystem with a with a banger of a meme and a concept that had to be some something funny something that everybody knew you know ben's face ben's voice as his friends tom and everyone else is something that people are familiar with even their kids are familiar with and it's it's a fun thing to do really so uh we have a lot of plans a lot of big plans big announcements big airdrops big partnerships coming that will blow everybody's

mind because um we have the resources the capacity and the willpower to to do what what no one else is willing to do yeah i just want to say one more thing and then we kick off the discussion on meme recordings and the ecosystem and john go to you first just want to say one more thing and then we kick off the discussion on meme coins and the ecosystem. Joe, I'm going to go to you first and we'll go to Rodney and then Carlo and the rest of the panel. But just one thing on a project. I don't know what meme coins stand for. I don't know how to build a narrative.

I don't know how to launch a meme coin. I don't know how to incubate a meme coin. But all I know is that the team behind the meme coin is what I look for because that's the only indicator I have and that's the reason I went with Ben and on a serious note Scott like if you meet the team you'd be

fucking impressed and the type of projects they launch and the guys behind it it says a project by Solana's earliest advisor I'm looking at it for the first time right now so yeah I mean that gives some hints I would imagine 2017 Anatoly Yakovenko earliest advisor i'm looking at it for the first time right now so yeah i mean that that gives some hints i would imagine in 2017 anatoly yakovenko um all right so so we'll kick off the discussion

with ben in a bit joe can you give us an id just people for the audience what the hell is happening in meme land like the i think they kind of led this bull run after Bitcoin above everything else. Yeah, I mean, a meme coin is basically a project that comes out with like a purposely stated, like no utility. There's nothing besides the community around a meme. And, you know, when you see these projects and these founders starting to kind of come up with the ideas for the memes, they're literally just looking for something that they think retail will rally behind, right? Something interesting, you know, and I think Dogecoin obviously is like the original, at least in a lot of people's minds, the OG meme coin that went viral, you know, and it's probably not, you know, too much of a surprise that something like Shiba Inu is right behind it at market cap

as the other meme coin. And, you know, it, I think it kind of stems from, you know, back, back when you used to have a startup, you'd, you know, develop the product, and then the product would go live. And then you would figure out whether or not people would use the product. And then you would create a community or a brand around that product. And then you would try to market that, right. And, you know, 10, 15 years ago in startup land, and even what you can see what someone like Mr. Beast is doing now is someone's creating a brand first and a community first. to wait they don't even have a product yet what's going on right but that that model's been done for a long time it's just you know taking on some you know incredible scale in the in the web 3 market and because anyone can launch one of these things it takes four seconds to actually launch a coin it does take a lot of uh prowess and it takes a lot of understanding of growth marketing to actually grow a community behind that i mean we can all can all launch a meme coin tomorrow. It's like, Hey, if you're having

a birthday party and you don't tell anyone about it, is anyone going to show up? Um, so it's really taking these marketing teams and they're the growth hack is done in a different way. It's done on discord. It's done on telegram. It's done on WeChat. It's done in the other platforms and then finds its way onto X and to other places. But really these are just people trying to start these communities and see if they can grow something. And then, you know, the, the hard part is most of the time, a lot of this is not going to turn into anything, right? Like I mentioned,

are they trying to grow something or are they just trying to like make a shit ton of money? I think 99% of the time it's probably they're trying to make a shit ton of money. But there could be some scenarios where people try to grow into anything. I would think if you're going to see NFT projects is where you'd probably see a community that's trying to build something and grow into something in a brand more than a meme token. Has anything happened, for example, Pepe, as a meme token that came out in the bear. In my opinion, it came out of nowhere, at least for me. Have they built anything in their ecosystem?

How would you compare them to something like Shiba or Doge, the Doge or Shiba ecosystem? Because Doge, I did a space on Doge about a year and something ago, went pretty viral. And we had a whole debate on whether there's utility or not. And they started listing certain things they're at least working on. So at least they're trying to build something. Have you looked into Pepe, for example, Joe? Pepe is the exact same as Shiba Inu and Dogecoin, right? It's a meme community built off Pepe the Frog.

I think they're trying to build things, even like a spinoff of Pepe's you know is pond you know pond token and um and pork you know from paulie and like they're at least they have a dex right and that dex has done actually a lot it's done a lot of volume um so you could say like well they've done just as much as uniswap right and so i think that's the that's the hard part for people is understanding like just because someone has a more professional demeanor in the way they're going to market, does that make them, you know, more professional? And that's it? Or does it does it make them have more utility? So I think they're trying to build it up. But no, I would say we've not. And I would take that for almost all of Web3. Have we seen anything outside of like the exchanges build a massive business where you're seeing marketing and seeing other things in longevity and seeing listings, probably just the miners? Plasma, I want to get your thoughts on this.

And I'm not sure what, I think you've got an NFT PFP. I'm assuming it is. But you've been in the space since 2018. Since what? Not the last two bull markets ago. 2013. Sorry, when 2013 2013 oh 2013 all right even better uh well before me so can you just tell us a bit more on on how deep are you in the meme coin ecosystem and you know your thoughts on it like it's obviously got legs still um i thought regulators would crack down on meme coins after the last bull market,

but here we are. Of course, give me two minutes. So I have understanding of only a small subsection of the meme market. The ones I focus on are like paper, where you don't have a team and you don't have any promises. You basically have a fixed supply asset, kind of like with Bitcoin, with Litecoin. And I see the memes this cycle, at least the ones I'm focused on,

as being completely different from Doge or Shiba. Doge had huge inflation. Shiba has a team and they're building a DEX. So the value of the token depends on what they deliver. Here we have just community, fair distribution, and then we have a reason to buy the meme. With Bitcoin, it was people who were self-sovereign money and, you know, all the philosophy behind it.

With the new memes, you have, like, people who vibe with the meme or with the community. And when you combine that with a fixed supply asset, I see the value of the asset going up long term. I don't think those will be quick plays. I think they will be around for years to come. But what's the utility? I know it's a question that we keep going on and on about

whenever we talked about meme coins. But if you've got something like, when you're talking about Bitcoin, the utility is created with a concept, with a certain purpose, and that's to disrupt the financial system and eventually became a store of value. When you look at a meme coin,

it launches as a story. But what is the utility of the story? Is it purely being part of a community? Because obviously the utility, obviously there's something there. They're still around. look how many bull markets we've been through and they're still around and not only are they around, they're killing it

so just help me understand it a bit more, at least for people because we have a lot of people from Tradify that are joining these shows as well I will try so with Pepe specifically, I think it's very similar to Bitcoin, it's just owning your own money freedom self-sovereign money and I think it's very similar to Bitcoin. It's just owning your own money,

freedom, self-sovereign money, and basically the same with Bitcoin. Can we just say that Pepe is self-sovereign money and is the same as Bitcoin? Is that what I just heard? It's very similar. That's why a lot of people kind of want to get in it. It's a limited supply asset, and you have a meme that people wipe around.

My toenails are a limited supply asset, but they're not going to become a global reserve currency. That just blew my mind. I'm sorry. Can you repeat the example you gave? It doesn't matter. I said my toenails. My toenails. I can cut them and I can give them out. There will only be 10.

I'll never cut them again. But you cannot send them over the internet, right? I'll find a way if someone will pay for them. But I mean, Pepe, comparing to Bitcoin, this is where my mind literally fucking explodes. I completely understand you. And I understand people are not ready to hear about it.

But I see the parallels. And a lot of early Bitcoin supporters, like the Gemini twins and other people, they vibe with Pepe because you don't have to trust a team. You don't have expectation of revenue. It's just a community built on an idea. With Bitcoin, the idea was self-owned money. And with Pepe, it's just people who love to express themselves with the meme. I can understand that. That makes a little more sense to me. But I mean, I just don't believe

that Pepe, people believe that Pepe is going to be self-sovereign money that they're going to be able to actually utilize in the real world or that will be a store of value. And you know, in my opinion, the Pepe's of the world, it's just like, I'm going to go back to this, but these communities, quote unquote, a community is only as good as the price. And it was the same thing with PFB communities last time. Like, I don't, you can be your turntable turtle or your, or your dickhead duck bill platypus or whatever the fuck it is.

But when that thing goes to zero, you're no longer your duck bill platypus. You're out of the community. Like it's over. So I get that. That's where I get lost here. And I'm not saying plasma is wrong. Those people do believe that, but like Pepe goes to zero or they still going to, or it goes down 99%. Is that still going to be a thought? Look, if the community goes, uh, spreads around and leaves of, of course the price will go down. I guess you're aware with Metcalfe's law, it's low, usually you say, yeah, okay. Well, there's another version, it's called Reid's law

and it talks about the value of a social network. It grows also exponentially, but faster and squared. And basically it states that the bigger the community gets, you have subsection of this community and that's why that the bigger the community gets, you have subsection of this community. And that's why the value of the community goes exponentially higher. And that's where I see the power of the PE. So the utility, especially the utility, and I'll go to Rodney. We have Joa.

Joa, you were there. Joa was converted live on MySpace, by the way, Scott, a while ago, if I remember correctly. Joa was a PE. Yeah, we did a Pepe space a while ago um and joa was there and and he was the the the anti-meme coin guy and joe is one of my favorite panelists he's a regular speaker on this space and political spaces when he was converted live to uh to the meme coin community and he i think he articulated the the the utility really well um Joe, before going to Rodney right after, can you tell us how would you define the utility of meme coins?

