The fiat system went into one of its cyclical debacles and Bitcoin had a fertile ground to appear and be proposed as an alternative, which few took seriously at first.
Back then, it was something mainly geeks talked about and understood, but after a while, others picked up on the idea...
Bitcoin could be mined, but not too many people had the technical skills to do it.
That's how the first mean of massively distributing it was created via a website that was called a Bitcoin faucet. No ads, just a captcha and bitcoin. Lots of them, by today's market price. See the direction back then? Decentralization.
Bitcoin was forked over the years multiple times, with some of the forks forked themselves.
Faucets expanded too, both for bitcoin and for the other chains. They added ads, to bring in some fiat money too. Also, more to present days other features. Among these faucets, lots of scams and also lots of bots posing as people destroying this business model for various faucet owners.
If we ignore the scams, they helped in two ways:
- distribution of crypto, especially for the early POW chains
- new fiat money constantly coming into the space from ads, surveys, offers, etc, helpful especially early on.
Of course, they are not as useful nowadays when tons of money enter this space.
In the meantime, more complex chains came up, like Ethereum with its smart contracts, and then its forks, and then the chains which run on EVM. Then, Ethereum "killers". And other specialized blockchains and ecosystems.
Looks like things were doing well...
Then, we started with the "narratives"... In 2016-2017 we had ICOs. Most of them scams, with a few successful ones. At least the narrative was promising: "give us money to build something awesome".
In 2021, we had the NFT craze. Most of them completely brain-dead, with a couple having some utility. So "give us money to give you back a jpeg".
Nowadays, in a movement that started in the previous cycle, we have the memecoins, which are the absolute non-sense: "give us money so we will give you nothing".
AI created this image.
Sure, you get a memecoin, but if you don't know what you are doing that's less than the transaction fees you paid to get them. They don't even sell an illusion as NFTs without utility did. Hopefully, everyone who buys into memecoins know they are worthless. They just hope they will pump and be that guy who got rich trading memecoins and now driving a lambo or whatever.
Ah, and of course, now Bitcoin is being sucked up by the representatives of the fiat world to which Bitcoin was once proposed as an alternative. That's the opposite of decentralization. And the opposite of an alternative. But times have changed... Profits before ideology, if there ever was anything like that in crypto.
Frankly, I don't know what the "narrative" for the next cycle might be. Anything lower than memecoins? In fact, I think there is a narrative lower than memecoins. This one: "give us money for nothing and owe us more". Anyone jumping to build something that fits into that narrative for the next cycle? Judging by how things have progressed, It might be a hit!
I might be too hard on memecoins... A couple of them build communities, which is an important thing in a space that needs more people. Sure, they build communities of degens, with a gambling mentality... Not sure if that's much better than no community...
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Meme coins already has their own established industry and unlike NFT, I think they're here to stay through many more cycles. Back in the day, I just didn't think a faucet would give anyone real money, it felt too good to be true for me, although I encountered many fakes along the way.
I won't dispute that. I don't like it, but I won't dispute it. Regarding NFTs, the jpeg ones will probably not make a return. But the ones with utility are too important for real-world use cases to be ignored. Unless crypto will be reduced to bitcoin and memecoins in the future, which I somehow doubt.
Crypto x AI could be one of the next narratives. For me, memes are interesting to observe, especially the degeneracy and empty hopes that some make out of it. Some however argue that it's a good stepping stone or gateway to onboard users into crypto.
That would be an interesting one. At least it has something behind, other than illusions to be shattered.
I'm in the same boat. We are probably a minority, which isn't necessarily a bad thing in this case.
Yes, I'll give them that. But it does matter the image you associate crypto with and what kind of people you attract.
That's what I tend to worry about, they will start looking at crypto from a very shallow lens, which doesn't do well with retention, they hop in, get addicted, lose, then hop out :)
Yep, that's how I see it too, unfortunately.
Hive is the perhaps the biggest crypto #faucet!
I won't argue with that. POB is a major upgrade to faucets regarding the way value is distributed. I've made this point in the past.
I like your analysis. Seems like a fairly factual account of the last dozen or so years in the crypto space. I was using a Dogecoin faucet and I'm still using a Bitcoin faucet. I like the concept of giving tokens away to help decentralize them a bit. I do that myself at @tokenfaucet.
