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Speaker A: Are meme coins better or worse than the attempts at legitimacy that scams or accidental frauds have been? Ledger? That's a question to you? Welcome to bankless, where we explore the frontier of Internet money and Internet finance. And today on bankless, we explore the frontier of meme coins. You can't seem t... |
Speaker B: Thanks for having me, David. |
Speaker C: Cheers. |
Speaker A: And of course, Brian Krosgaard, aka Ledger from up only fame. Also ledger cast, also his own project Flip XYZ, and also the only crypto person who lives in the state of Alabama, Ledger. Welcome back to Bankless. |
Speaker C: Hey, that's not true, actually. There's. There's pretty strong crowd here. |
Speaker A: Name three more. |
Speaker C: I'm not doxxing Dox. |
Speaker A: Three more. |
Speaker C: There's a y'all remember Messi from. He's gone. He's gone private over recent years, but he's in Alabama. And there's several more. But I won't go any deeper. |
Speaker A: All right, guys, we're going to talk about meme coins today. Ledger, you were putting out some tweets the last couple of weeks, talking about how you just can't get on board the meme coin train. I was listening to Steven here on his podcast, alfalfa, talking about the merits of meme coin, and I kind of want ... |
Speaker C: Yeah, I guess that crypto has been an experiment forever. You know, the vast majority of coins do begin as some form of experiment and sometimes with a degree of pointlessness. However, I think when we've seen the most success with coins, there's been quick, like, community gravitation towards, like, somethi... |
Speaker A: Steven, did that Stoke any thoughts on you? |
Speaker B: Yeah, a lot of thoughts. I mean, I feel like I used to be like ledger for sure. Like when I first entered this space maybe like eleven years ago now. I guess as an investor I thought my job was to be really smart, right? And like oh my God, there's going to be this stuff that will change the world. And if I ... |
Speaker C: Not entirely. There's a scarcity element to bitcoin, which is part of the idea. And so one element is, it's a better idea, and the market cap proves it. The capitalist environment proves it. When you look at one market cap versus the other, the forever supply or relatively forever supply of dogecoin has been... |
Speaker B: I would probably make the exact opposite argument, to be honest. I think one of the downsides of the sort of bitcoin like scarcity thing, I mean, I object to this idea that scarcity just makes something inherently valuable anyway. But even assuming it does, what it does is it creates an incentive for hoardin... |
Speaker C: You just made the exact argument of a Fed inflationist for targeting 2% inflation or whatever, like some minimal inflation to encourage capital endeavors essentially to beat inflation. And I don't disagree with that, except for in this scenario, there's not a significant market for dogecoin or other highly i... |
Speaker B: Most of everything in this space is going to zero, right? Like, if it's going to zero as a justification for why something is generally a bad idea for you to invest in, then this whole space is going to fall apart. How many of the, even the top 500 altcoins do you want to buy and then go into a coma for 15 y... |
Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, that's kind of my point. And that's for things that have a productive component or things that don't, but for things that clearly do not. They don't know what they stand for, other than here's a funny thing that I thought of 15 minutes ago. |
Speaker B: Why is that not something that's great to stand for, though? What is better to stand for than memes are amazing. Sure, there are some things that are better to stand for than memes, but memes are a pretty good thing. Like, the Internet freaking loves memes. There's an entire three generations now of people o... |
Speaker A: There was a line from Jacob, from Zora that I resonated with, which was that meme coins will just be called memes in the future, which I think he's just kind of implying, like, the actual instantiation of a token, a financial asset, that goes, you know, alongside an actual meme that we know of, like an Inter... |
Speaker C: I think that's stupid to say, here's token, now let's try to meme it so our bag doesn't go to zero. I'm okay with the idea of, here's a meme that should be tokenized, create a viral event, and then there's an economic value that can be associated to that. I think that's actually very interesting, and I think... |
Speaker A: Okay, so, so wait, so what you're saying is, like, the doge meme was already a meme on the Internet, and then the doge blockchain came about and you're saying that that is a normal expected area? |
Speaker C: Yeah, it was the tokenization of a thing versus. Yeah, the options. |
Speaker A: What about geo Bowdoin? Who Joe. Joe Biden already existed and was already, you know, having meme power in of itself. And now there's geo Bowdoin. Like, where does that land on your viability spectrum? |