Yeah, look, yeah, I was in your space and I heard some people talking about Pepe and then I spent eight hours with them. And, you know, I started to think to myself, like the hardest thing to do in crypto is to build an audience. So then I'm like, what if you focus on the hardest problem first, right? Which is to build an audience so then i'm like what if you focus on the hardest problem first right which is to build the audience and i'm like there's actually nothing wrong with that when you come and think about it right it's okay yeah they don't have the utility but are there

a group of people that want to do something first right they don't know what that is yet but they're willing to come together and band together and do something. And I said, look, if Pepe audience holds together doing the bear, then this is going to become something. So I kept my tokens because they kept holding meetings. They kept holding AMAs. They didn't go anywhere. And they weren't – look, typically memes, I hate them because they're like bags pump your bags and pepe wasn't doing that pepe was like guys take profit like get out if this is life-changing money for you like this is not they weren't like uh pumping

bags and you don't you no longer have those those tokens that do well that you know the creators holding like the huge bag of tokens nowadays the memes that are working are ones that they renounce the contract um so look if they want to focus on the hardest problem first and they're able to do that then if they could do the hardest problem they're going to be able to do the easier problem afterwards and that's kind of the way I've been looking at me the question the question I have and then we'll go to Rodney, but the question I have is when you buy a token, so let's go to Faith, for example, which is a project we invested in, incubated. So you buy the token Faith Tribe,

and then you could use that within an ecosystem to participate in creating your own fashion brand. Okay, that's the utility of the token. Now, some people will buy the token, they expect it to go up. You buy a token within a game, some people buy whatever pixels or any other token, they expect the token to go up in value, but others are buying it to play the game. When you buy a Pepe coin or any other meme coin, I'm genuinely curious, are you buying it to feel like you're part of the community and for the

price to also go up for you to make money which again there's nothing wrong with that anyone that says you shouldn't be making money is just being an idiot so are you buying it purely to make money because or is the being part of a community feeling like you're part of the community because you actually own that token is the utility even if nothing else is built on top of it yeah i mean it's it there's there's all kinds of people, right? There's people there that are just there to shill, make money, get out. And there's people there just like, look, just like any group. Like, Mario, you with your group of friends, or even me and Scott when we were like 16,

we have our own lingo, right? We have our own way of communicating. Most tribes haveingo, right? We have our own way of communicating. Most tribes have that, right? So yeah, a lot of people confuse their language and say, oh, these meme coins are all about community. It's about the vibe. It's about the culture. No, it's really like, can this group stick together through highs and lows and then eventually

vote on doing something, right? And that's kind of where these tokens go. The other day, I was on a space for Bobo, which is kind of partners with Pepe, and Charles from... I can't believe I forget the name. Cardano. Cardano.

He was on there for two hours. He's been going on that space over and over. Did he say Bobo? Yeah, Bobo. hours and like he's been going on that space over and over bobo yeah bobo um yeah and i love i love that group because charles keeps going there and he's like a wealth of information which was insane so i want i want to even though i'm playing devil's advocate the next question i want to go to rodney's what to look for when you're looking for meme tokens let's say i want to get deeper into the ecosystem so i've kind of dipped my toes with k9 finance it's an investment we made a few days ago which kind of building again the lidar for the meme community um and then now we've we've we've got at least for the first time our a meme

token that we hold and then we were talking about because i know the team behind it but that this is so why i went behind bender dog which is the – I'll give him another shout-out as the partner for this space, is I don't understand what makes a good story or what doesn't make a good story. I know renouncing your contract is one good indicator. A fair launch is another good indicator. But again, this is something very alien to me, the meme community. So the only indicator I can look for is the team. So I know the team behind Bender Dog more than the story. That matters to me more than the story. So I'm pretty chill talking about them.

But beyond that, where are you, Rodney? You're there. Rodney, beyond that, so for people in the community that are like, hey, Mario, you don't need to convince us about meme coins. We don't give a shit what you're saying. We don't give a shit what Scott is saying. They're pumping 100x, 200x. We want to get into the ecosystem. What should they look for if they want to participate in a meme community or just buy a meme token? Just be direct. Yeah, absolutely. What's up, Mario? What's up, Scott? Thanks for having me. And I just want to say real quick that Pepe literally has no intrinsic value. And the truth is about most meme coins,

and it's okay. It's okay to accept meme coins for what they are. The sooner you do it, the better off you'll be. A lot of them are just for, they're here just for a good time, not a long time. I think everybody's chasing the Shiba Inu, Pepe, you know, bonk virus where they think everything's going to 10,000x, you know, 100,000x, when that's not the case. I got into the space in 2021 because of meme coins. So I'm fairly new to the space, but I've been making content ever since. And I kind of became orange peeled along the way. So obviously, you know, meme coins bring a lot of people in the space. I've always said, if you went on the street, you asked 100 people what Dogecoin is, they probably know. If you ask them what Ethereum is, they probably wouldn't know. At least a large percentage, a larger percentage would know what Dogecoin is. So I think the

sooner you understand that meme coins are just mostly the degenerate gambling space of cryptocurrency, that's OK. But if you're looking to get into some meme coins, I mean, the truth is you can use every single trick and tool out there that I use to kind of like, you know, prescreen these meme coins and nothing's 100 percent. There has been developers, fully docs, that will boldly, boldface lie to you. Like, it's just part of the game. So docs developers don't really care about that. You know, renounce contracts don't really care about that. The best things you can do is look for a market cap. I like to look for a market cap that's over at least a million because the truth is a

lot of meme coins are being created, you know, every 30 seconds, every minute over on the live new pairs. I mean, it's insane. A contract reader like Token Sniffer to make sure the taxes aren't insane, make sure it isn't a honeypot, those sorts of things. Make sure the contract is renounced so they can't change it because that does help. And make sure none of the wallets are holding an insane amount of the supply. So whoever, you know, deployed it can't just dump all their tokens all at once.

Look at the community. How are they? How is their presence on X? X is the biggest promotional platform when it comes to cryptocurrency. Not even close. So are they active on is their presence on X? X is the biggest promotional platform when it comes to cryptocurrency, not even close. So are they active on this platform? Who do they follow? Who follows them? How often are they posting those sorts of things? And then look at all their social media websites. Are they clean? Do they have all their links on CoinMarketCap, on DexTools? Is everything, you know, everything connected? And then look at definitely market cap to liquidity ratio. A lot

of people completely ignore that. Like you'll see a meme coin with a $10 million market cap size with 50K in liquidity. And no wonder why it's pumping off a one buy. So those sorts of things I really pay attention to. And use case is something that's a huge afterthought because the truth is, and I know Scott talked about this a little earlier, there's no use case for a lot of these things. There just really isn't, you know what I mean? And they say they're going to have some sort of use case down the road. They have some, you know, roadmap with some, you know, lofty goals. Never pans out. A lot of them. Right. And those roadmaps are usually just like a replica of something that already exists that's better that you don't need on that meme coin, right? Yeah, absolutely. Like you look at the top, even 50 cryptocurrencies are all kind of, you know, decentralized exchange, centralized exchange, stable coins, whatever, you know, same thing with meme coins, you know, whatever swap, ShibaSwap, PepeSwap, whatever swap, right? I don't really pay attention to that. The best thing you

can do, if it is unique, fine. I mean, maybe you can, you know, join a Telegram, join a Discord. But I think that's a mistake sometime because people like in cryptocurrency in general become super cultish and like you say anything bad and they call you like you know flutter or you know you know fighting their bags or whatever like you know whatever so i don't really like to join those communities too much i just pay attention to the news on x so those are some of the things i do to kind of you know get a better idea of what the project can do but at the end of the day pay attention attention to your bag, take your profits. Don't hold the bag all the way down to the ground, my opinion. So just, Joe, is there any other indicators that you'd look for before going

to Jason? And I want to get a legal discussion with Jesse and Carlo. That'd be interesting. Any other indicators or what are your indicators, Joe? Do you own any meme coins first, Joe? Joe, Joe, be honest. Joe, Joe? Joe, you've got to be honest. Joe, Joe. You, Joe. No, no, I'm not a big – I had some Doge early on. But actually, you know what? I did get gifted some pork because I found it and someone told me about it,

but I didn't actually purchase it directly. But I, I love it. I still follow it endlessly because the narratives are crazy and they're fun. And, but I've never, I'm just too, I'm too orange pill Mario. Joe, any, what are the indicators you'd look for? And what meme coins do you hold? Yeah, here it's not so much about the founders, Mario, it comes to memes it's it's who's involved so imagine you scott and ran decide to get behind a meme coin right how many people would jump in with you based on that and then let's say you have a hundred thousand holders now you're like wait a minute this is something

let's create like a vc token where you know all the projects that come to us, we're going to give an opportunity for the community to get involved with that as well. Like, that's what's happening. That's track wallets of people who are influential. And if they're buying a meme token, I jump into the meme token. I have like probably 20 that probably will never be worth anything. But then I have one that 1,000x is already. And that's kind of what I've been doing. I'm the same as you. I think I'd look for – this is exactly what I said earlier. I just look for coins. And when I was talking about Ben, I told you guys, I don't know the

story. That's not what I care about. I just care about the team. I look at people backing it and how much they have to lose. So I know that if a meme coin is backed by someone that has a whole business, a whole reputation behind it, they're not going to risk everything. They're not going to risk a business worth a hundred million dollars just for a meme token. But if you look at someone that's an up-and-coming entrepreneur out of nowhere, launch a meme token, that could become the next Shiba Inu, but it's just way too risky for me. I've never thought about the legal repercussions. We do have two lawyers that have been with us for a long time on the show. Jesse Carlo, from a legal perspective, for anyone launching a meme token or investing in a meme token, what should we know?

