Hey, friend!
It’s the 12th edition of Gems Corner. Today’s edition highlights the meaning of meme coins, PEPE coin craze, and incredible VC updates.
Enjoy the gems.
As the meme craze intensifies, it is vital to reconsider the historicity of meme tokens and the ideas behind them.
To some, meme coins are money printers, while to others, they are a fad. But come to think of it, what are they truly?
As the name implies, meme coins are meme-inspired cryptocurrencies on the internet or social media. And its origin can be traced back to the first meme coin - Dogecoin (DOGE), launched in 2013 off the picture of a Shibu Inu dog.
Dogecoin became a hit coin after Elon Musk threw his weight behind it, which inadvertently kickstarted the meme narrative.
Essentially, meme coins have no utility and, often, no inherent value. It’s just centered around jokes, images, and, most importantly, community.
I personally never really understood meme coins. There are many successful people who do seem to understand them, including Elon Musk, and others, so we go by users. If a coin has a lot of users trading it, wanting it, playing with it, etc., then we’ll most likely list it. If the coin only lasts for two weeks, then we probably won't. But if it holds, then we probably will. So we view coins from a user perspective. - CZ, Binance on listing Meme Coins.
That said, they are many rags-to-riches stories with meme coins, which attract new retail investors to crypto. Even so, it’s a high-risk bet as there are a ton of scams in the market.
For instance, ZachXBT, an on-chain sleuth, recently discovered that one person had created 114 meme coin scams in the past 1.5 months. Here are a few meme tokens tips:
Some more additional tips to consider:
Popularity on social media
Strong team profiles
Market value and trading volume
Market environment and opportunity
Finally, here’s a thread on busying strategies for meme tokens.
Stay SAFU out there, anon.
PEPE Coin, still on fire
Pepe coin has reignited the meme coin narrative, and now, it’s getting more interesting. Recently, the PEPE coin liquidity pool became the most active on Uniswap.
Also, the market cap for PEPE is now bigger than that of majours banks like First Republic Bank and PacWest Bancorp, as captured in the image below.
Again, I say, don’t FOMO. Always do your research.
Crypto Calendar for May
Mark your calendar and never miss any significant crypto event!
VC Updates for April
LazerZero raised $120M in a series B round, making it the largest raise in April. Other projects alongside LayerZero include Unchained Capital, EOS, Sei, P2P Validator, MZERO, iZUMi, and GOALS.
From the chart, it is clear that Infrastructure projects are gaining lots of traction by VCs lately. It could also be worth keeping an eye on and interacting early regarding airdrops and other incentives.
Alpha Drips
Blur launches Blend, a peer-to-peer perpetual lending protocol for NFTs - link
Vela Exchange releases its Starmap ahead of its official launch - link
DeBank introduces DeBank Stream, a web3 social feed - link
Linea kickstarts its 9-week odyssey to unravel the Linea ecosystem - link
Thread on finding low-cap gems and not buying scams - link
ChronosFi hit a milestone of $200M, becoming the third largest DEX on Arbitrum - link
Potential Airdrop opportunities on selected DeFi tools - link
Thanks for reading!
Until next Friday,
Viktor DeFi.