Speaker C: It could be, okay, and there is this, like, the survival of the fittest. There might be 1000 memes based on Joe Biden and Donald Trump or the election, and only one survives because 999 die. And I understand that. And that's where a lot of this, like, everything goes to zero stuff comes from. But still, it's... |
Speaker A: So there's this concept out there that this idea that meme coins are more honest than actual real projects in crypto, because you can talk shit about all the meme coins that you want, but there is just a graveyard of attempted legitimate project that the founders had every intent to rug. At the end of the da... |
Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, this is my favorite thing about memes, is that they sort of, like, rip the mask off and say, this is what's happening. There's an authenticity about them. There's an honesty about them that's refreshing in the space. First, we created altcoins, and they stole people's bitcoin, and then we creat... |
Speaker A: Puff is a meme coin on mantle, and it's being bootstrapped by the mantle community, the mantle thought leaders, people, majority. And then the idea is that actually will turn into something with a. A team with good intentions, with a north Star, and they will build something. But there's just starting with a... |
Speaker B: Yeah, and I think it's brilliant, and I look forward to more experimentation in that regard. Using these memes for good. |
Speaker C: Yeah. This is an impossible argument for me. |
Speaker B: To win, because it's a really good one. |
Speaker C: Because your argument is really good. No, it's just, like, there's obviously going to be, you know, good, like, some good things that come out of it, but I don't think that that's a reason to celebrate the overall idea. Right. Like, I think that I'm not going to celebrate, like, this idea that all is futile,... |
Speaker A: I think one way to kind of maybe, like, categorize this conversation is there's, like, meme coin theory, and then there's meme coin in practice. Um, and I think Doge, one of the reasons why we talk about Doge and why everyone talks about the potential of doge is that meme coin in theory turned into practice ... |
Speaker C: And the result has been the same in all of these, pretty much where liquidity gets spread out, like way out to a point to where you kind of have this house of cards on the market that needs to correct and go back to the things that do carry something. Like, they carry some value. And yeah, maybe there are so... |
Speaker B: I kind of object to this whole painting of everything as this is just financial nihilism, right? We have a meme coin channel in our discord, and nobody in there is nihilist. Everybody's vibing and having an amazingly fun time. And the idea that never before in human history did everybody get together with th... |
Speaker C: I'm not saying it didn't exist. I'm just saying it's always fun while you're winning and then it's not. |
Speaker B: Sure, of course. And like, I think there is a much higher sort of self realization in the people trading memes that what they are doing is like a very zero sum game. I think in previous cycles, people were buying these altcoins. They literally thought they were going to do something and make them money. It's... |
Speaker C: I think it's less, I think it is dystopian, but it's not nihilist. |
Speaker B: Sure. All right, cool. It's dystopian. You could choose your dystopia, right? I mean. I mean, David, you're a big advocate. You love crypto, right? You think crypto is going to be a thing and change the world. Does crypto become a thing because a bunch of people buy bitcoin in their coinbase account and look... |
Speaker A: Yeah. And when I got into crypto, I was very much illusioned by the ico mania. I thought substratum was going to change the face of the Internet. I thought basic attention tokenization was going to meaningfully change our relationship with advertisers. Uh, and it really wasn't until, like, 2018. I was like, ... |
Speaker C: For the most part, yeah. Like, when you take it holistically, there will be success stories. But, like, I think it's a. Maybe it's a more efficient lottery, right? Like, and I don't really like the lottery. I certainly don't like the concept of a state run lottery. And let's send kids to college because we t... |
Speaker B: Sure. |
Speaker C: But at the end of the day, I would rather hold something, invest in something where I have some fundamental belief about what that thing is and why I hold it and why I'm participating. And I think for a market to be functional, you need a reasonable number of people and a reasonable volume of dollars that ar... |
Speaker B: Do you invest in art? Do you invest in nfts? Do you believe those things are investment vehicles? To a degree, or at least high probability speculative assets. |
Speaker C: High probability. No, I wouldn't do say high probability, but fine. |
Speaker B: Art you don't think is if it's. |
Speaker C: Already been established, right, but then your upside is lower. It's more of a traditional investment vehicle. The difference between me buying a Picasso and buying a piece of class a real estate, might be pretty much the same type of returns. |