And we are asking two lawyers with an NFT profile for you quickly so they understand the ecosystem. Yeah, good morning, Mario. So unfortunately, I've got to jump into a meeting, but obviously you have the securities concerns, you have the collective interest in pumping the price of it that are always a concern. But I would urge you to zoom out a little bit when it comes to memes. When you look at memes, you have to remember, and you can go to the smartest thinkers in this space like Punk6529, who is a Bitcoin OG, who is an NFT legend you know, legend in this space, they look at memes as culture. And I

would, I would say that memes are the backbone of crypto culture. And the community, you even need to zoom out on that Mario, because it's not so much the community of any given token, as much as it's the overall community of crypto. I'll give you an example. Pepe, very famous meme. Matt Fury, the founder of Pepe, dropped an NFT collection this weekend. Full disclosure, I bought it because I just saw the obvious art and intrinsic meme value of it. But that did 4,700 ETH in a weekend in sales at a time when gas prices are through the roof and ETH NFTs are down. And that just gives you a glimpse into the power that memes have to proliferate community and message. I mean, it's obviously why people like Jack Butcher and Visualize Value have very brilliantly leveraged meme culture to create an incredible brand.

It's why I wake up every morning and post a little scale of justice, which matches my PFP, but in a different color scheme, because it is brand recognition and it is culture. And it represents what I would say is the overall arc of crypto so setting aside the the the the euphoria and of course the the dopamine drive of trading in meme coins i think you have to zoom out and look at them more as a cultural revolution unfortunately mario i do have to jump into a meeting but i'll listen as long as i can but but thank you for giving me time to share those thoughts i appreciate jesse i'd love you to jump in on that point as well yeah i, I mean, I don't have much interesting to say about the legal component, to be honest. I mean, most of the stuff is technically illegal, at least by current American security standards, which are still, you know, kind of adjusting.

We'll probably have ETF soon and then there might be a, who knows, you know, some pivot point at some point where we have coins like this that can be launched on places like Coinbase. But I mean, just culturally speaking, I think, you know, betting on memes, it's just kind of the natural accelerant of the technology, which is basically matching money to kind of social equity, which is what a lot of people have already done, right? People were already doing this on Instagram, launching their audience, right, to magnify products. You build an audience first, then you figure out a product, you sell it.

And now it's like, you can directly do that. And we were already trading in the currency of memes, right? If you're just posting a meme of yourself to get clout on whatever, or with your friends, you're already being like, okay, you know, I'm kind of part of this group. And now you can have the option to essentially gamble on that and say, well, I'm in on this meme first, I can also put $100 in it, tweet it out, of course, because I want to pump my bags. And then

it's kind of an accelerant of that. And so it's kind of a natural kind of part of this ecosystem, you know, obviously, Bitcoin is like gold, but every time you have a you have a giant bubble. And I think everybody, even the outsiders view crypto as not view it. It is highly volatile. Right. Even Bitcoin, like what Bitcoin is doing now. It's up in a way that no almost no stock could do along the same times. And it could drop to 57 and then go up to 100.

I don't think any of us would be shocked. I mean, the crypto people, the Bitcoiners would say there's no way it's ever going down. But, you know, just look at just zoom out and look at the chart. Right. It could go down to 60 in like a week and it wouldn't be that weird, which is a huge drop. And then it could go up. And this is the natural accelerant of that. I mean, when I told I told my sister recently, you've got to move some of your money into into the ETFs. And she saw them and she's like, they're already up big the past couple of weeks. I already missed it. And that's the way people view these meme coins. They just want to get in on the next thing because they know it's volatile. So if it's

going to be volatile, why get a 20 percent return, which is still amazing, right, on Bitcoin in the next year or two when you could potentially get a 200 percent return. And so, I mean, I think that's really what it is, right? When you had Facebook and everything blowing up, a lot of people didn't want to buy into Facebook. They're like, let me get the next, right? Shitty, you know, all the venture capital was going into, you know, crappier versions of whatever Facebook and Tesla and Uber were. And that's what you see when you have a bubble. And of course, those are all going to, those all, most of them went to zero, those startups. And of course, most of these meme coins are going to go to zero. But I just think the currency of crypto just makes it natural that, you know, that you're

going to bet memes. And also the friction is less. Like people saw the Bored Ape stuff, but it was hard. You had to create a metamask wallet. You had to figure out what OpenSea was. Okay, you can't buy WIF yet on Coinbase, but you will probably soon. At the very least, you can buy, you can buy a few things on there. And so even if you're willing to take a risk,

it's like all you need is a bank account and a Coinbase account. And now all of a sudden you can say, okay, I made 10 grand on Bitcoin. Let me put some on some lower coin play. So I think it's just a natural extension of that. It just seems that money, like my next question, Ben, I'm actually gonna ask you that question. It's like, I've got the privilege of, and I think it's just a natural extension of that. It just seems that money, like my next question, Ben, I'm actually going to ask you that question is like,

I've got the privilege of, and I think we mentioned it cause it was on the, on the sheet of what we could mention. So I hope I didn't mess up, but I know the team behind the project. I'm genuinely curious as to why, like you guys, like Ben,

can I just say briefly what you guys do or no? Yeah. I mean, we can probably cover it maybe from and thank thank you maria so uh there was a good question asked is uh what what are the main factors of a successful meme coin and to be honest we're going to identify a few uh you know one of which that many many actually don't pay much attention to is actually a ticker name because we know we need to understand that memes are driven by

uh communities right so like those you know recent meme that uh to be honest like we we we know who the people are we know who who behind the project is it's called salama uh not salana but salama but that project just because of its ticker had you know insane uh insane volumes and was very fairly distributed uh you know project uh just because of a ticker started to grow, picked up in the communities. So ticker name is important. Another thing that we would also definitely map out is the team behind it, but also the resources that are ready to put in behind it. Because as you know, it's all about exposure. Does the team have the right resources to get this exposure that is needed?

Because market is driven, right? People are mentioning X, Twitter things are going through X. If you don't have much exposure, then your project is not gonna be well known to people. So that is an important angle. How do you align this exposure? How do you get the reputation that you need

to get key opinion leaders to support you, to back you, to also have an idea that you want to drive this meme coin, not only on DEXs, this follows to a third thing that is important, but also to centralize exchanges, right? And so what we're seeing now as well, some meme coins that recently came out have substantial volume on radium on dex's uh you know but then maybe they're not even able to get on gate or mxc or you know following that q coin by bit and of course majorly you know hitting other tier one exchanges so that is also a big aspect because what we believe in is that if you don't eventually get to major centralized exchanges

yeah the only way historically and statistically is down, right? So that is because, you know, there are certain expectations that are coming in, number one, from the communities, and number two, of course, by being on liquid exchanges, because at the end of the day, you know, there is only a limit to liquidity that you can find on decentralized exchanges. So those aspects combined along with a very consistent exposure that the project needs to get by, you know, partnerships. For example, you know, we're going to have a massive partnerships were announced with the chain that we're, you know, not going to expose too much stuff, but there's something coming out. And the next day or so, we already also from our end, we've been,

we also merged with Twitter, sorry, with Near Protocol. So we did a bridge with Near, got supported by the Near founder. He retweeted us, got his full support, also working with Near closely on the angle of their support. So it's about exploring different type of exposure and partnership that you can get, you know, to get where you need it.

And it's a very, you know, if you don't do it quick, because the narrative of meme coins is short-lived, it's people's attention that like, you know, there's every single day, there's a new meme coin. And if you don't do it fast, if you're not able to execute things fast, then this is where you might have a problem by, you know, people, people thinking that, you know, they are not fulfilling their expectations, right? But in the end of the day, sir, go on i'll finish off i've just got a few questions on what you've said so i'm fascinated by this discussion because

we've spoken offline and i know what you guys do and like i know your kl network i know the projects that you guys work with and so it's just fascinating to see someone in my world like an incubator an investor and i don't know what more i could say um that's now launching a meme coin so you kind of we think alike we had what we talked we talked about projects you're investing in and strategies within our world when it comes to startups and now you've just got a meme coin that's doing pretty damn well you said the neo co-founder retweeted you guys um so so you talked about the team behind it being one important thing you talked about the resources that are behind it um but the last thing that you mentioned is that you got to move fast there's always a new meme coin can you just elaborate on that like exchange listings for example um and partnerships so you just got

to keep that momentum going so you got to keep seeing news and using news to keep the token alive or how does it work and then how do you work with kols with influencers. Yeah. So in terms of exposure and like constant, you know, constant marketing and B2B and partnerships, this is something that you need to be doing, you know, live. But the reason for that is like when you're in a kind of in a meme season sprint, we don't know how long it's going to be. It's going to be short-lived, long-lived. But, you know, as BTC picks up, then the first what follows tends

to be meme coins. Then liquidity probably goes into altcoins, et cetera. So you need to move fastest, number one. Number two, the competitiveness of going on centralized exchanges is becoming hard, right? Because the higher, the better the market is, the more there are projects that are potentially performing well, and the more projects are willing to list on centralized exchanges. So the, you know, the criteria on listing on those centralized exchanges, they're becoming much harder and much higher. So, for example, listing a couple of weeks ago, I'm not even talking about months ago,

but a couple of weeks ago, listing on, you know, some major centralized exchanges, even for meme coins was easier than listening today because then again, there's more competition, right? We saw a few, there was a few rock pools, you know, like that listed on centralized exchanges, you know, their opinion of, you know, their opinion of those projects, they just became much more careful with that.

