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Crypto Traders Discuss Why Memecoins Have Been 2024’s Most Profitable Narrative

Journalist and host Laura Shin interviewed crypto traders Ansem and Kel, known on X as blkoiz06 and Kelxyz, for her Unchained Podcast.  They discussed why memecoins had become the most profitable crypto trade this cycle and what the future might hold for the sector.

Is There Value In A Memecoin?

To begin with, Shin asked the traders whether there was substance in tokens based on memes, as it has been a big argument against them. To Ansem, people “think too hard” about the value of memecoins as projects. Moreover, he considers there’s no real gain in comparing whether other altcoins deserve or have more value than meme-based tokens.

Ansem further explains that the crypto community is “very internet-centered,” with its members being “internet people” since crypto’s origin.  As a result, the community is knowledgeable about the financial aspect but is also knees-deep in online culture.

The trader believes “there’s value in memes and culture on the internet.” People in the community are “financializing” meme virality and realizing that it’s a possibility with crypto.

Shin jokingly added that if this trend had been popular in 2016, the Drake meme creator would be a “bazillionaire” by now. The host seemingly referenced the still-popular meme that originated from Drake’s Hotline Bling music video.

Agreeing with this argument, Kel asserted that, over the last 20 years, many trillion-dollar businesses have capitalized attention as their “winning trade businesses idea.”

All these trillion-dollar businesses (…) facilitate directing attention and the way they’ve done that successfully has been, oftentimes, via memes. One could even make the argument that memes are the core engine of the entire Internet.

The Risks And Criticisms Of Memecoin Mania

To understand why memecoins have become the narrative of Q1 2024, the traders discussed the risks and arguments against the tokens.

One of the biggest criticisms of memecoins is their high-risk nature. Because they are much smaller and not backed by institutional money, they can “be riskier” and “more easily go to 0.”

Despite this, traders consider that many investors, especially new ones, find memecoins attractive because they have the potential to give 100x to 1000x returns.

Moreover, losing money is not exclusive to memecoins. To illustrate his point, Ansem compared the people who bought Doge’s top to those who bought Bitcoin at $69,000 last cycle before it fell to $15,000.

To the trader, how much a token can drop and investors buying the top is part of the general market dynamics instead of a characteristic of memecoins. However, he clarifies that there is better criticism of the sector.

Ansem considers the shady behavior behind the projects’ teams a crucial issue to address. To him, a framework could prevent creators from controlling a large supply of the tokens and dumping them immediately after launch or rug-pulling investors.

In the replies to the podcast, a user argued that the reason behind the recent frenzy is driven by “the Financial nihilism and the lack of liquidity that the youth has.” Adding that investors are “Buying a mere coin is like a lottery ticket.”

It is worth mentioning that trading memecoins like lottery tickets is not an unseen phenomenon. On-chain research platform Lookonchain recently reported a trader seeing 4,906x gains in one day by precisely doing that.

Per the report, the trader invests 0.1/0.2/0.3 SOL for each memecoin. Yesterday, the investor turned $30 into $147,000 by turning 0.2 SOL into 2 million AGORA.

What’s In Memecoins’ Future?

When asked what is in store for the sector, both traders concurred that memecoins are not going away. To Ansem, the community behavior towards memecoins is like that of NFTs last cycle. With NFTs, investors felt like they were part of a community and were working towards developing it.

The shared experience of relating is another crucial factor in the craze of meme-based tokens, as seen in communities of tokens like Dogwifhat (WIF).

Adding to that idea, Kel asserted that “all memes will become coins” in the next ten years.  Moreover, the trader wouldn’t be surprised if “the creation of a meme was natively financialized” by then, as the trend of financialization of things continues to increase.

Ultimately, he believes the sector is in the early stages of this trend as the community tries to “capture the moment of a meme” and capitalize on it now that crypto has made financialization “trivial from a tech perspective.”

crypto, crypto market cap, memecoins

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The Other Side Of The Do Kwon Story: Fat Man Terra Visits Laura Shin

It’s time to listen to the other side. Fat Man Terra used to be a cog in the Terra machine, but nowadays he’s the protocol’s biggest critic. He’s also a researcher, and his investigation lead him to believe that Terra was a scam from the very beginning. Of course, Laura Shin’s Do Kwon interview rubbed Fat Man Terra the wrong way. So, exercising his right to reply, he went to the same platform and told his side of the story.

If what Fat Man Terra says is true, the Terra/ Luna story is a horror film. 

A court will probably decide if he’s right or wrong, though. Let’s explore his allegations, taking into account that this is just the investigator’s interpretation of the facts. He might know more about the Terra/ Luna case than everyone on Earth, though.