Speaker B: See, I dont think theres much of a difference at all between buying Dogecoin and buying fine nfts. I dont think theres that much of a difference between buying Dogecoin and buying shares of LVMH. Right? Like, like, sure, LVMH makes widgets and people buy them. Right? But. But like under, underneath all of th... |
Speaker C: I've talked about the network effects of a blockchain forever like that. I'm not disagreeing with you on that. |
Speaker B: But if you think that it's like a legitimate investment to invest in brands, like brands like LVMH, for example, is investing in doge not the same thing as investing in any brand? It's an idea that you think has traction that is growing and it is growing at a rate that will let. |
Speaker C: You get a return on your thing. Negative about Doge. You keep saying I'm like anti doge. I've never said anything negative. |
Speaker B: Sure, but if you accept Doge and you accept the idea of brands, then you have to accept the idea that there won't just be one brand, there will be many downstream brands. |
Speaker C: No, that's like saying, well, if you believe in Nike, you should believe in Schmike because I made it. |
Speaker B: No, it's not. It's like saying, if you believe in Nike, when Nike made shoes, you had to believe in the idea that somebody would also create, like, adidas shoes and then converse shoes would be like, that's not the same at all. |
Speaker C: I think the vast majority of what's created looks a lot more like schmike than Adidas. Like, I don't think very many of the, what? Very many of the things that we see out there and that end up, like, shilled by people with significant followings are truly a different take on a similar concept, and instead th... |
Speaker B: Of course that's true. But if what you were saying, if the opposite of what you were saying was true, that was like, oh, yeah, I look in the meme space and I see all these really great brands that are the next doge, then there wouldn't be any returns there because the market would already see that. Like, you... |
Speaker C: But there's also some purpose, there's some purpose in establishing accountability in that ecosystem that is important. And when there's zero consequence for creating, like, a thousand shmikes, then that's. You're gonna self destruct the thing that was good in the first place. |
Speaker B: But that's why I like crypto. We just, like, fast run all the stuff in the real world and just blow everything up, and we learn all the lessons ourselves and redo everything and, like, super, super compressed timeframes. And you're already seeing the market adapt to some of this. We have these token checkers... |
Speaker C: Do you think there should be any accountability, like, for the person who's creating all the ones that are not, like, a real attempt at establishing meme value or whatever? |
Speaker B: No, I think if you fair deploy a token with no attempts to defraud people. We have laws in the real world against certain financial crimes. Just because you commit that financial crime in crypto doesn't mean you're not responsible for that financial crime. So I'm all for holding people in the crypto world re... |
Speaker C: I. |
Speaker B: Don'T have a problem with that. I don't have a problem with people playing that game. I don't. |
Speaker C: If I created a coin and I called it, okay, grandma or whatever, somebody's done these with me that's already created. |
Speaker B: Now, by the way. |
Speaker C: Yeah, I'm sure. But, like, if I create one, essentially memeing myself for being a frickin old boomer, like, let's call it the Bama boomer coin, okay? And so we got the Bama boomer coin, and I say, listen, I'm gonna go. I'm gonna create the Bama boomer coin. It's worthless. But if you guys want to make fun o... |
Speaker B: Okay, so two things there. Like, one, no, of course you're not responsible. And then, I don't know, like, people. Sure, there are people in the world who want, like, they're the Elizabeth Warren types and they think we should throw you in jail for that. Like, I'm not that person. Do it. If you're being trans... |
Speaker C: Once again, not said memes don't have value. |
Speaker B: You said, well, you said Bama Boomer. |
Speaker C: Doesn'T have any, has no value, but. |
Speaker B: Not a meme value because you as this, like, you've said it with, like, clout on crypto Twitter, you have attention. So stuff you put into the world has attention. And when people are buying meme coins, they're buying a piece of that attention or speculating on how much attention that will actually have. That... |
Speaker A: So one of the reasons fundamentals. In a token, for example, Makerdao has had some of the best fundamentals in crypto over the longest amount of time. And it's one of the most ignored, generally speaking, ignored coins until finally just the fundamentals became so strong that even VC's had to pick up on it. ... |
Speaker C: To pick up on it. The slowest actors in this, always the last one to the party. |
Speaker A: Well, on public markets, yeah. |
Speaker C: They'Re so. |
Speaker A: Attention grabbing that all of a sudden they showed up in the market price of MKR finally. And so maybe to kind of reframe what meme coins are. They're like, they're not equities, right? They're not trying to produce fundamentals, they're not trying to produce cash flows. They're commodities on attention in ... |