So there's many aspects to that where, you know, you need to move fast on working with meme coins okay and then for for people that are looking for a meme coin the indicator what indicators from a because you gave us indicators if someone's launching a meme token yeah um so if someone's looking to invest so this is more for the audience rather than myself um the first one is i'm more curious about like what you know what you go through what went through your mind to launch this um for people looking to invest in meme tokens obviously big disclaimer risky as is very very important disclaimer but what indicators to look for um when you're looking at joining some

some meme token i mean the the those uh uh one of the indicators that was actually mentioned as well is is uh market cap um and social activity on twitter uh partnership that they have aligned uh you know how fast are they moving what are the volumes as well uh i mean people people also look into ta as well in technical analysis trying to see you, if it's too late, too early to join, how does the graph look like? Also, of course, you know, scanning the holders and standing, like, are there any significant holders that could potentially influence the price or not? So, like, those factors together, you know, they play a part. And, of course, the targets of people, right?

So there might be people that want a bit of a riskier play of moving towards like one million dollar market caps probably 95 percent of them will dump and uh you know you're probably going to lose your money going into very kind of very small market cap uh meme coins but then you know there might be you know less riskier plays although the whole meme is a very risky play but there might be a less risk risky play of going to market caps, coins investing that are already, you know, $30, $40 million, and assuming that those, you know, those meme coins can get it to major centralized exchanges. And also, probably those aspects I would consider important.

Let me go to the panel. Jason and Jahan, Jamali, I'd love your thoughts on the discussion so far. And I'm going to, you know, the questions I'm really curious about is, you know, what it would take to launch a meme token. And how do you get a meme token to be the value? What's Pepe's market cap?

These are crazy numbers. So their top 39 coin, their market cap, or is it their volume? It's 1.5 billion volume. It's going to give you an idea of the size of these communities. Why enter the space, Jason, Jahan, and what do you guys look for? Yeah, thanks for the opportunity to speak, Mario.

I think I have an iteration of what a lot of the speakers have said, but maybe packaged a little differently. So, you know, I'm looking for asymmetric return. We go to the market as like a Bitcoin fund. And some of the speakers have said people think they've missed Bitcoin, like it's run. But I look at these and I'll call them like community tokens or meme tokens. They're a little different than some of the other stuff that you're looking at. Because I see them as almost a marketing campaign for layer ones. So my thesis is to look at different layer ones and try to find the very best opportunity.

Where's the community focused? And where's the community focused? And where's the innovation happening? And when I say like innovation around meme tokens, you may scratch your head because like meme tokens have no use case. And that's a feature, not a bug. But look at Bitcoin. Bitcoin has ordinals. And ordinals are meme. You know, Taproot Wizards, for example, or whatever else, you know, whatever other meme token they're launching there. But it's pushed innovation, Mario.

Like, we now have ways to exchange these memes. There are wallets that have been produced. And it's pushed Bitcoin mining. And it's pushed and broken even the community because half the community doesn't even want this stuff. They see it as spam on the network versus the other side that's seeing it as a marketing campaign for Bitcoin. So I look at this meme attention economy as a marketing campaign, and you see it swing. You see some of the focus be on Solana, Layer 1, to Avalanche, to Ethereum, to even base, Coinbase. There's probably a blue chip meme there. It may be Brett. And Brett will expand in terms of its market cap. And Coinbase

and base chain will rely on the expansion of interest in brett to prove and produce interest in base so that that's really what i'm looking at i'm looking for asymmetric returns ways that i can outperform bitcoin and if i have to do it on another layer that's cool because maybe it'll push the technology and advancement and interest in each of these layers. Yeah, Jason, I completely agree with that. And Mario, thanks for having me up. I'm Jahan, for those that don't know. And, you know, a lot of what's been said here touches on a lot of key important things. My view of this, long before I was ever in digital assets, I, I spent most of my life understanding, um,

insurgent communities and understanding how people organize themselves in times of change, understanding how ideas flow through that. I mean, I was an intelligence officer long before I got into technology. And if you walk yourself down back down a macro thesis, are digital assets a revolutionary phenomenon? Are they going to do you subscribe to the thought that they use and yeah almost all the all the meme coins out there will go to zero but i don't think that's what you should be focused on i think you should be focused on the fact that some of them are going to stick and that as um you know jason mentioned as rodney mentioned as joa mentioned this is the gateway this is the this is how you capture attention because we're all talking about meme coins right now and i'll tell you what like you know many many many years ago

before i bought btc i bought doge and that is going to trickle down so it's um it's with that lens that we sort of look at it and yeah, I look at team too, but I also look at a phenomenon that can be, you know, engulfing to, so to speak. And at the end of the day, you need to spark joy. If what you, if that symbol of yours doesn't spark some degree of emotional response, either happiness, joy, and particularly when the market's up, everybody's happy. But if that still doesn't happen a little bit, when the market's in the gutter, right, then that's probably not going to stick either.

But this phenomenon is think about this. If you were if we were in 1968, and blockchain was out. And all of a sudden, a meme meme token called the peace sign was dropped, do you think that would have had an effect? Or back in 1789, if the Gadsden flag here in the United States, if tokenization was a thing back then so you can't ignore the phenomenon and then once you accept that the phenomenon is a legitimate one and a pathway and a rallying cry right and a flag of insurgency so to speak how do you how do you see that okay so how do you see that evolve once crypto becomes more mainstream like do you so now, meme coins are just a community. They buy the token.

They're passionate about the token. They made money great. And it almost becomes like a store of value when you become a top 50 coin. How do you... Can it evolve beyond this? Can you give us specific use cases? Yeah, it can. You know, here's the thing.

I hate to use the word gang but you know it or or a country club you could use as well but this is your this is your you know your group right and we live in an era of increasing transnational identity i didn't you know the way you identify these days is a lot more complex than it was 100 years ago for folks you identify in a variety of different ways now from the things you believe in, to where you were born or where you live now to the values that you share. It's not just like I'm an American or I'm British or I'm Muslim or I'm Christian. It's not that it's far more complex. And people are going to have multiple different

ways in which they identify. So you know what, some of these are going to stick around, because that's going to be your club ticket. That'll be your club token, right? Might be your tip money. So I see them sticking around some of them. Yeah, can I jump in for a second? Because I don't I agree 100%. Like, I don't think that these meme tokens, these, these meme tokens these these marketing tokens these community tokens go away actually because i i think i think bitcoin like and i said this back uh a long years ago guys in terms of bitcoin and in particular nfts or whatever they're going to be called are really really important because they're going to drive innovation on Bitcoin. I don't think ordinals go away.

I think this is a different phenomenon. And I don't think Pepe goes away. I don't think – I think Pepe on Ethereum is a huge, hugely important thing. And I don't know if Brett is the one on base, but I think it's hugely important. Mario, let me – Jason's exact – just really quick. He's exactly right. We're talking about symbols.

We're talking about Pepe. The total supply is $420 trillion, $69 billion. It's a symbol of cannabis and then a sexual position, right? And that's a $4 billion market cap, you know? And then you look at some other meme coins, like- Are you saying the sexual position is a $4 billion market cap? Excuse me, Joe, just clarify, please.

But I think the interesting part is, you know, then you look at some other meme coins and they're twice the market cap of like an Owens Corning, right? Charlie Munger is turning over in his grave, thinking about a company that provides almost all the roofing and industrial insulation in our country and these massive companies. And now you've got a meme token that's double that. I think the more interesting part

that it's not going away. I mean, look at someone like the Tezos Foundation, right? They're not a meme coin, but look at how many Bitcoin they're holding. These meme tokens potentially in the next five years are going to have the same war chest as the Harvard Endowment Fund. Like these things are just not going away and it almost doesn't matter what they turn into. But they're going to have enough longevity where it's like some luck is going to hit

and it will turn into something. And so people are just aligning themselves with these tribes, with these camps, with the memes are the most fun, and they're getting utility out of the community. And so I think that's what's interesting and why it's just not going to go away. So just kind of Scott going to tell you where I'm at when it comes to meme coins before going to, to, I think aCasa hasn't spoken yet. But, you know, I've just kind of

taken a U-turn similar to Ran. I think it would have been good Ran was here so I can brainstorm with him. So I'm not touching them and kind of being very critical in the last bull market. Joe, you were there and we were like the PIPA community loved to hate us. To now, obviously, backing the first project that's building utility within the meme coin ecosystem canine and more importantly uh the partner for the show today ben the dog is the first meme coin that we're um we've we've invested in or we got tokens in and we're part of that journey um and we believe in so i'm what we're doing on top of this is we're launching a meme coin show

as well and so we're going all in on this community. I know that it's going to be very risky. I'm just really worried because I know there's a, I want to mention, I see a lot of love hearts and claps. I appreciate that. But there's also a big risk that we're taking because at first there's a reputational risk, which is a lot less now than it was before. Like before the last bull market and the one before, if you touch meme coins, you're already in the dark side, you're a scammer. No one's going to respect you.