This is the introduction to the episode titled “Fat Man Terra Speaks: Do Kwon Is a ‘Sociopath’ and a ‘Charismatic Manipulator”:

“Fat Man Terra, the anonymous Twitter account dedicated to bringing Do Kwon to justice, reacts to my recent interview with Do Kwon and says what he thinks it revealed about his personality.”

This is the video:

Fat Man Terra Presents The Case

  • According to the pseudonymous investigator, the Terra creators were “unfairly enriching themselves” and failed to disclose critical information to investors. On purpose.
  • Regarding his interview with Shin, Fat Man Terra thinks Do Kwon was “dancing around questions” and didn’t answer directly several of them. 
  • He thinks Do Kwon was “intentionally lying” about Terra’s breakup with Chai. Both when it happened and during the interview. At best, the situation was “heavily mishandled.”
  • Fat Man Terra claims that on-chain data shows that TerraForm Labs cashed out billions of dollars. They cashed out throughout Terra’s whole existence.
  • He also thinks there’s proof that the organization has “hundreds of millions stashed away.”
  •  According to the pseudonymous investigator, at the time Terra claimed that the protocol was attacked, but could not find “proof of fraud.”

The investigator also thinks that Do Kwon is “not able to stick to one story.” That’s a characteristic that fraudsters often exhibit. And he claims there’s a reason that regulators all over the world are looking at Terra specifically. Some things don’t add up, and this case is far from over. 

LUNA price chart on Eightcap | Source: LUNA/USD on TradingView.com
Opinions About Do Kwon’s Character

Respectfully, Fat Man Terra goes for the throat. He’s been studying Do Kwon and his diagnosis is that the man is:

  • A “sociopath with little regard for people’s feelings.”
  • “Avoiding law enforcement” and “definitely on the run.”
  • An idiot. Apparently, Do Kwon held all of the company’s bitcoin reserves in a single wallet. 
  • A liar. He knew that his involvement in the failed algorithmic stablecoin Basis Cash was relevant and should have disclosed it. 
  • A thief. Do Kwon was pretending to believe in Terra over everything and promoting it as such to retail. In reality, he was “simultaneously pulling out” hundreds of millions. 

According to Fat Man Terra, it all comes down to that. “If you really believe in UST, why did you cash out so much,” he asks Do Kwon. Also, why did he made up statistics and inflated the network’s numbers? 

The investigator will “start to believe he’s sorry” when Do Kwon starts making affected Terra investors whole from his own pocket. 

Fat Man Terra Is Still Optimistic

The parasites will always be there, surrounding the crypto space. According to Fat Man Terra, if the industry wants to survive we have to start “calling out scammers” and “pushing for justice.” He believes the industry will develop “failsafe mechanisms” to filter out bad actors and, in general, he’s “optimistic about the future of the space.” Make no mistake, though. Despite the optimism, the investigator claims that “Terra was a scam at every level.”

According to Laura Shin, Do Kwon will be back to answer the allegations in the future.

Featured Image: Laura Shin screenshot from the interview | Charts by TradingView

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Meet The UST Restitution Group: Tracking Do Kwon, Looking For Payback

The UST Restitution Group is on Do Kwon’s tail. A few governments and this civilian group are all out looking for the Terra creator, who insists that he’s not on the run. The Terra/ Luna collapse was one for the books, and that book is still open. We will write many more headlines about Do Kwon, and probably a few about the UST Restitution Group also. What’s done is done, some might say, but others will not rest until the case involves a court. 

In the FT article menacingly titled “Retail investors become vigilantes in hunt for crypto’s most wanted man,” we get to meet the UST Restitution Group. It’s “an association of nearly 4,400 crypto investors trying to track down Kwon, who is wanted in South Korea on charges of financial fraud.” That’s not Do Kwon’s only legal problem, the UST Restitution Group “launched class action lawsuits against Kwon in Singapore and the US, while Interpol has issued a red notice for him. South Korea is expected to revoke his passport on Wednesday.”

UST Restitution Group: Anons Looking For Do Kwon

According to the UST Restitution Group’s website, “Members have suggested that Kwon could be in Dubai, Russia, Azerbaijan, the Seychelles or Mauritius, among other locations.” A pseudonymous user went further and wrote, “Dubai is friendly to crypto, very international (he would not stand out), and has limited extradition treaties in place. It would seem like the best fit for the 3-5 hour timezone shift apparent in the data.”

Reviewing their impressive methods, another pseudonymous user reveals, “I obviously wouldn’t delve into specifics because publishing our methods would render them ineffective. I think we’re doing more than anyone else, though.” This particular UST Restitution Group member “introduced himself as a 31-year-old Ivy League-educated American,” and goes by the name of Antithesis. “His days are numbered. We have people who are very, very close to Do Kwon,” the person said. 