Speaker C: I guess I'm indifferent. I mean, I told you I was going to like, this is going to be hard for me to win because it's mostly me saying what I'm not that very willing to participate in. Um, because I don't value many of these segments of the attention market, if you will. And I do believe in the attention mark... |
Speaker B: I mean, if your point is that memes as a whole are actually really good, and I just, this segment of meme coinery is bad, if you wanted to say fraudster, profit, maxi spammer, sure. I won't argue with you. |
Speaker C: And that's been my whole point. But there's a high ratio of that in this current meme coin iteration. It's because we're just like, yolo, everything is fine. We're enabling so much more of that, and we're tolerating, for example, people that I think are making irresponsible decisions, like bro Bama, boomers,... |
Speaker A: I think this is really kind of drilling down into the heart of this whole crux, which is we talked about how, like, shady and terrible crypto has been in its history. The graveyards of scams that have come and gone and made very few people very rich to the cost of retail. Are meme coins better or worse than ... |
Speaker C: I think they're worse, but they're not that much worse than what we've been forced into with real projects, because the government has been been the one that has forced us into non fair distributions of real projects. So I can get back to blaming the government about, like, their approach to regulate regulat... |
Speaker A: Steven, thoughts? |
Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, my generalized thoughts on this is just that ideas are powerful. Ideas have value. We've been focused a lot on crypto as like, building, quote unquote, projects that. That do things, but ideas and things that have mind share undeniably have value. You can envision an end state of this cycle whe... |
Speaker C: Do you have a good example of one where it turned into something productive? Because I think the instate of what you're saying here is, I hope dog with hat is just like dogecoin again, and same with shiba inu. But have we seen anything really of, like, with any real productivity or like, anything of these cr... |
Speaker B: Well, I don't think anything in crypto has really done much so far. If you want to take a step back and think about it, there's a benchmark. Yes. We've created some cool products and Ethereum land. Yeah, bitcoin, get an ET. But the main thing we started crypto for bitcoin is still not doing anything it said ... |
Speaker C: That would be pretty funny, but I guess I would like to see some evidence of it. It is a little tiresome in crypto to how long? Seven, eight years or whatever in the space. And you're just. You keep saying, okay, when is some of this stuff going to come into fruition? And at some point I think the industry, ... |
Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, much like in the early days of the Internet, like the Internet didn't become a thing because people invested in Shopify and PayPal. The Internet became a thing because a lot of people started using it and they started using it in the early days for mostly, I dont know, mostly, but very numerous... |
Speaker C: Now. |
Speaker B: This is just the natural adoption cycle of these things to an extent. To expect that it's going to be any different this time around is silly. And yeah, of course I want to get to that end state. |
Speaker C: I actually think crypto is going significantly slower in its true adoption cycle than the Internet did. |
Speaker B: Yeah, I agree with you, I agree with you. |
Speaker C: But truly the crypto adoption cycle has been very slow in my opinion, and very fast on the speculative front, in the same way that the Internet was, but very slow on the adoption side of things. And I think that's partly because it's really hard. Right. Like there's a financialization aspect that was less, l... |
Speaker B: Well, I mean, I think the Internet ultimately gained a lot of adoption because people used it to entertain themselves. And I think in early crypto, like, you know, it was, it's kind of hard to entertain yourselves. And then all coin speculation became entertainment. And now this is just like another form of ... |
Speaker C: I agree with that. And if people figure out ways to lose money all the time, but if that's what it costs to get hundreds of millions of people with crypto wallets on their phone, that's the core of the crypto experience that's missing. And it's really hard. By the way, talk about things that need addressing.... |
Speaker A: Probably going to jail. That's why. |
Speaker B: I mean, that was like an outright financial fraud. And I think important to distinguish from, like, the. |
Speaker C: I don't even, like, was it not launched fairly or like, what was there. |
Speaker B: Was like a really great, like, they got six hour breakdown on this. It is such a scam, like, literal throw people in jail scam. Right. So they have. We should put it off to the side, for sure. |
Speaker A: Not a meme coin. |
Speaker B: Not a meme. |
Speaker C: Actually, it wasn't a meme. |
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