Now, you guys, Ben, you said the co-founder of Near Protocol retweeted you guys. It kind of shows that the sentiment around meme coins has changed drastically. Again, the team behind Ben the Dog, these guys incubate some of the best projects in the ecosystem, projects we're invested in. So it's a complete different environment to what we had previously and i think it just allows people like when you see other big names you know you said charles hoskinson was going in that other meme coin space the pepe or whatever i can't remember which one space and spending hours there joe i think you said that you just kind of see a lot of the ogs get into the space and no longer shy away from saying hey this is risky it's a

community you put money in you make money you lose money you know no one looks at a casino if you walk into a casino you become a fucking criminal casino you go in you make money you lose money i think meme coin is is similar but there's also obviously more to it than that in terms of being part of a community but i want to go back to the to the question um actually ben i'm going to ask you that question before going to see Casa. Is it beyond the community and beyond obviously continuing that energy and listing on this exchange, kind of using you as Ben the dog as an example, listing on this exchange and that exchange and that partnership and that influencer, is there anything beyond the community itself that's being built as utility or there doesn't

need to be any utility? The community is enough.io that that's a great question and i think someone someone in the round table was also able to summarize it well like a lot of projects make an attempt to claim that they're gonna you know do a massive utility that is going to come but i think the primary goal of of any meme coins at launch and especially in you know in the first kind of couple of months of their life is is to build up the community as much important because community is the number one thing right you have to get all the exposure all the k-walls all the region china korea international markets cis markets pretty much as much exposure that you need to make sure that everyone knows about you.

Once you're out there, once you're on all major exchanges, you can start building up things that you want. I mean, the natural fit for many meme coins is gamify that people attempt to work on. We also have a couple of games that we're building on top of Bandock that are going to be released very soon. You know, this is actually our first kind of announcement of that we just did here. So for sure, you know, you want to get as much utility to the token. But I think that should be it should be not the biggest emphasis of the meme coins. You know, meme coins is all about community. And that's it.

OK, so for example, building the game. Okay, I see Ed agreeing with you, so I'll go to Ed after CK. But you're saying, because you just mentioned it and asked me, but I mentioned it in a very nonchalant way. You said, hey, we're building games within the ecosystem. But I like the way you mentioned it is that because a lot of people make it seem like the game is like the end goal, like the whole reason a meme con should exist is because we have a game that's coming. You're saying, no, look, utility is good, but the meme itself,

the story itself is the utility and everything else is bonus. Is that how you're structuring it? Yeah, yeah. I mean, first, it is a community, right? If we wanted to be a gamified project, then we would call ourselves a gamified project, but we're not. And many, many attempts that were made by major meme coins, you know, like, I'm not going to name, you know, but like, we saw many tier one meme coins making attempts, you know, I'm not sure all the attempts that go

in the right direction, you know, not sure that the metaverse angle itself has evolved in a way that even projects building on metaverse is not related, have much traction or utility, right? So, you know, that is a statement to make, and we're just true. So I think the biggest focus is around communities. And while you do that, can also you know emerge in building you know different type of products around that not sure why a memecoin needs a dex you know or other defy projects but you know gamify seems like a very suitable product narrative for memecoins yeah and i like how you've owned up to this as well like the narrative itself is the the main utility and again like i'm going a lot to you ben not only you're a partner of the show i met ben in dubai in the hotel when i say ben the person speaking right now

and talking about incubation and partnerships etc and i was really impressed by what they do so kind of picking your brain on on on how you launch a meme token because you mentioned as well in our meeting like oh yeah by the way we also launch a meme token. Because you mentioned as well in our meeting, like, oh, yeah, by the way, we also launched this meme token that's doing XYZ, market cap, blah, blah, whatever, 30 million volume, whatever it is today, $10 million volume. And you mentioned it briefly in our meeting, and I kind of added it in my notes. So now digging deep into it, but doing it publicly is pretty cool instead of doing it in another face-to-face meeting in Dubai.

But let me go to Sikasaasa and then we'll go to Ed. Sikasa, I would love for you to add to the conversation. And we're kind of focusing on what brings utility to a meme token. And people in the audience are, you know, there's entrepreneurs wanting to launch a meme token. There's pump and dumpers that will probably launch it and rug it. And I wish I know who you are so I can kick you out. And there's investors that are looking at participating in meme tokens.

And then we'll go to Ed to get his thoughts on this. And we've got whale. Whale FUD is going to be fun. Thanks, Mario. Hey, Scott. Thank you, guys. The second I hear utility with a meme token, I'm out. I don't want key networks.

I don't want any of that shit. The whole point of it is, you know, they're not, there's, meme tokens are not built the same. I'm only focused on a certain pocket of meme tokens, which is the Pepeverse tokens that are rooted in 4chan and internet culture, expanded back to 2005, right? You've got, you've got, now at face value, they sound ridiculous. The names Pepe, Bobo, Bobo is the, Bobo, Snibbu, Mumu, Dodo. Those are the five, right? Now, obviously, they sound ridiculous, but these are personified market forces. Bobo is the bear, Mumu the bull market, Snibbu the crab market, and then Dodo is the black swan event. These are forces that we grapple with on a daily basis we're all in

the market these things make us feel shit they're rooted in 4chan so they're rooted in the freedom to transact they're rooted in internet culture pepe is used on the front lines in in hong kong as a symbol of freedom when when they're up when these people are protesting against an oppressive government it transcends language barriers, all this. Dude, this is a result that what's happening with the paradigm shift in memes is a result of all of us getting rinsed by utility and roadmap and what none of this shit ever comes true, man. What do these things make you feel and what do they represent? And when there's no team that you have to rely on, when you can verify on Etherscan that, you know, especially with Bobo and Pepe, the distribution is sound. Nobody's owning more than 2% of these projects. Rektakashi, who is a fucking meme lord back to since 2016 that has proliferated this bear market meme that has transcended, traversed way beyond crypto.

It's that that Bobo meme is in all different types of traditional trade by Twitter or X Slack discord that people use that meme and for some reason, you know, me, I'm a bull at heart, but on red days or red market days, way before any of this meme token shit came about, when I saw a Bobo meme, it kind of brings this level of comfort, like kind of just a self-deprecating. So you're essentially creating, this level of comfort like kind of just a self-deprecating so you kind of essentially

you're essentially creating like you're tokenizing that feeling of confidence but think about the way that these have been lever have been have been utilized to to uh push the freedom to transact to slam dunk on politicians like you think leading into an election that pepe and bobo are not going to play a transformational role in clapping back at people like elizabeth warren who are gunning at our freedom to transact and so when there is no no implied value no promise of future value which is the case for these meme tokens in particular the pepe verse ones it only relies on are the memes dank and do they make you feel shit and we have,000 plus memes that have been contributed by artists that span all corners of the fucking internet that are at our disposal at any time to just deploy and make people feel shit. their meme token that's just like birthed overnight that starts you know community community all right yeah everyone everyone in the community is great till number goes down pepe has already shown that

that is not the case there is when there's two decades of of substance of actual rooted meaning that is connected to them that is the differentiator between pepe and bobo and the other market force memes that are in the Pepe versus 4chan culture that extend way beyond any of this other meme of the week bullshit. So I do think it's important to draw the distinction between those two. Yeah, so what I'm going to do now, Ed, I've got a couple of questions. I want to make comparisons to BitClout and social tokens. I'll go to Wale, and then I do want to back and forth with Ben.

But Ed, do you remember how on BitClout, so for anyone that doesn't know what BitCloutcloud is essentially it's a way to buy tokens in people now it's called deso to deso blockchain social tokens you buy tokens in people and the reason i want to make that comparison ed you probably have other points to make but the reason i want to make that comparison is us so me you guys were pretty big names on the space like very very active in that ecosystem. And do you remember the period where we're trying to find how to create utility for people that buy our tokens? And then what ended up working is like really nobody bought those tokens for utility.

Not many people bought it for utility. Not many people bought it to be able to talk to you or participate in a Zoom call. But a lot of people bought it based on narratives like mario's blowing up or brian and ed are doing a daily video or jake paul won the fight and they buy the tokens in them so we kind of it kind of became like a meme-ish ecosystem where you buy tokens and people based on the narrative and the story and the feeling that you're part of mario's community or brian's ed's community or or uh jake paul's community or whoever else el Ed's community or Jake Paul's community or whoever else, Elon's community. Elon wasn't even on the platform, and he was the number one token throughout.

Yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, you go back to 2020 to 2021 with the NFT craze in the bull market. Before that, we had the ICO craze in, what, 2017, I guess. And I feel like it's kind of like the ICO craze again, but with less scams, less volatility, less utility. Maybe not less volatility, less utility and less promise. But I think that's a good thing because people aren't saying, oh, this is a really good business. You know, I'm going to buy this coin.