I have had some memecoins and decided they were worthless in the past so I sold them. For example, the Doge I got free from a faucet. Turns out I sold too early. I still think they are basically worthless but now I also see that they are a membership card in a social club.
We have meme tokens here. I really like #PEPE. It has been around over a year I think. Someone in here just analyzed the Ethereum PEPE and our PEPE and I think the conclusion was that in the last year real PEPE is up 6X and ours is up 4X. Not bad if we think of what the Hive was worth that some of us used to buy that hive-engine PEPE. It has gone down a few X. That may be why our PEPE looks higher because it is in HIVEs. Even so, in dollar terms Hive is down and PEPE might be even.
This part of the quote reminds me of something I'm working on...
I just added pumpkin items to one of my games (@metarobots) and am working on a mini game where you can buy and sell the pumpkins on a game market where the price is not market driven but algorithmically driven. The "game" is to see if you can catch on to what the algorithm is doing and make some in-game money in the pumpkin market.
I think most memecoins are not market driven. I think one or more whales are manipulating prices at their own will. I think using a little bit of a game's in-game currency to practice a simulation of what a manipulated market looks like might be informative and maybe fun. We'll see. I'm all about doing experiments and then analyzing the results to see what I can learn.
How about you? Are you experimenting with any memecoins here on hive-engine?
That applies here too. Imagine if the rest of the world discovers we have a PEPE here, for example, and you can trade it on hive-engine for no fees. And it has a community with its own game @pepegame similar to a very simple Splinterlands.
I am a realist so I know it probably won't happen. But in my opinion, it is worth it to have a little skin in the hive-engine meme token game.
Just in case...
I wasn't aware of this one. I remembered someone distributing small HIVE amounts a while back (maybe they still do), in a faucet style, but I forgot how they were called. I am not against this, even on Hive. This is a known model which some prefer, and has the benefit of helping decentralization. Even though we have our own mechanism through POB, far more advanced.
Any benefits of being in this social club? Other than hoping to get rich?
I guess there is some arbitrage opportunity? Of course, there might not be one if we account for Ethereum gas fees.
Most likely.
Maybe... On principle, I won't buy meme coins with coins or tokens that have utility. I've been airdropped some dust PEPE, and because it doesn't have a pair on diesel pool, I've been too lazy to sell it. Probably worth close to nothing (I checked at some point). I am not against earning meme coins if someone prefers them, but not buying them with something with utility.
It's hard to know what the new movement will be but I don't think it will be that great. A lot of them ended up just doing it for the money and I can't see memecoins going anywhere. Most of them are just there for a quick buck. I remember the Defi craze as well going on with the NFT craze.
Yep, you are right. There was the Defi craze too. In fact, there were 3 of them then: Defi, NFTs, and memes (to a lesser extent). Both Defi and NFTs can really be useful, but much thought needs to be put into them and a lot of work done to create something really useful and awesome. Unfortunately both names have a bad aura around them now, thanks to how the initial iterations were created. And how many would do it, when we have the easy-work-easy-money model that works via memecoins? I wonder if these narratives aren't made dumber and dumber every cycle, so that in the end, there will be only one: bitcoin, and this one controlled by the right entities. Plus a few centralized casinos (Solana), or something like that.
I'm not against meme coins as some of them brought some innovations to the space... Like the one that was my first to buy... I bought it as they offered something new in crypto, which was nice to see... The meme coins boom that happened a year two ago started exactly because of the greed from some new "VC blockchains" that were created with only one purpose... To create a "fake image", pump the token, and fill the VC's bags...
But, you are not wrong with that comparison... It looks like we are going backward, indeed... BTC is going into the mainstream, and altcoins are going nowhere... hahahahaha... I don't want to sound pessimistic and I do believe that we will see a lot more innovation (for good) in the near future... Not just meme coins...
Innovations? Ok, maybe I missed those... But overall, the direction with the narratives seems wrong, as you also remarked, all while real utility is either ignored or fewer and fewer are enticed to either develop it or invest in it because of the mindless movements we have embarked on, as a space.
The direction of the whole world seems wrong... lol... Luckily, there are some "small islands" where we can "hide" 😃
Yes, unfortunately.
Yeah, small, and who knows how long until they invade those too?
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