Ahh meme coins, and the long lasting debate about whether they are trash or gold?, well buckle up pardner, let's explore together.
on one hand, meme coins are the classic clowns of crypto, catching everyone's attention by their quirky/funny names and a community that loves to shill the coin, you also get to hear success stories of overnight millionaires who were able to pay off their debt and were able to buy a house for their mom.
but let us not kid ourselves, for every winner in the market there's also a sucker who lost his mortgage money, for every dude who was kissed by the market there was a guy who was sucker-punched in gut, remember the market is a zero sum game.
which might make you think that it might be net-negative for the crypto ecosystem
instead of focusing on the core values of web3 like decentralisation, privacy , security, immutability, meme coins are glorified ponzi schemes, with wild swings that makes the chart look like a roller coaster or maybe a "bear" trap(iykwim).
but on the good side meme coins are the means for L1's and L2's to get liquidity, more users, etc.
so meme coins might be quite profitable for the dudes who have staked that chain, one more argument is that there are tons of things which are quite pointless and innately worthless like baseball cards or pokemon cards, but since people have "given" value to it, tons of people were able to make quite a handsome sum.
so let us not throw the baby out of the bath water, it's ok to have a little fun, but remember anything in excess is poison, so if you decide to invest(gamble) on meme coins, be sure it is money you can afford to lose.
one more obvious thing is, meme coins are quite rewarding for their creators and which is why you see so many bots that shill it, but when the chart is going up, the coin is going to be dumped almost certainly, pump the coin using bots, memes, etc and dump it, that's it, now if you are the creator you will have made quite the profit, you can now retire your parents and buy a nice little mansion with a sea view for yourself, and you can happily retire, or.... you might go ahead and start another project, maybe a different blockchain? an NFT meme project this time? the possibilities are endless, or if you are a lowlife scum with no morals, you might even start a wallet drainer ring(they make bank ig). All the best my upcoming rich scamster, consider donating some money from your scams to me.
In all seriousness, like most things in life, the answer to the question of whether meme coins are trash or gold, isn't black and white, think of it like the digital yin yang, the answer depends or whether you are a broke teen who wants to 100x their investment, or someone who runs a node of a particular blockchain, or the creator of the meme coin
but one thing for sure is that the crowd meme coins pull aren't rational, smart peeps who have tamed the traditional finance markets, in fact it might drive those people away from crypto adoption, it might make crypto scene look like it is filled with a bunch of clowns and scamsters(their view). so there's that too.
what we need to focus on is not another 10x altcoin but on building protocols that will solve real world problems and have actual use cases.
I personally believe that decentralised, secure, private, and most importantly trustless governance is the way to go, DAO's have the possibility of changing the world(India's Amul is also like a DAO btw), as we move forward as a society I believe we should use technology to solve problems instead of creating another speculative asset, but hey that is just my view
So whether you are an expert cowboy in the wild west of crypto or just starting out, remember to stay paranoid, not get caught by a wallet drainer, and play it safe, if you wanna look around and have some fun remember to practice safe crypto(iykwim).
In conclusion, I believe that we are getting excited about the wrong things and we need to do better, meme coins are here to stay tho, just like loot boxes, slot machines, etc.
A fool is born every minute, and scammers will exist as long as suckers who fall for scams will exist, that is the unfortunate reality of the world we are living in, so be careful and most importantly don't be an idiot. All the best y'all.
Fin,
Hangyaku.