I'm going to make a ton of money because they have a really good plan behind them. Whereas now it's more like you're buying it for the community, kind of like the NFTs, how you kind of bought the NFTs for the community. In a lot of cases, I feel like we're kind of it's kind of like a mix between NFTs with the community aspect and ICOs with the, you know, I'm going to become part of this. So, so I definitely think I kind of share the same perspective as you, Mario, but also Seek Hazard, probably not quite as optimistic as Seek Hazard, but in the, in the 2021 run, I was starkly against meme coins. I thought they were stupid. I'm like, this is just the biggest scam ever. But now I'm now I've come around to them because I've realized that people know what these, for the most part, people know what these meme tokens are about. They're not, I guess you could say, investing into them with these hopes of a great business promise, a great business plan, hoping that they're going to make a ton of money because the business is going to succeed. It's more like I'm going to be part of this community and speculation is going to drive it in a lot of ways. And I want to be a

part of that. So I think, you know, anybody who says somebody who buys a meme token is a scammer, that's just stupid. Sure, there's going to be some meme tokens that are going to make promises and aren't going to fulfill those promises. There are going to be tokens that rug. There's going to be plenty of rug pulls, I'm sure, tokens that just collapse. But overall, I think it's healthier than the ICO craze. And to a lot of degree, maybe even the NFT craze. I mean, I would just add, before I dip down, like the inside joke of CT, like NFT Twitter is like, oh, they're not meme coins, they're culture coins, which is it's kind of a joke in the sense that it's trying to like redefine their stupid gambling addiction with credibility. But there's there's an element of truth there, which is you are buying.

Right. Like kind of like she was saying, culture and that culture is really, really rooted, at least right now. It might change in the future when memes, you know, scale and potentially the normies buy in. Again, once the normies buy in, remember at that point, there's so many meme coins, it probably levels out the much you can make. There's obviously a relationship. You don't get to make 100x without the downside risk, right? So the downside risk is 99% of these are going to fail. So you should be prepared on a couple of these to go to zero, right? You don't get the 100x. You can try to get some asymmetric risk, but you don't get the 100x if it's not a huge risk, right? The same with like a venture capital portfolio, right? You know 90% of these are going to lose, but you're hoping to hit one big. But the culture is really rooted in anti kind of

authoritarian, right? Like principles of lean libertarian. I don't think like, at least from my perspective, I'm not buying these saying, Oh, I'm going to hold this for five years and become a millionaire based on that. I'm trading them. I like say, okay, this, this one fell quite a bit. I think if I buy it now, I can probably make a little money in a week or two from now. That's how I look at them. I'm not, almost everybody does much in the culture.

No, I was just going to say, which because they're saying like the ones that have held that may, you might consider holding are these ones that have a little more of this. Again, you got to think GameStop. Like you just have to think about it in terms of it's a lot of crypto culture. It's not just anti-inflationary, which is part of it. It's an FU. It's literally a middle finger to the system, right?

It's so dumb that we're making money and not only are we making money we're doing it the way that every single person on wall street and every person would think is like the dumbest thing ever and that's part of the attraction of the culture and and like again when that when that roots in in like sometimes a more revolutionary culture as he caused was saying it can be more powerful, Pepe and Doge. And some of these are kind of like, OK, it symbolizes that movement in a more positive way. But we also can't deny I know nobody wants to hear hear it. No one ever does. But I don't care. You're going to fucking hear it. It skews very like crypto bro centric to culture.

Right. There's you could easily see a meme coin, a Taylor Swift type meme coin. But we don't see that yet. Right. You can't ignore the fact that, you know, Elizabeth Warren and Gary Gensler, who are kind of like anti-crypto, that the memes about them are Elizabeth Warren and Gary Gensler. I mean, this is about the most base lame. Sorry, I'm not offended as a as some kind of vocal liberal. I'm offended as a comedian. Like, this is the lamest form of right crypto jokes. And so you just have to like you just have to know that's what this is about. This is what people want to get

into. A lot of these people have made a bunch of money on Bitcoin saying F you to the system and they're doubling, tripling down to it. And that's a big part of the culture. That's just the reality. So, Walefied, we've done a lot of spaces together. What's up? What's up, man?

What's happening in meme land right now? How is this bull market compared to the last one when it comes to meme coins? It's so exciting, man. Like last bull one, there were more uncertainty about meme coins. Like people bought it and they were like, ah, we have to buy utility coins

because that's the thing. But this time around, like everyone know that meme coins are going to be around. And yeah, I bought a lot of meme coins and obviously many of them go down and but i've been lucky and have a lot of them go up so i've hit on hit on many of them but what do you what do you look what do you look for what do you look for in buying meme coins like i i did i talked earlier i don't know if you're listening i talked

earlier about the team and that's like the only the main indicator i look for like what's the brand behind it so i think there are many different variables. Okay. So one of them could be, okay. If you know a dev that have made multiple meme coins in the past that are successful, okay. Maybe you want to follow him. Right. So, so that's one of the one I can have. I know some of them and they tried to make the good ones that that tries to be the Shiba Inu. Um, sadly we have a lot of meme coin farmers so they're just making a bunch of coins just to extract eat from you so so that's the one you want to try to stay

away from but in general you want to just i'm not sorry well i might jump in just for the audience so so meme coin farmers are essentially people that will it's like it's exactly a pump and dump so what happens they launch a token, various more market cap, everyone just waits for it to dump. And you got to jump in before it dumps and make money. And there's always going to be someone holding the bag. Is that what you're talking about? And there's people known to just launch these.

I remember them in the last bull market. Yeah, there are developers that people know are farmers. Okay, so they have a ton of money. They make a bunch of volume on the meme coins, but the meme coins fail. And we have seen that now during the Matt Furry trend right now, So they have a ton of money. They make a bunch of volume on the meme coins, but the meme coins fail. And we have seen that now during the Matt Furry trend right now. Like you have a bunch of these meme coins spawning out of these characters by Matt Furry.

And many of them are failing. I have personally, like sometimes I just throw eight in here and there and I kind of forget I bought it. But yeah, some of them go down and some of them go up. So yeah, community, developers. There are many different variables depending on how, like if you know the dev or check the community and so forth. Yeah. Where's Ben?

Ben, you're there as well. I don't know if I can call you by yeah go ahead something we got yeah with ben he was talking about with utility and and the header is our meme coins the next big thing and and the reason for it to be the next big thing is pretty simple like if you think of crypto as a business if if you're the business owner, if you run a store, you have to figure out what is your demographic? Who are your buyers? Who is going to buy your coin and for what reason? And meme coins are so simple to understand. You don't have to deposit into ave um stake this and that it's just so simple you buy something you believe you up ben i love how direct you are ben all right so so

let's let's go back to like just me sitting you and you sitting in a cafe like a few days ago and brainstorming so now i'm a holder of Brenda Dog. What's the plan? What's the strategy like? Because if we're talking about a project we're both incubating, I know exactly what the strategy is like. I know exactly what happens next. So now it's a meme talk. What happens next?

What happens during a bear market? What happens over the next few days, weeks, and months? How do you keep that momentum? How do you get – is your goal to get to like the Pepe level? How do you get to that level? Because obviously it's like one in a million chance of getting there. Yeah. Thank you, Mario.

I mean, the goals are huge. You know, we will do our best to achieve them. For us, it's mainly here as the whole team that is behind it. Actually, I'm just sitting with around 10 people that are next to me. Everyone is working on this meme from various angles. It's just a funny journey. What are they doing, Ben? What are they doing, man?

I know your team. I know where your office is. Who do you have? I'm curious. Right now, I mean, Ben is next to me, obviously. Yes. Yes. really kind of curious right now i mean ben is next to me obviously yes yes and and obviously well they're just drafting an announcement that is going to go live in around it's already live so okay so we just uh partnered with solana phone doing the drop uh on uh for solana saga phones

we actually one of the few coins that ever did that. Bonk was one of them, right? So, yeah, so they're just going, just went live now waiting for Solana also to retweet

from the angle. Let's see if we can get, you know, some other prominent Solana figures to also, you know,

retweet and engage posts. So let's look at that. But, but a lot of things to come. So, a lot of exposure of partnerships to come. We partnered with Hot. Hot is the number one on Day Prodar.

It's a dApp built on Near. So we partnered up with them, did a massive job. I think we have tens of thousands of holders on Near, on Bendog, because we're cross-chain both kind of solana and near so we have massive exposure there that's why the near founder or near co-founder they retweeted us and and kind of supported us so uh more listings to come more changes to come and you know drive it as hard as we can and then we see how it goes and how does uh i'm just going through your twitter i'm trying to see the announcement as hard as we can and then we see how it goes. I'm just going through your Twitter.

I'm trying to see the announcement. So for someone that wants to hold the next Pepe, how do you get to that level? I know it's a very, very ambitious goal for anyone that wants to get to the Pepe level or the Doge or Shiba Inu level. But what did they do that worked so well? How did Pepe become Pepe? I mean, the whole concept of Pepe was great, right?