These are very high-level people. They’ve been scorned and they want answers. What will they do to Do Kwon when they find him, though? Another UST Restitution Group member that goes by the name of HKTrader “said he spent a month organising a Singapore class action lawsuit against Kwon and discovered his whereabouts in the country by hiring a private detective.”

Do Kwon is not in Singapore” anymore, though.

UST price chart on Kraken | Source: UST/USD on TradingView.com
How Would They Do It?

The elephant in the room is this: people are not sure how Do Kwon’s trial is going to go. The FT article quotes Seoul crypto expert Choi Hwa-in, “I wonder how effective the legal action against him could be, given the lack of legal ground to punish crypto players. This would just strain the crypto market further, dragging down their value and hurting investors more as a result.”

They also quote an official statement from Terraform Labs themselves, “Recent developments reaffirm that Terraform Labs and its stakeholders remain subjected to a highly politicised and erratic legal environment in South Korea. The facts are on our side, and we look forward to the truth coming to light in the coming months.” Is it possible that Do Kwon and company have it all under control? If so, why is he hidd… oh yeah, because the UST Restitution Group people are literally looking for him.

In a recent interview with journalist Laura Shin, the Terra creator refused to reveal his current location. Apparently, when people knew where Do Kwon was, there was trouble. In the interview, the Terra creator admitted failure and said the cause was the protocol’s “weakness to respond to the cruelty of the markets.” Do Kwon admits to technical and theoretical mistakes, but denies Terra was a scam. 

For her part, Laura Shin went to bat for Do Kwon on this issue. “I’m sorry, people, but this is totally not cool. What do they plan to do when they find him? WTF? People are crazy — Do was right when he said on my show that he can’t reveal his whereabouts. Seriously, don’t do this,” the journalist tweeted.

Featured Image by Amy Z from Pixabay | Charts by TradingView

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Laura Shin Asks Terra’s Do Kwon The Tough Questions. What Did We Learn?

This is the Do Kwon interview everyone was waiting for. In the latest episode of Laura Shin’s Unchained Podcast, titled ‘It Was Never Really About Money or Fame or Success’, the Terra creator faces serious scrutiny. Do Kwon denounces media misinformation, denies several serious charges and gives a play-by-play explanation of the organization’s movements during the crash. And he sweats bullets. 

Laura Shin did her homework, and relentlessly puts forward the questions most Terra investors have. She does this in a non-threatening, extremely professional way. Do Kwon answers all of her questions. Some better than others, but the man does show his face and answers, which is a lot. Compassionately, Laura Shin also gives Do Kwon a second opportunity to say sorry to Terra’s affected investors and their families. He would’ve come across much worse if she hadn’t offered that second chance.

The episode’s intro says:

“Do Kwon, cofounder of Terraform Labs, discusses the charges against him, gives a message to Terra victims, answers allegations about potential fraud and non-transparent business practices.”

This is the video:

This Do Kwon interview is one for the books, everybody interested in the subject should watch it. Let’s bring out the bullet points and analyze this phenomenal piece of media.

Do Kwon On His Location And “On The Run” Status

  • He claims he doesn’t live in South Korea anymore and he’s not planning to return to face the alleged charges. He plans to appeal, though.
  • Do Kwon hasn’t seen a copy of the arrest warrant.
  • Apparently, cryptocurrencies are securities in South Korea. 
  • His team has been cooperating with South Korean authorities, fulfilling the court requests for different documents.
  • Do Kwon refuses to reveal his current location because of the difficulties it brings to his living situation. He denies he’s on the run. 
  • He denied frozen funds at the KuCoin and OKX exchanges belong to him, Terraform Labs, or the LFG foundation.

The most important news Do Kwon reveals, though, is that the organization is working with a chain analysis firm to produce a paper on their trading activities. “They should be publishing a report shortly, which I think is going to provide a lot more clarity,” he said. Do Kwon promised the report in “the next couple of weeks.”