So it was the whole culture behind it, right? So it's literally evolved. At the time when the market was a complete shit, you know? And also that kind of culture brought Pepe where it stood, you know? And of course, most importantly is that, you you know was a team able to execute correctly you know were they able to move very fast on things but I mean it exploded right so I think one of the main kind of success the end kind of cherry success of paper was a Binance listing right and to get there you need you know you need as much volumes as much exposure as possible to And to get there, you need as much volumes,

as much exposure as possible to get to where you need because you need to end up with the most liquid exchange. Yeah. Okay, so obviously the epitome, and that applies to any project. So in the startup projects, so we were talking earlier about Pixels and Portal before we got into the meme coin discussion. And those are both Binance projects,

Binance Launchpad projects. So the end goal, it's like Binance is the reward for any project. This is the feeling of, hey, we made it. What does Binance look for to list a meme token? I mean, the number one stats is how many own chain holders does a project have it's not only related to binance but pretty much to any major centralized exchange right so uh that's probably you know the number one thing that i would look at at meme coins is how many own chain holders what's the market cap you know how engagement is the how engaged is the community

uh who's been supported by? Is it supported by millions of people, hundreds, thousands of people? What's the scale of the community? So that is pretty much one of the most important factors that the exchange probably looked at, alongside with the volumes and retail hype around the project. And how well do influencers work for a meme project? So for anyone that wants to launch a meme token, and again, we're not talking around the project. And how well do influencers work for a meme project? So for anyone that wants to launch a meme token, and again, we're not talking to the farmers

that want to launch something for a few days or hours or weeks, and that's it. For someone that wants to create something like Bender Dog or a similar project, what are things that work really well? Because you guys, obviously, you've done pretty damn well. I don't know when you launched. Let me go back to your token but you launched um all right you launched it 28th of february uh yeah so so

it hasn't been one month it's been less than a month you're already at um a 30 million dollar market cap and you got today nine and a half million dollar volume what are some things that work just for other entrepreneurs other other projects to learn from so you asked about k wells and i would say that one of the best uh one of the best ways to work with k wells and immune coin like this is to is to let them let them let them in on this and show them this coin relatively early right so that they so that and explain what you're doing with it and explain that you know because there's a lot of projects what they end up doing is they end up giving k wells a big a bunch of bags right and they give them a big bags and these bags have become very hard to control

so this is a mistake that a lot of projects made in the beginning so the best way that we see was that we saw was to kind of let people buy in naturally and then continue pushing as they go on. But you can only do that if you have a certain relationship with major care walls in the space where you know that you could be trusted. This is not a rug. You're planning to run this hard. So they know that you're also putting your reputation on the line

by sharing this project with masses. this hard you know so they they know that you're also putting your reputation on the line uh by you know uh sharing this project to his masses yeah and most of the k-walls that you see supporting us are doing so naturally because they bought bags themselves at early stages and there weren't even uh you know people that were contacted by the team yeah okay so you have k-walls that will actually just just buy the token and start shilling it themselves, even without you partnering with them? That was our entire marketing strategy, for what it's worth. We have a no-influencer policy. Yeah, so let's see.

Some people have no-influencer policies, and you can't stop people from shilling naturally a bag that they own. That's fascinating. And how important is a store... It's the best way to having a 100% man having a non-influencer strategy just having influencers buy it themselves and talk about it yeah i mean yeah you could say that hey guys we supported this we are also doing this uh you know if you guys interested you can buy and consult so it just becomes like a movement you know any meme coin is a movement and also it's literally people uh pushing their own bags because they bought in as well and they want this to grow and they want

success for this you know so that that is the best way you know like any type of paid activities where you're like here is some used tea for you here's some that that's like doesn't really work out well to be honest so we're kind of avoiding this stuff only natural building up communities building up hype so uh uh yeah and then how how important is the story and what's the story behind sorry i'm gonna go to you in a bit but ben um it just and as well ben is the partner of the show as well so i appreciate you guys uh partnering with our first crypto town home meme coin show ever so um ben how important is the story because you said something earlier is that the narrative is really important is it yes

all right jump in now yeah all right go ahead ben i was asking you your question was again sorry i couldn't hear you well so you So you said something earlier about the narrative, the story being important. You talked about Ben the dog story. I've got actually in my document, like the brief that either you guys said or the team wrote, it's all about the story of Ben the dog. So I'm just going to read it out.

But then my question is, I'm going to read it out. But for me, like this is not the stuff that I can't relate to this at all. Inspired by the viral mobile game Talking Ben, which was captured the hearts of millions. Talking Ben returns in the form of ben dog a viral meme coins that ignites childhood memories and nostalgia for people worldwide i remember as well we had i did a big meme coin space so not crypto town hall separate um i don't know if scott i didn't tell you actually that one we did a big crypto meme coin space on uh with k9 oh they hosted it and i hosted it with them two days ago three days ago two days that i missed that so sad yeah no it was actually it was actually

really interesting we had the shib shiba inu co-founder come on um apparently he doesn't speak publicly and for the second time ever he spoke publicly but what he did he doesn't speak himself he like had an ai voice and the music and like i listened to it and And obviously, I couldn't relate because I'm not from the ecosystem. We had other names on there as well, like from the meme coin community. And it literally felt like us having some of our finance, having someone like Peter Schiff on stage, we just want to sit there and just chat to him and really enjoy chatting to him. We have Bill Ackman jumping on and giving you a spiel about why silicon valley bank collapsed and

everyone's just sitting there listening um or elon coming into a space everyone's just obsessed you just want to listen to what elon has to say kind of sounded the same when we had this guy and a few others um in the space that some of you guys might know them but i don't so shaitoshi's the guy so shaitoshi what is this he said the recording was all about a story and why the movement is so important. So I think the story of a meme coin is a lot more important than I give it credit. That's what I'm trying to understand from Ben.

Ben, and then Jahan, I want to go to you as well. It seems everyone's agreeing with what I just said. Why is the story so important? I thought people are just buying the token because, hey, the team is solid. You know, the distributor, maybe the sphere distribution, there's some good influences backing it. How important is a story to a meme token? Yeah, I mean, the most important thing, I think, is the story, right?

Because that's the story. It's the most fun thing, right? So everything follows. The whole meme coin concept is about having fun, right? So can you unite people under the concept that you are pushing? And then Bandog is a famous game that has hundreds of millions of downloads played by hundreds of millions of people. So it is a very popular game, and a lot of people can relate to it.

So, Tense, we kind of picked that. And I see some great names as well out there that played, where their concept played massively. People could relate to that just because of the branding and name so that i believe is uh is is crucially important oh sure you just by the way i'm just looking at your talking now you did hit an all-time high for your talking so congratulations thank you we just uh bridge 40 minute market cap on our salon phone partnership oh cool people seem to be relating to what you're saying um i do let me go to to jahon and then whale and others kind of start wrapping up but ben just to kind of give the audience one

thing on on why i chose bento and as i said earlier i i met the the founding team again ben i don't know how the meme coin world works like what you guys keep as confidential what you guys share but you see it's on the deck on the document that i got but i met the team they're in one of the best crypto incubators that i've met in a while we could be working together they mentioned the meme token in passing i didn't even know they're coming on the show today i woke up what 30 minutes before the show and the team called me like hey mario there's been the token that's going to be the partner for the show today i know that name and that's because the meeting i had with the founder of the incubator and he mentioned it in passing. So that

was the only thing I needed to know. I'm happy because I know what they've done with other projects that they've incubated. So I'm like, all right, let me take a risk in my first meme token with these guys that I know the team pretty well. So that's why I chose the token that others in the audience might be looking at other indicators and they might love the story, they might love the KOLs backing them, they might love the announcements they're doing, the NIR protocol partnership, or the NIR co-founder call to retweeting you guys. But for me, that was the indicator. So, Jahan, I'd love to get your

thoughts on what's been discussed so far. Let's start kind of rapid. Yeah, no, definitely. Thanks again, Mario. I yeah narrative narrative is everything and we found it to be best when it's crafted in real time by the community and that's sort of where our um unpaid influencer strategy started to pay off because what we discovered is that that's where the content came from the content came from that story and within that we started to see community projects just sort of emerge amongst themselves and that became our marketing force you know we had nine wells in nigeria all right we built not like not us like a team not team stuff this community stuff this whole thing was a fair launch for us um and that was a

community just group source project from a few of our folks but several weeks later mr beast discovered this phenomenon i don't know if you saw then all of a sudden he had however many millions of views he has on his episode so at the underlying thing of all of this what we look for and what some folks do look for is you want something that'll last beyond your token. And you want something that'll last beyond you, right? If you can get something to stick, it's bigger than your project is. And that's where I'll leave it. And I love that you guys are taking a look at this.

I think it's a really important phenomenon. I think it's only going to continue to grow. Scott, we're in the meme coin world, my friend. We're in the meme coin world. The first meme coin space on Crypto Town Hall. I did my first one two days ago. My one went fucking epic. This one is a great discussion. I'm enjoying it. I think it went well. Now we have the meme coin show launching. I don't know if we're doing it on YouTube or on Spaces or both. I have no idea. But we're in the meme coin world, bro. Scott, what's going to happen to your brand now, man? You're a meme coiner.

Dude, I'm meme coin adjacent. Just because I sit next to dudes who meme coin doesn't mean I'm meme coin. I'm sure I've sat next to some horrible people, but it doesn't mean that I get to gain their attributes through osmosis.

So, whale, go ahead. I'm a meme coiner. I can't say I'm a meme. I'm not, it doesn't mean that I get to gain their attributes through osmosis. So whale go ahead. I'm a meme coin. I can't say I'm a meme. I'm not that. Yeah. I'm a meme coin. I think Scott has some meme coins as well, or I don't know, maybe you're done with it, but, um, yeah, I think the narrative is absolutely everything. Um, you have that dog thing that is a game or something. I've seen it before you're talking with it for kids right and you had uh crypto banter or or ran talking about hemele like vitalik's cat uh so that's like this one i mean that's the narrative like you don't need anything else this is just the captain metallic on the blockchain like do you want to buy it what did what did ryan what did ryan talk about on this show did he have like a meme coin partner no no no no he talks about it almost daily him and the other guy i

don't know the names of them but but from crypto banter they talk about hemele vitalik buterin's cat so that's basically it like it's nothing else it's just a cat and uh if you if you hold that you hold that um but but yeah the narrative is extremely important because if you just have a shiba floki baby in you like you just make something up, you have to differentiate yourself. Like you have to be different from the others. Like, I don't want to shill, but it's trending right now. But I'm on Byte, which is like a Grok dog, like the first AI dog. So that's like the narrative, right?

If you go to Grok and just type Elon Musk's AI dog, he will talk about Byte and tell you stories about Byte. So you need to be different than other coins. As I said, you can't just be a derivative and just a copy paste and you have nothing different. Similar to Pepe, that was also a different thing. It was the first frog. Everyone or many people knew about it

from the past. But yeah, it was usually all about dogs and then frogs. You know what? I usually all about dogs and then frogs, yeah. You know what? I'm curious what I want to happen, Scott. I want Ran to choose his own partner of a meme token. This should be so fun.

I'm actually going to tell him. You're not going to play the game, Scott, because you're going to fuck it up. But I want Ran to choose a token that he's going to partner with or work with or have on the show like I have Ben the dog. And then me and him compete. I get Ben the dog and then me and him compete.

I get Ben the dog and he has his, and we see which one does better. So Ryan will be with us. He didn't, he forgot. You can, Jahan can pitch me. Jahan can pitch me a meme. I trust him. On the next, on the next meme token, we get like, maybe we can get some meme tokens to pitch Scott. You choose one of them. There'll be your partner. They have to give you some skin in the game. Either you invest or something. And then you have, I have skin in the game with Ben the dog. You'll have your own one.

Scott Rand has probably a million of them, but we'll, yes. Are you saying that as an American, I should take payment in a meme coin token and then publicly discuss it and get Kim Kardashian by Gary Gensler right up the. Sorry. Okay. No, sorry, man. Cool. Cool. I'm really glad i joined this you know it's great don't tell emmy don't tell me if the police are listening that was him he lives in dubai don't worry scott they own the meme coins too buddy trust me let's go let's kind of wrap up joe any final words and

then i want to kind of wrap it up with ben joe i wrote in this casa go joe yeah i mean look i wrote i wrote scott a couple months ago. I don't trust Solana because I know how Bonk was built, and it was a lot of the VCs to kind of try to save Solana, right? And I was wrong because

what they did is they're using meme tokens, like Ben is probably going to become Nier's weapon to attract users, to build community. So like Sui, for example, which I think you've had Evan up here from Sui, they suffered because they never did an airdrop. So everyone was like, no airdrop, no community. Well, then they launched FUD and they got all the VCs behind it and they're pushing and Sui is pushing FUD and look at Sui, it's performing well now And they're pushing. And Sui is pushing FUD. And look at Sui.

It's performing well now. They're getting community. So some of them are just natural internet communities that already exist. Hold on. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry, I got finished. Sorry, I'm not finished. Sorry, I have a bad habit of interrupting.

And some of them are actually tools that the chains now realize, hey, besides an airdrop, there's another tool we have to build community, right? And that someone mentioned Brett, that's what Brett's going to be on Coinbase for sure. And that's kind of what's happening. You have two different ways to use memes, but all of them build community and it's a way to do it without doing an airdrop. Yeah, that's actually a really interesting point. The meme talk is used to build a community for a protocol. C. Casa, Rodney, final quick words, and then we'll kind of wrap it up with Ben.

And what's next? Yeah, thanks. I would just say that, and this doesn't apply to people that are like traders. I'm not a trader. I'm investing in things that I believe in. So if you're chasing the next shiny meme of the week, GGs, I hope you get max gains. But I've got a bit of good news and bad news. The bad news is there is no next Pepe. There is no next Bobo. These are the most important symbols on the internet. And that's just a fact. When it comes to the good news, when you look in relation to market cap to any of the other top performing meme coins last cycle, you had Doge hit 70 billion market cap. Shiba hit 40

billion. Floki, Elon's dog, 8 billion. Baby Doge, a derivative of Doge, 2 billion. Okay. These are all relatively topical memes that don't have two decades of substance and are ingrained in freedom to transact and internet culture, Silk Road, all the things that have brought crypto to where it is today. So I would just offer people the opportunity to just consider a $4 billion market cap for Pepe, just a little over what Baby Doge was able to achieve. Bobo is at $100 million. $100 million. The disrespect is crazy.

These are the most important memes on the internet, period. And so there is still ample time to correct course and recognize the memes that actually mean something when it comes to why we are here and why we've sat in the mud for two years in a bear market and showed up every day, a lot of us, because we love this space and we recognize the innovation and the potential here. And I think aligning with things that actually have ingrained meaning and roots from where this all stemmed from is an important distinction to make and to not get extracted out of for the next shiny object that may get max gains for a little bit, but it's not going to stand the course of time.

Rodney, a final quick word. And then Ben, I've got an idea. We can wrap it up with this idea that I have go ahead Rodney yeah, yes sir real quick on the influencer thing I think there's a give and take you've seen projects like Miro

who are absolutely killing it spend a lot on influencers but then you see influencers talking about other cryptocurrencies popular ones because it helps them with engagement grow their platform and those sorts of things as for, you know, the top meme coins and the next Pepe when it comes to symbolism maybe there won't be the next Pepe, when it comes to symbolism,

maybe there won't be a next Pepe. But when it comes to top meme coins, there's definitely going to be meme coins that blow SHIB, blow Pepe, blow Doge out of the water. Cryptos start early. We saw it with Bonk. We saw it with Whiff. We saw all these with these Solana meme coins. So that's what I want to point out. There's going to be another top meme coin. And as soon as we start really realizing what meme coins are and accept them for what they are and realize that not everything is going to be the next pepe or shib or doge or anything like that the sooner we can get on they're here for a good time not a long time the vast majority of them protect your bag look out for number one and take your profits so that's what i got to say thank you so much mario

not at all i'm gonna actually scott just dropped off uh or he glitched out again i want to try to bring it up because i've got a great idea and this is a challenge to ran so ran missed today's space he's gonna be back in the later this week or monday just because of the time change uh daylight savings so the space started earlier today for us for me and ran but the the um the idea that i have is i mentioned it earlier is i'm going to partner with ben so i think we're pretty good at this like we had ben and you guys just hit your all-time high today k9 which is not a meme coin but the first meme coin you know utility being built on top of a meme coin ecosystem we did a space for them two days ago and they hit their all-time

high in that space so i think i'm going to win that challenge with ran where we i chose i'm going to choose ben the token because i know the team behind it ben the dog sorry and then he chooses one and then me and him just kind of compete obviously and first luckily i'm not an american secondly very damn important as i put the disclaimer in every one of my tweets when we talk about projects we invest in i put a massive disclaimer you might read out the disclaimer that i write in every one of my tweets. And these disclaimers are in projects that we invest in, projects like actually building a product, businesses. They're incubating. Again, the guy behind Ben the Dog knows exactly what I'm talking about because they incubate projects as well. But I put a disclaimer that says the following. There it is. Where is it? Hold on. I'm going to try to find it. But OK.

No, that's not it. So I put a massive disclaimer. And it says she's like, do your own due diligence. Any investment is going to be risky, especially when it comes to crypto. So there's this guy. We are investors. And all investments have inherent risk, especially in crypto. This is definitely not financial advice.

So don't be lazy and do your own due diligence. Now, I put that disclaimer in tweets about projects that we invest in. Now, if you're talking about a meme coin, I'd want to make the disclaimer about three times as long. Be very, very careful about any meme coin you invest in. The risk is always going to be very, very high, obviously high risk, high reward. But, you know, I'm taking that risk and I'm putting my bet behind the team, behind Ben the Dog. And I'm curious to see if Ryan is going to accept my challenge and choose his own meme token.

But Ben, let's chat offline and I'll chat to Ryan as well if he's up for that challenge. And we'll go head to head with whatever. Probably Ryan will choose some crappy project and he's going to flop. I know for sure. But whatever token he chooses but Ben the Dog

what are your plans moving forward any final words man I mean we just we just got the challenge so we happily accept the challenge if it's going to be

accepted from the other guys so happy to do that and happy to prove that we can win so a lot of plans to come so hopefully

it's just the start of our journey cool man well it was a pleasure to meet you in Dubai didn't expect you to be on the show today but it was actually a really good chat a lot of plans to come. So hopefully it's just the start of our journey. Cool, man. Well, it was a pleasure to meet you in Dubai. Didn't expect you to be on the show today, but it was actually

a really good chat and seeing what you guys are working and how you're building a meme token and doing pretty damn good at it in less than a month. So hopefully it pays off well. For the audience,

we're going to do meme coin spaces, more meme coin spaces. We're in the midst of a bull market and trying to understand the ecosystem. For projects, for anyone that wants to launch a meme token,, more meme coin spaces. We're in the midst of a bull market and trying to understand the ecosystem. For projects that I want, for anyone that wants to launch a meme talk, but more importantly

for people that want to participate, because whether or not we're going to talk about it, you're going to participate anyway. It was a great discussion. Really appreciate it. We'll see everyone again about same time tomorrow. And Ben the Dog, thanks a lot for sponsoring the show today. Bye, everyone. Appreciate it.

Thank you, guys.