LUNA price chart on Kraken | Source: LUNA/USD on TradingView.com
Terra Was a Failure But It Was Not A Scam

  • Do Kwon claims that his online persona was an alter ego and confesses that he got carried away with the “sh*tposting.”
  • Terra’s failure was caused by the protocol’s “weakness to respond to the cruelty of the markets.”
  • He admits to a lot of technical and theoretical mistakes but denies Terra was a scam. 
  • Do Kwon claims that the Anchor developers/ whistleblowers that came forward denouncing the protocol were only interns. Not a line of their code appears in the final product, and this is apparent in GitHub. 
  • Admits to the SDT premine of $1.4B. This was a second stablecoin that the Terra organization used to maintain the UST peg to the dollar. This stablecoin wasn’t even mentioned in the Terra whitepaper. According to Do Kwon, this was because they hadn’t conceived SDT when they wrote it. He claims Terra’s is an “academic whitepaper” and wasn’t supposed to cover all of the technologies’ use cases.
  • Do Kwon admits they were using market operations to maintain the UST peg to the dollar. In fact, he says this was always the idea. The burning and minting of LUNA was not the only procedure that was supposed to maintain the peg.

Do Kwon And The Other Admissions

  • Apparently, Terra and Chai haven’t been working together for a long time.
  • When asked about faking Chai’s numbers and interactions registered in the Terra blockchain, Do Kwon said that the numbers came from Chai. According to him, they were probably “distancing themselves” from the Terra situation but still using the blockchain.
  • When asked about his participation in Basis Cash, a failed algorithmic stablecoin, Do Kwon distanced himself from the situation. He was just founding the team, but had nothing to do with the actual project. “Basis Cash is not something that I designed or operated. It’s something that I encouraged,” Do Kwon said.
  • When asked about if he was planning to compensate Terra investors from his own pocket, Do Kwon said, “my personal funds are not significant enough to make a difference.”
  • He still believes the world needs to work towards a decentralized future and that we need censorship-resistant money. 

As for his future plans, Do Kwon says he plans to continue building “highly experimental” projects in the crypto space.

Featured Image: Do Kwon and Laura Shin, screenshot from the video interview | Charts by TradingView

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Cardano (ADA) Takes A Tumble After Hoskinson Is Accused Of Falsifying Credentials

Cardano (ADA) is one of the most popular digital assets in the crypto market. The network which has been the subject of never-ending upgrades has made its mark as a force to be reckoned with, both development-wise and price-wise. However, it has been on a downtrend since it hit its all-time high of $3 last year and has not made any meaningful recovery since then.

This has recently been further made worse by accusations about the network’s founder, Charles Hoskinson. Hoskinson who founded Cardano in 2017 has come under fire for some information that was published in journalist Laura Shin’s new book.

Hoskinson Falsifying Information?

In her new book The Cryptopians, Laura Shin opens a window into the world of key players in the space. One of those who made the lineup was Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson. According to Shin, Hoskinson had made some untrue claims with regards to his schooling and education. Shin said that the founder had previously told her that he had dropped out of a Ph.D. program which she had confirmed to be false.

Related Reading | Risk Aversion Pulls Crypto Market Down, Bitcoin Still Below $40K

Shin made the accusations in response to a comment Hoskinson had made on Twitter calling her book a “great work of fiction.” The crypto journalist had subsequently fired back at Hoskinson asking him to address the discrepancies between his claims about his schooling and the statements from the schools stating that Hoskinson was never enrolled in their Ph.D. program and one of the schools didn’t even offer a math Ph.D. program.

Hi Charles, speaking of fiction, do you want to address the discrepancies between your claims of dropping out of a PhD program and the schools' assertions that you were enrolled as an undergrad? pic.twitter.com/gBULGEa6KK

— Laura Shin (@laurashin) March 6, 2022

Other Twitter users had replied to Shin saying that Hoskinson never said he had been in a Ph.D. program. To which the crypto journalist had countered with an audio recording of Hoskinson saying that he was a grad student. “I was trying to get a Ph.D., and I ended up dropping out and never finished,” Hoskinson is heard saying on the recording.

Cardano (ADA) Takes A Hit

Hoskinson is yet to respond to the accusations levied by Shin regarding his claims that he had dropped out of a Ph.D. program. Nonetheless, the digital asset has reacted to this controversy.

On March 6, when Shin had posted the accusations, there had not been much movement in the price of the digital asset, although it had continued its downward plunge. However, once the exchange began to gain more attention, the effects were being felt on the charts.

ADA falls to $0.8 | Source: ADAUSD on TradingView.com

On Monday, March 7th, ADA had taken a pretty significant nosedive that put it below $0..8 for the first time in over a year. A small recovery had since it break back above $0.8 but the cryptocurrency has not had much luck continuing on that recovery as it is now back down to the low $0.8.

Related Reading | TA: Bitcoin Faces Uphill Task, Why BTC Bears Are Still In Control

Laura Shin’s book opened a conversation about a lot of leaders in the crypto space and their conduct over the years. But besides calling the book a work of fiction, Charles Hoskinson has not said much about the book or the parts that involve him.

Featured image from Cointribune, chart from TradingView.com